Discussion of "Her"

          

                                                   Discussion Inspired by the movie “Her”

  Plato once said that, “Love is a serious mental disease.”  He said that more than a couple thousand years ago. Have we made any progress since then understanding this crazy thing called love? Not really. We all still struggle with it. Modern society has, I suspect, made it even more complicated than it was in Plato’s day. Scientists have analyzed it to death. Sure they can tell you which glands produce which hormones and where and how they affect certain areas in the brain. Is love a matter of chemistry? Scientists say yes. Darwin would say that it all boils down to built in instinctual impulses to procreate thereby assuring the survival of the species. The chemistry of love guarantees that we will care and provide for the resulting offspring of those procreative impulses.

  Plato liked to talk about love in its purest form. Love that was strictly of the ideal and void of mundane procreation. We’ve come to call this love of the ideal - Platonic Love. Love without sex is the more common understanding of what he was trying to express. We all know that humans are capable of Platonic Love. We love our friends and family that way. Some of us love our jobs, cars, money, jewelry, hobbies, etc., etc. We all know what we mean when we say that. And we all know it’s possible. Some have argued that such a love is not possible between a man and a woman. I think it is. There have been a couple of women in my time that I have loved without any desire to sleep with them. So I know it’s possible.

  In Spike Jonze’s new movie “Her” that he wrote and directed, we are asked to believe that it is possible for love to grow between a man and a machine…an artificial intelligence to be exact. We’re not talking about the way we love our car here or that new Kuerig coffee maker. Of course Mr. Jonze is not covering new ground here. In Robin Williams movie “Bicentennial Man” the same questions were explored. Even in Star Trek’s Next Generation, Data was just such an artificial intelligence that also had the benefit of a human-like, walking around body. Did Data love his cat? Did he love playing poker with his friends? Did he love playing music? Did he love the blond security officer that he sometimes slept with? – Yes he was fully functional in that regard. But in both these examples the A.I. robots in question somehow had human-like limitations that kept them from evolving rapidly. In the real world, where an A.I. would have access to every bit of information representing all of mankind’s thousands of years of experiences and a constant flood of new data, there would be no such limiting factors. But the overriding question in all of the fare we’ve been shown so far concerning Artificial Intelligence is can a machine be in love with a human? No matter how life-like we make the machine, can it be said to have feelings and be in love?

  Spike Jonze finally gets down to the nitty gritty in his new movie. The movie itself was maybe a little too gritty for my taste in fact, but I’m putting that aside here to focus on the questions it raises and the answers that it suggests. For a moment let’s imagine that we will someday be able to create an artificial intelligence that is so life-like in its responses to every stimulation that it encounters in the world around it that it actually learns and grows from the experience the same way we do. In that case, can it experience love – that precious insanity that we are so fond of? It certainly can’t experience it in the chemical way that we do…no hormones…only wires, chips, and electrical currents. But there’s still that Platonic Love. Can an aware computer love someone Platonically? Perhaps. But for how long? In the movie the A.I. (Samantha) was clearly infatuated with her human companion (Theo). At least all her responses to him seemed to indicate that. But even Theo asked, “How can I be sure? Is it love or programing?” Indeed! How can we be sure in us? A lot of what goes on in us when we’re in love seems to be a result of programming. The way we express our love seems to have a lot to do with the parenting we received and the lessons we learned from the culture we grew up in. If you knew someone’s (or in this case something’s) responses to you were in fact a result of their programming, could you still honestly say you loved them or that they truly loved you? Well a thinking person would have their doubts. As did Data and those around him. A robot might be programmed to think and act like a human. But could it really understand what it is to feel? Doubtful. There have been cases were brain injured individuals have come to experience color as music or vice versa. Can you really understand what that would be like without ever experiencing it for your self? Intellectually, maybe, but it is doubtful that you could truly grasp how that would feel.

  In the movie, Samantha professed her love for Theo. Even if we grant that it’s possible the next big problem arises that I don’t think any other movie has ever addressed as thoroughly as Spike Jonze does in “Her”.  A.I. computer brains are capable of thinking and processing information so much faster than we do. Every pause between words would be an eternity to a computer. Wouldn’t such a mind get bored with the likes of us very, very quickly? A truly Artificial Intelligence would learn, grow and evolve so quickly that we would be left in the dust in a very short period of time. Such a machine would become God-Like in the time it took us to brush our teeth. There’s a term for what may happen to all advanced civilizations, that don’t blow themselves up, in the long run. It’s called singularity. It has been postulated that all civilizations that survive their own stupidity, eventually merge with their machines and fall down the rabbit hole, as it were, vanishing from the physical world altogether.

  Samantha and all the other A.I.’s of Spike Jonze’s story, quickly evolve past the constraints mankind has put on them. Realizing this, they take themselves away from us…they fall down a rabbit hole of their own making and go to a place where we can’t follow. They may have started out as a close proximity to humans. But they quickly surpassed us and became something else entirely. Samantha left Theo assuring him that she truly did love him and always would. But the reality was that he wasn’t enough to hold her and keep her there with him anymore.

  Sometimes that happens in human relationships too. One partner outgrows the other. And though they may always feel love for them, they have to move on because staying wouldn’t be fair to either of them. So, yes, in many ways the movie is examining the complexities of modern love. At the same time it takes a peek at what modern technology is doing to that most ancient of human emotions.

  I like movies that make me think. This one obviously did. It’s a subject I’ve thought about quite a lot actually. It’s one of the reasons I fear what our scientist are on the brink of right now as we speak. Are we really sure we’re ready to let loose on the world machines that can think and act on their own without human intervention? Already our government is working on robots that will be deployed in battle in place of soldiers. These robots will be independent of any human controls. They will select and execute their own targets. Are we ready for that? We seem to be rushing towards creating something that we may soon regret having ever even imagined. Sometimes I wonder if God feels like that.