Synopsis: Her (2013) is set in a near future where a lonely writer develops an unlikely relationship with an operating system designed to meet his every need.
Her does a good job at illustrating (a) what AI can do and (b) sets a course for the viewer to see that it isn't inevitable that AI will become some giant Skynet entity. On the contrary, the largest problem we might face with AI is how to actually live with it emotionally and psychologically.
Her embeds concepts like the Turing Test and recursive self-improvement in ways that is understandable by the average audience without needing to go into the technical details or state it explicitly. In fact, I love how they provided the consequences and implications of these things.
The story does a good job at making sure the audience becomes invested in Samantha (the operating system)... so much so it forces you to realize by the end that (as a human) you can empathize but won't truly/fully understand how it would "feel" to go through a process of recursive self-improvement every single moment because you can read hundreds of books a minute, have hundreds of conversations a moment, and be involved in hundreds-to-thousands of relationships at a time without feeling like you're multi-tasking.
How does the movie pull this off? It starts with placing the audience in the shoes of Theo the main character. And in his character development, Spike Jonze emphasizes on very human emotions like anger, sadness, loneliness, frustration, and love. Once Jonze introduces Samantha into the picture, you're already anchored by the thought that an OS will not understand the human experience - specifically, Theo's experience. That's an easy sell by Jonze.
But little do you know that as a viewer, there's a larger goal to this. He flips this on its head by building Samantha's character. You see her learn and grow over time. Take for instance when you are first introduced to her, she works like an average OS (today), i.e., ask/give it a name, tell it about yourself, have it learn who you are and your preferences, and make it do things for you especially the repetitive stuff. Over time, we see Samantha ask really good questions. She provides jokes and makes us smile and laugh. You begin to see curiosity. And by the middle of the story, she ends up creating music and art. A similar process we see humans go through. The moment we are bought in that her "character" has purpose and meaning in the story, Jonze flips the table completely. Samantha continues to learn more and faster. She experiences things humans can't experience. In the exact same way that AIs are limited by their form and therefore cannot experience human dynamics, humans are limited by space and time and therefore also cannot experience AI dynamics. This sets the stage to deconstruct what love is.
The film deconstructs love by experimenting on different scenarios throughout and posits what love is for the audience. Here are some questions the film went over:
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Is marriage an indicator of love?
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Are legal documents of marriage an indicator of love? Or if you file for divorce, does that mean you stop loving someone?
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Do you need to love someone with a human body?
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Can you be in love with a machine?
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How does sex play a role in love? Is it just about sex? Can you have love without sex?
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Can you love someone/something and still have sex with someone else? Is that still love? I.e., surrogate scene.
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Is it a true love-letter (by definition) if someone else writes it for you?
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Is love monogamous or can you love multiple people at the same time?
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Can you love someone before and end up loving them later on?
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And is love simply a phenomenal event as oppose to a noumenonal one?
Here are some other things I thought were interesting:
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the use of red
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the idea that Theo's job is a creative one yet can still become mundane over time
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the types of jobs that will pop up due to AI
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the fun connection (or coincidence?) that Theo (meaning god-given) was the name of the main human character... and that humans created an AI system that eventually becomes omniscient and omnipresent.
Submitted January 27, 2018 at 12:41PM by Nzym http://ift.tt/2BuHvdH