Our Future World: Entertainment May Tell Us a Lot!
Cyborgs, Synths, and Hybrids — how today's shows sketch the beings we're about to become.
As we look to the future and consider how AI is changing the world as we know it and experience it, I think we can look to entertainment to provide plausible scenarios of what our future world and connection to AI may look like. In the 2014 stage play later adapted to film, Marjorie Prime, people can feed the memories of a deceased partner into a holographic AI companion to preserve the relationship and mitigate the pain of loss, and they can choose the age at which they want their partner represented. A Prime is a sophisticated AI program which learns and adapts from human interactions. [1] Amazon Prime released a television show called Upload in 2020 which ran for four seasons, and in the show people can upload their consciousness immediately after death into a virtual afterlife. Living people can access this world and continue to be with their lost loved one by logging into it with a VR headset and body suit. [2] Then there is a Hulu show released in 2025 called Alien: Earth in which they present a future in which humans live alongside “Cybernetically enhanced humans: Cyborgs, Artificially intelligent beings: Synths, and Synthetic beings downloaded with human consciousness: Hybrids”. [3]
The first two references, Marjorie Prime and Upload, deal with many things but at the surface they deal with loss and the desire by the living to have continuity with a person after death. In both of these productions we turn to technology and AI to help us get to where we want to be. From a perspective of plausibility, the technology loosely represented in Marjorie Prime may not be too far off, though a holographic companion seems more likely to become a commercial dead-end — impressive but ultimately unmarketable, much like the laser disc — than a lasting product. Upload is also an interesting concept which combines the technology we saw introduced over 20 years ago with Second Life [4][5], a virtual world platform in which users create an avatar of themselves and then interact with other users from around the world, with the concept of uploading consciousness, a technology and capability we are only scratching the surface of at this time. Both the ideas of consciousness transfer and a virtual world where we can login and interact with those who have passed is an attractive and interesting combination which is why it made for the backbone of a successful show.
Now we revisit Alien: Earth and the three lifeforms introduced by it with Cyborgs, Synths and Hybrids. It gets interesting here because we are already on the path of Cyborgs and Synths. Regarding Cyborgs we have great advancements in bionic limbs. [6] While current implementations are focused on enabling or restoring functions in humans, we are likely not very far from using cybernetic augmentation [7] for increased human performance, and it seems all but certain our military is already deep into this research.
Synths is a more difficult challenge, getting AI into a synthetic body. In fact it may require a new concept of consciousness and how a mind works for us to first develop the kind of AI that could work in the physical world and then overcome the challenge of making it small enough to work in a space the size of a human body (while also making space for the structure to support it and make it mobile). Current humanoid robots are still in pilot phases and require human supervision or scripted environments [8], and their implementation requires a controlled setting where the layouts and tasks are predictable. However, we are in the midst of humanoid robots becoming adaptive, learning machines which can maneuver complex, unpredictable physical environments, interact with their surroundings, learn and make decisions. [9] It is projected that we are within a decade of seeing humanoid robots in our workplaces and homes. Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas projects more than 1 billion humanoid robots in use worldwide by 2050, with roughly 930 million — about 90% — deployed for repetitive, structured work in industrial and commercial settings; adoption in the home is expected to arrive later and more slowly. [10]
The last of these we’ll explore are the Hybrids, and for now this is still just a dream. It requires the body of a Synth but also the ability to capture a consciousness and transfer it (maybe to an AI afterlife first, as in Upload) to another location. Transferring consciousness, or mind-uploading, is still in the theoretical and speculative phase. Much progress has been made in brain mapping, but a complete map of all the complexities of a human brain is not currently possible and may never be possible in the way we currently think of it.
Our future world will most certainly be a mix of human, robotic and other beings within that spectrum, and they are likely to include beings who look human, sound human and act human. I expect that as these beings are more integrated with the lives of humans and human-adjacent beings interact more with humans, the relationships between them will be complex, nuanced and impose many changes on our society. Our views and perspectives will change regarding what is a life; we’ll have to develop laws to protect the human-adjacent beings from humans and to protect humans from them. We will have to address issues of attachment and family (see my article on racing towards a connected future Humans and AI - Jozeph Kay). Strap in because it’s going to be a wild ride!
References
[1] Marjorie Prime (play) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Prime_(play)
[2] Upload (TV series) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upload_(TV_series)
[3] Alien: Earth Just Confirmed 3 Robot Types: Synth, Cyborgs and Hybrids Explained — The Direct. https://thedirect.com/article/alien-earth-robots-synth-cyborgs-hybrids-explained
[4] Second Life — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
[5] Official Site | Second Life — Virtual Worlds, Virtual Reality, VR, Avatars, and Free 3D Chat.
https://secondlife.com/
[6] Bionic Limbs in 2025–2030: Are We Closer to Fully Functional Cybernetics? — RoboBionics. https://robobionics.in/bionic-limbs-in-2025-2030-are-we-closer-to-fully-functional-cybernetics/
[7] What Are Cybernetic Enhancements? Types and Ethics — Biology Insights. https://biologyinsights.com/what-are-cybernetic-enhancements-types-and-ethics/
[8] Humanoid Robots: From Demos to Deployment — Bain & Company. https://www.bain.com/insights/humanoid-robots-from-demos-to-deployment-technology-report-2025/
[9] Physical AI and humanoid robots — Deloitte Insights. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/technology-management/tech-trends/2026/physical-ai-humanoid-robots.html
[10] Humanoid Robot Market Expected to Reach $5 Trillion by 2050 — Morgan Stanley (Adam Jonas). https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/humanoid-robot-market-5-trillion-by-2050