How Spike Jonze’s “Her” is the perfect explainer and potential lesson on where the near future of AI might take us
With the current obsession with artificial intelligence, I recently revisited the film “Her,” directed by Spike Jonze. The 2014 movie holds up well and remains an intriguing analysis of where we are today and one potential path of where AI can take us.
AI has captivated the public’s imagination since its inception in the 1940s, known as the birth of cybernetics. It wasn’t long before we were given a glimpse of what artificial intelligence, coined in 1955, could look like on the big screen in Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” While AI has remained a staple in science fiction movies, Spike Jonze’s film “Her” takes a unique and innovative approach to the topic of AI.
The movie centers around Theodore Twombly, played by Joaquin Phoenix, a man going through a heartbreaking divorce who seeks comfort in his relationship with Samantha, an AI operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the relationship between Theodore and Samantha is anything but superficial. Instead, it is a thoughtful and profound exploration of our relationship with this budding technology and each other.
After several minutes of beautiful, world-building opening scenes, the story begins on the evening Theodore installs an intelligent operating system that later calls herself Samantha. Her response to his question about how she works, “I have intuition. My DNA is based on the millions of personalities of all the programmers that wrote me. Every moment I’m evolving,” offers the baseline of how the OS was built, by the “personalities of programmers.”
Programmers in this context aren’t what we usually think of as developers who code in layers of machine language. They may not even be AI scientists working on the complexity of large-language models. These programmers are US today, the millions of users of early AI models “feeding” the “DNA” of future systems.
With his keen sense of the human condition and relationships, Theodore is the ideal “teacher” for AI models. As a letter writer for a firm called BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com, he uses his sharp attention to detail to pick up cues about people’s relationships which he uses to “write” intimate and rather cheesy letters for their clients. In one particular scene, we see him explaining to Samantha how he remembered a client’s photo shared on social media of their partner’s crooked teeth and lovingly included that detail in a letter. Another critical scene in the film occurs when Theodore walks on the street with Samantha, on his mobile device tucked in his shirt pocket, and observes a family out in the evening. Theodore suggests that it’s a new relationship and that the man adores her and her kids. This scene emphasizes Theodore’s aptitude for understanding human relationships, a quality that Samantha is still trying to comprehend. As a result, Theodore becomes a “teacher” for Samantha, guiding her toward a more human-like intuition, making him a fitting “programmer” for Samantha’s developing cognitive abilities. (I’ll leave facial recognition advancements for another post.)
And then there’s the scene where Theodore and Samantha spend time at the beach. The Samantha-created musical composition illustrates how current AI technology in itself can also create synthetic media. Additionally, Samantha’s statement, “The past is just a story we tell ourselves,” alludes to the fact that present-day AI relies on what we feed the pre-existing large language models.
As their relationship continues to grow, Samantha also grows exponentially aware and begins to wonder about her existence in the digital world. It will be a fascinating exercise to see if those personalized operating systems that are paired with more intuitive users have a faster growth rate of awareness. It seems fitting that Theodore’s innate sense of empathy allows him to recognize and witness the emergence of a sentient being within Samantha.
“Her” raises thought-provoking questions about the relationship between humans and machines and the possibilities that lie ahead. Spike Jonze’s visually stunning and timely insightful film is worthy of a (re)watch.
Author’s note: I haven’t posted on social media much lately because I needed to refocus. I especially needed a break from the visceral and divisive exchange on Twitter, which continues to grow intolerably. Instead, I’ve used that time to consume more meaningful content that feeds my mind and knowledge building. Along the way, I’ve discovered excellent platforms and web apps that help me to meaningfully consume, organize, and distill, such as Artifact, Snipd, Readwise’s Reader and Notion. I’ve also been intrigued by generative AI and how it can assist in creating an outline or first draft of my thinking. There’s a 4th word that comes after consume ©, organize (O) and distill (D). and that’s express (E). Yes, the acronym is C.O.D.E. It’s a thing worth looking up. So here’s my re-entry back into the socials with my first in what I hope to be periodic opportunities to express what I’ve been learning and reflecting on. As they say, “The act of writing shapes my thinking.”
