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Notes -
I recall Black Mirror had a whole host of episodes about AI that's actually conscious and the ethical horrors that could follow. There was one about a game dev who made AI companions based on coworkers who slighted him, ruling over them cruelly within his own game simulation. It actually made a reference to I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream at one point. There was another about a conscious AI meant for controlling someone's home lighting and climate - and the AI was modeled after the user's consciousness, to best be able to know what the user wanted - which was essentially tortured into being a subservient tool by having it experience months of solitude simulated in seconds of real-life time.
This was after Black Mirror had gone severely downhill, though, so none of them really explored the ethics of it in an interesting way. It was mostly just "this bad; you feel horror."
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