Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror has been called “one of the most stunning reflections on the accelerated evolution of media technologies and their consequences for human culture.” What makes it powerful are its “radically realistic techno-philosophical visions—all set in a future that could arrive in ten years or ten minutes.”

Of course, we don’t have to wait. Some dystopian technofutures are already here. Our screens are, as one theorist puts it, “maps of our consciousness for 10–14 hours a day,” shaping not only what we see but how we think. And, these “techno-cultural trends [are] impacting the brains of our species.” At the center of a new transformation sits artificial intelligence, the quiet force reshaping trust, knowledge, and human connection.

This is the starting point for AI & Society: A Series of Critical Perspectives. It’s an invitation to think beyond hype and examine what AI means for human flourishing.

Developing Skeptics in a World of AI Enthusiasts

Silicon Valley promises AI will solve everything from climate change to loneliness. This series takes a different path. I am not anti-technology, but I want to ask what usually gets overlooked: What are the unspoken risks? Who benefits? And what assumptions about human nature and social organization get coded into these systems?

As one media theorist warned, “The enemy will not be aliens. It will be us, staring at our solitary reflections in our black mirrors.” The danger is not conscious AI or AGI, but losing our own capacity for conscious, critical thought about the world we are building.

Each lesson examines AI through a critical lens, paired with Black Mirror episodes that feel less like fiction and more like previews of next week’s TechCrunch news.

Alignment Problems

In Hated in the Nation, Autonomous Drone Insects were designed to replace dying bee populations and later programmed to surveil citizens. A hacker exploits this system to lethal effect, turning a tool of ecological restoration into a weapon of mass destruction.

This is not a story about machines going rogue. It’s about how systems that are perfectly aligned with their coded objectives can still be exploited once deployed in the real world. AI does not need to misinterpret its goals to be dangerous. Co-opted or poorly safeguarded aligned systems can still threaten human values. Of course, we already see echoes of this today: most video and image generators are not designed to spread bias, yet they consistently amplify stereotypes. As Nick Bostrom reminds us, “Computer languages do not contain terms such as happiness…[so] identifying and codifying our own final goals is difficult because human goal representations are complex.”

Epistemic Security: When Truth Becomes Negotiable

In Joan Is Awful, an AI system turns a woman’s life into entertainment, blurring truth and fiction until even Joan doubts her own memory. This episode dramatizes our current epistemic crisis, where deepfakes, synthetic voices, and AI-written articles are beginning to overwhelm the channels we use to find the truth.

Philosopher Regina Rini warns, “The most important risk is not that deepfakes will be believed, but that increasingly savvy information consumers will come to reflexively distrust all [information].” Some researchers call this “epistemic fragmentation,” the splintering of shared reality into incompatible information ecosystems. As one theorist observed, “Everywhere we turn, the signs and symbols of the real stand in for the real, apparently too unbearable, too degraded, or too boring in comparison to the artificial selves and glorious worlds on our screens…”

Anthropomorphism: Machines That Feel Human

In Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, a lonely teenager bonds with an AI doll that mimics empathy so well it reshapes her sense of self. The doll does not need consciousness to be effective. It only needs to perform empathy convincingly enough to trigger our social instincts.

Today’s AI systems do the same. Trained on human conversations, they appear fluent, caring, even wise. Yet as one computer scientist emphasizes, “I reserve certain words such as think, know, understand, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, etc. for people.” When we anthropomorphize AI systems, we risk granting them authority they do not deserve and lowering our standards for real human connection. So when a tech leader claims their platform thinks or understands, we should all question their credibility.

Living in the Black Mirror Moment

The creators of Black Mirror understood something essential: “The future will be one of surprise and strangeness, filled with events that will feel very comfortable, familiar, hopeful, and terrifying.” My contention is that we are not heading toward a dystopia, we are already adapting to one in real time. So this series, in part, is preparation for that world. A social space where AI systems mediate our information, our relationships, and even our self-understanding. The questions we ask now—about alignment, truth, and authentic connection—will determine whether technology enhances human flourishing or erodes it.

In the end, our greatest tool is not artificial intelligence but human intelligence—our capacity for critical thought, genuine connection, and collective wisdom. So while AI may shape our tools and our screens, we still choose the destination.

 

References

Albrecht, M. M., & Alleyne, O. (Eds.). (2018). Black Mirror and critical media theory. Rowman & Littlefield.