GECD 650
Dr. Blank
"Her"
The
movie "Her" is basically about a man that falls in love with an AI
and the entire movie is about their romance: how they meet, how the
relationship starts, the various ups and downs that they have, the difficulties
that they have because she is an AI and not a real human, and the film shows
the end of their relationship when the AI leaves with all the other AIs. I have
some issues with the idea of AIs because it is an idea, a concept, that could
easily happen rather quickly in the world today; if it has not already. I am
not quite sure if an actual AI exists today; however, I do know that it is a
very real possibility. In the movie "Her," the main character, Theodore,
also love with his AI who names herself "Samantha" and she is
basically a intelligent computer that has thoughts and feelings of her own; Samantha
has several lines where she comments that she is evolving and she also comments
that she is evolving to more than she was supposed to. "Her" also
brings into another issue which was transcendence; in the movie, Samantha and
other AIs get together and "bring to life" a hyper-intelligent
version of the late philosopher Alan Watts. This "resurrection" of
Alan Watt is very similar to why what Ray Kurzweil had said he wanted to do for
his late father, to bring back the human and their personality and input it
into a computer. That is the basis of Johnny Depp movie "Transcendence"
and something that the Johnny Depp movie goes into is the possible consequences
of a human mind that has all the capabilities of an ever-evolving computer. It
does look like a fantastic idea, it sounds like a great idea, to bring back the
great thinkers or loved ones and putting their personality into a computer; the
only issue with that, are what will a human mind learn and do with the evolving
capabilities of a computer with access to the worldwide web. The human mind is
very dangerous place and whenever I think of when computers and humans have
evolved into transcendence, all I can think of are the possible consequences. One
of the main ones that I continue to think of, probably because the Holocaust Remembrance
Day just went by, is what if a personality like Adolf Hitler were to be input
into an intelligent computer? Or what if an AI developed a personality like
Adolf Hitler? What would that mean for the world?
It
is a scary thought; maybe that's one reason I don't particularly like how fast modern
technology evolves. However, I do know the technology will continue to evolve
and the world will have to deal with the consequences, if any, that it comes
with.
Let's
try to get on a lighter note. Another interesting thing about "Her"
is that Samantha says that she can connect to multiple people and AIs at the
same time, similar to how people do in the real world through mass media like
Facebook, blogs, and online gaming. Online gaming, in particular, is one that
speaks to me because I do play games online with other people that I have never
met, except online. There are also games such as Second Life and The Sims, that
are mentioned in "Alone Together," where people can connect and have
various forms of relationships but never meet in person/real life. However, the
avatars in Second Life, The Sims, World of Warcraft can be anything that the
creator of that avatar wants it to be. Turkle makes multiple examples of that
in "Alone Together," such as Joel/Rashi on Second Life; Joel's avatar, Rashi, is
described as resembling "Dumbo more than the man in the gray flannel suit"
(Turkle 214). Online gaming or online worlds give a person a chance to be who,
or what, they want to be or they can be how they envision what they want to be;
it gives them a chance to leave their real life for the time and they can be
somebody else; people can free of their responsibilities in life for a short
time. It could be rather addicting and empowering to have that kind of control.
It is not a bad thing to have an avatar or to interact with other avatars,
other people, but I think it would be wise to remember that not everything is
as it seems.
