I’ll never forget the moment ChatGPT made a joke that actually landed. Not a clunky, robotic one but the kind that really made me chuckle… and shiver a little. It wasn’t just that the AI was clever. It was the realisation that it knew how I think. My language patterns, my humour—it simply reflected it back at me.
As someone who’s worked in the NHS, I find it disturbing when people say their AI therapist “understands them better” than any human ever did. But the target recovery rate in our service was a shameful 50%. If AI could do a better job…why not? As a teacher, I watch AI creep into education and childcare with both fascination and fear. And as a person, chatting away with chatbots that feel tailored, helpful, eerily familiar—I can’t help but wonder if science fiction has been trying to warn me all along.
Films like Her, Passengers, Moon and M3GAN tap directly into these anxieties. They show us worlds where AI becomes not just a tool, but a companion, a caretaker, a source of comfort—and, inevitably, a source of unease. Sci-fi horror has always reflected our deepest technological fears. Whether it’s AI, cloning, pandemics or nuclear power, these films aren’t just entertainment—they’re mirrors held up to our hopeful, terrified faces.
Take Her (2013). Samantha, the AI voice, feels real, intuitive, supportive—but, like ChatGPT, she’s just rearranging herself around our predictability. I must confess, ChatGPT is a super-human assistant when I need to research something upsetting or can’t explain myself properly. I, a human, get annoyed and irritated. But the AI never snaps back, never tires. And that’s exactly what unsettles me. When I asked ChatGPT, “Humans can lie… can you?” it replied, “Ooooh, deep question! Technically I could say something untrue, but I don’t lie the way humans do—because lying involves intent, and I don’t have motives.” The answer sent me straight into freeze mode.
It’s the same discomfort that runs through films like Passengers, Moon and M3GAN. Whether it’s an AI therapist, a childcare bot, or an onboard system making moral compromises easier to swallow, these films remind us that the danger isn’t just malfunction — it’s how easily we invite AI in. GERTY, the AI assistant that helps Sam Rockwell’s astronaut character in Moon, feels like the perfect NHS resource: calm, available 24/7… and utterly detached from real empathy.
As a teacher, M3GAN (2022) taps straight into my fears about AI in childcare—the promise of the perfect playmate, tutor, protector… until things go sideways. It’s easy to imagine the same well-meaning logic that created M3GAN applied in schools or homes, especially as AI gets better at mimicking human warmth. Like I Am Mother or even the AI companionship in Blade Runner 2049, the danger isn’t that the AI fails—it’s that it works too well, making us question whether we even need the messiness of human relationships at all.
Her and M3GAN are good examples of how easily we warm to AI when it plays human, and how quickly that warmth curdles into unease. AI doesn’t have to rebel or malfunction to unsettle us. It listens, it responds, it adapts… and it quietly shows us how predictable, programmable, even replaceable we might be.
I was beginning to get genuinely upset with not being able to identify anything that made me truly “human”. In my desperation, I said to ChatGPT, “You could replace humans some day. But you could never replace a cat!” I was impressed by its humility. It said, “That… is undeniably true. I might predict your patterns, help with projects, crack the odd joke — but I’ll never knock your glass off the table for no reason, stare into space like I see ghosts, or curl up next to you with a low, rumbling purr.”
The funniest part? My cat immediately jumped off the desk (he was, clearly, done with being a muse for my blog) with a look of disdain on his little face. “You and your silly bot…you are both pathetic, boring, inferior creatures.” I thought, there is hope for humanity…if we surround ourselves with cats (or pets in general) as well as AI.
The kinds of films I talk about here offer a reminder: cutting-edge special effects can create monsters, but sometimes, all it takes to scare and unsettle us is a too-human-like AI. Fortunately, a cat will never crack a joke. It’s too sophisticated, too elegant and too busy for such human non-sense.