7:41 am ET
Jan 24, 2014


How Real is Spike Jonze’s ‘Her’? Artificial Intelligence Experts Weigh In

    • Commenting on the last sentence:

      “A funny view of the future is that everybody is going around looking at the sequence of auto-suggests,” he said. “And pretty soon the machines are in charge.”

      The human would set the long term goals, and the machine would handle navigation to get there. It would be the general case of what we do with GPS. You set the destination and the machine routes you. You look at the route and perhaps choose a more attractive alternate. You check to make certain the route doesn't have you turn into the hotel parking lot from an off ramp 30 feet in the air.

    • What unmitigated nonsense! According to the article we have already surpassed 2001 a Odyssey’s HAL. Have we now? HAL was presented as being self-aware and pretty smarter than human beings. HAL held conversations that had total human qualities.

      In that we don’t even know what self-awareness is, it seems doubtful that anytime soon computers are going to become conscious. Moreover the human brain is vastly more powerful than the largest supercomputer. It is projected that around 2022 a super computer the size of a building with the power requirements of a small city will have the processing capacity of a human brain. This is to say it may be able to process the theoretical speed of the human brain, but it will still be a machine that runs programs. It will not be self-aware; it will not have free will; it will not have emotions; it will not be driven to do anything it is not told to do in a rather specific sense.

      The constant fear people seem to have that computers will take over presupposes that they are inclined in some particular way. Computers are nothing different than any other machine. It does what it is built to do. You lawn mower cuts grass not because it is inclined to, it mows the lawn because that is the net result of its components.

      Until computers have self-awareness, emotions and free will I would lose too much sleep they are going to take over.

    • I will say one thing, sometimes I would rather have a machine as a girlfriend - I could always turn off the machine when it acts crazy...

    • I was dragged kicking and screaming to see this movie. It will be the LAST time I go out to a movie for a long, long time. Pure drivel.

      Reminded me of the hoopla over "The Artist" a few years ago, "Her" would have been better if it had been a silent movie, too.

    • Without true sentience and the ability to dwell on the past computers will never match us.

    • That will be just crazy, and extremely unhealthy. Unless they find a way to bring those dead to live. i don't see computers as an alternative, at all!

    • Anyone remember the movie S1mone with Al Pacino?

    • @DX, So dating your reanimated dead partner would be more healthy? :D

    • Having watched the film, I find it almost inevitable, the collecting and packaging of the individual components to produce a system to that standard of foresight with the ability to run our everyday lives for us is already here, it just hasn't yet been done, as for emotional attachment to the 'machine', again that is an inevitability, something that helps us that much would easily receive human attachment from us, much in the same way most iphone users state they would not switch to a different phone.

      Let's face it, a computer can already pickup on hesitation, tone, emotion, within our voices, again it just needs to be put together correctly. Thus a computer would be able to engage us in a conversation to lighten our mood through understanding based on the 'sensing' of our emotions, which again will aid in human attachment.

      The computer loving us however is the grey area, the computer I don't think will ever be able to develop it's own grey matter in the same way of humans to take it from artificial to superficial intelligence.

      You know, in more depth, instead of the surrogate method of interaction in the film, they could easily have used a lifelike doll, equipped with a plethora of sensory equipment feeding back to the operating system to give Samantha a real feedback experience allowing her to give Theodore a positive physical feedback, but that would have been too much for the audience to take in and would not have amplified the point of the connection not being physical, but instead being soulful.

      The film brings about a huge amount of emotion and works well on the breaking down of barriers between human - computer action, but I for one cannot contemplate the 'loving' of a machine or it's ability to make itself love.

      I for one would love to see computers break free from procedure, but definitely fear the consequences.


    • Machines will take over when humans keep buying phones and leaving all their intellectual duties up to the machine.

    • Can I just say what a relief to discover an person who really understands precisely what they're talking about on the net.

Add a Comment


About Speakeasy


    • Speakeasy on Twitter
    • Speakeasy on Facebook


Barbara Chai Barbara Chai
Jonathan Welsh Jonathan Welsh
Mike Ayers Mike Ayers
Robin Kawakami Robin Kawakami
Don Steinberg Don Steinberg
Kelly Crow Kelly Crow
Ben Fritz Ben Fritz
Stefanie Cohen Stefanie Cohen
Michael Calia Michael Calia
Erich Schwartzel Erich Schwartzel
John Jurgensen John Jurgensen
Anna Russell Anna Russell
Jennifer Maloney Jennifer Maloney
Joe Flint Joe Flint