[…] Today: Siri, suicide, and the ethics …read more […]

I'm immediately assuming the robot is named Virgil. This is a tough one, because I have a friend who committed suicide, but at the same time, I totally think that people should have an "escape plan" at the ready in case the circumstances come up... but those have to be VERY specific circumstances. And there's definitely something enticing about being able to control the last interaction you have with people, you can have a proper going away party, do a live will-reading, you can really say goodbye. I was listening to a Patton Oswalt bit the other day where he talks about taking Ambien and how alluring that sleep is, it's the sleep where you know your legacy is secure and your enemies have been defeated and your work on this planet has been done, and he warned if they ever created a suicide pill with that effect, watch out! So THAT would definitely be built in. Maybe there's a safe word element involved, you give the robot a phrase and the robot knows you've changed your mind. Or maybe there's a little brain implant that lets the robot know that you've passed "the point of no return" in your sickness and that would let the robot know when it's time to pull the plug. There's a lot of hot emotions and religious arguments for and against assisted suicide, so I think I would focus more n the robot. Go Asimov with it. I know it wasn't a popular movie, but I always had a soft spot for "Bicentennial Man," so in my head, the movie focuses on the robot whose built to kill (kill with love) and who starts to learn about his patient and the family, we're introducing this whole life to him ("a stranger comes to town" as it were). And you've definitely got this arc with the patient as well, he has to learn to come and trust this robot with his life, both caring for him when he's well and then executing him when the time is right. I know if I met the person programmed to kill me, we would not get on at first. There's a lot of trust that needs to be established. And imagine explaining who the robot is to your grandkids. And as much as I'd like a robot suit, I think budget would probably have the robot looking like a real person throughout the whole thing. Which is fine, he/she could have a cool outfit.

Death penalty drama with the executioner as protag: In Spokane, WA, a McVeigh-like member of a right-wing militia sentenced to death, and determined to turn his case into a show trial and media circus, requests that he be executed by hanging, as is his right. Since no one has been hanged in the US since 1996, only a single elderly man possesses the expertise to carry out the sentence in a humane way, and he is pulled out of retirement and tasked with the responsibility of building the gallows needed and performing the execution. However, when his identity is leaked to the press, he and his family are harassed and threatened from death penalty opponents on one side, and vengeful, rabble-rousing media and grandstanding politicians on the other. We follow the psychological journey of a man bound by duty to kill another and singularly burdened with the responsibility of ensuring that justice is served.

Wow, really like that idea Scott - great potential for a single location thriller....made me think of Hardware and Wait Until Dark (although both very different stories).....Azimuth's rules might need a bit of rewriting though? :-) How about a comedy? The film equivalent of SIRI is artificially too intelligent and becomes depressed, deliberately misleading our geeky hero....every time he/she requests seemingly innocent information, the depressed OS tries to trick them into killing themselves.....

Are you thinking Marvin, the paranoid android? Bear in mind that an artificial intelligence would also be an alien intelligence, which is to say it wouldn't behave with the same motives and priorities as a human. How about an AI that wanted to explore death as a means to seek out spiritual experiences for itself? Its sociopathic human developer/creator kidnaps people, puts them into artificial comas, while wiring them up to the AI. Then as the victims are scientifically pushed and pulled closer and closer to death, by proxy the AI experiences these states. And becomes addicted.

"Oh what's the point, robot with a brain the size of a planet and they tell me to get the prisoners, you call that job satisfaction 'cuz I don't..." Mark: The AI trying to get the humans to kill themselves makes me think of "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream," but what if it's malevolent without really seeming malevolent? It reminds you of all the embarrassing moments in your life, how futile your future is, that your wife is cheating on you... it's just giving you the cold hard facts. Pliny: It sounds like Flatliners meets The Matrix! Cool. Maybe it starts off as a hospital AI hooked up to the coma patients to monitor them, and evolves from there. It could be a tiny little research hospital out in the woods or the mountains, so you've got a contained element to it.

"The Green Mile" meets "Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman." Definitely an interesting premise.

You guys might want to take a read of this: http://aliciapatterson.org/stories/eurisko-computer-mind-its-own

If we are way into the future why not most -or all- humanity being enhanced with technology, Everyone is half man, half machine. And the machine part is programed to avoid suicide. But a hacker releases a program that would allow you to commit suicide.

Definitely had Pierrepoint in mind.

And what if in this future science is so advanced that people are practically immortal. Doctors can easily and cheaply grow any part from stem cells, so with almost any medical problem you can just have any body part or organ easily replaced. And if that doesn't work they can clone you, keeping all your memories. You try to commit suicide? Most methods fail because the doctors can cure almost anything - poisoning, gunshots, hanging. Or you're back as a clone. Enter your Silicon Valley hackers, which hack nanorobots to modify DNA and make death possible again. They call themselves the "Death Liberation Front". But the nanorobots could go berzerk...

Well, if we're all bionic, then there's probably no incurable or untreatable diseases, so a bunch of those suicides wouldn't be an issue in the first place. And if you have an enhanced brain, then if you're depressed enough to kill yourself, you can just "correct' that. So there's another chunk of suicides that won't happen. And the rest would be about circumstances... it might still be a lot, but as a percentage, I wonder how many that would actually be, what the "demand" would be for the ability to commit suicide. The fact that you're biologically incapable of committing suicide brings up a lot of issues of control vs free will, if we can't do that, what else might we not be able to do? There's a great discussion to be had there. I'm totally thinking a world like "In Time" (not ABOUT Time, IN Time) with that whole genetically modified humanity.

The population would grow out of control real quickly in that scenario... we already have WAY too many people. So you might have to set it after some disaster or massive population drop, where they need every human body they can get (maybe it's a colony on another world). Or these people who are constantly dying and being brought back have a special skill that can't be easily replaced. Basically, they're too valuable to die.

I just thought about some of those issues. See next post. :-)

Well, in the future we would have colonies all over the solar system. Maybe even farther away. In fact, part of the problem would be that humans are extending like a swarm of locust.

That's how you beat out extinction: spread yourselves out.

No one responded to this one, and maybe it's not the most advisable story to write, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it all day. I put it down in my "ideas" notebook quicker than I did for the sexy vampires one. I've been seeing little snippets of the movie in my head all day, where the humanoid robot (Olivia?) moves in with the guy and becomes his caretaker and... I dunno, activities director, she gets him eating right and healthy and makes sure he wraps up all his legal affairs, finishes his will, does everything with his family that he needs to take care of, and gives him a big farewell living wake party. The perfect death, no one ever gets that, and it's kind of alluring in a morbid way, isn't it? And Olivia would be the last best friend you'd ever have, until you reach that point of no return, she's there to make sure you're as happy and healthy as you possibly can be.

One of the feature scripts I'm working on has this theme. If humanity can for all intents live forever, it automatically allows us to be a spacefaring species. That's because even traveling at less than the speed of light, any return trip to another star, whether it takes 10 or 10000 years comprises an insignificant fraction of our lifetimes. Of course, if you're not ready for the consequences of practical immortality, problems will ensue.