This post was written by Alice Dauphin. It is cross-posted from our Substack. Kindly read the description of this sequence to understand the context in which this was written.

Picturing A Future with Humanoid Robots

In the previous post, we introduced a number of risks associated with superintelligent systems. Among them were the dangers posed by advanced autonomous agents that can create their own goals, possibly conflicting with human values or worse, directly threatening human existence. If it all sounded disembodied, I have the perfect show for you: Real Humans (Äkta människor), a Swedish series released in 2012, that depicts a not-so-distant future in which humanoid robots (hubots) are deployed at scale.^[1]

In the series, hubots are programmed with limited intelligence and strict obedience to humans, preventing them from being harmful. They have the status of property—machines that can be sold, traded, and discarded. The industry uses them as relentless workers, and households as domestic assistants for daily chores. Their human appearance makes them familiar and reassuring so that they can become true family members, while their lack of self-motivation makes them perfectly compliant workers.

This setup raises a number of concrete ethical and societal questions: What jobs will be left to humans in such a society? Is it moral to program hubots for sex? And what happens to human relationships when companionship can be bought? The show brings these questions to life through compelling storylines featuring personalized AI assistants, clones of dead relatives, and a variety of human-AI relationships spanning romantic connections, companionship, and even family-like bonds. Although released more than 10 years ago, it is not outdated. There are occasional plot inconsistencies, but they don't detract from the powerful exploration of AI ethics, making it one of the best AI-related dramas available.

A Missing Piece of Code to Create Intelligent Systems

The series would already be great if hubots remained under strict human control. But it becomes really captivating when we discover the existence of a piece of code that enhances hubots' intellectual capabilities. This code allows them to create independent motivations beyond their original programming. The code has gone missing, but had already been implemented in a mysterious pool of hubots—David Eischer’s c...

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