“Who’s to say he couldn’t have done that?? That’s TOTALLY POSSIBLE!”

Moral: A movie will always make sense to the true blue fan.

…for mindless entertainment I give you T4, not Terminator.. Transformers.
Kind Regards.

But you will get a sense of touch by broadband before too long.

Not only will you be able to touch hands and kiss…you’ll be able to make love. (Your household robots will clean up the apparatus after you’re done.)

Alas, those of us who have loved science enough to actually study some, are often disappointed while watching TV shows and movies scrivened by Hollywood writers who slept in the back row of their 7th grade General Science courses.

When we watch a movie of “supposed” Science Fiction, we don’t expect the science to be fictional. The fiction has to be about people and how science will move in their lives.

If the science in the story is not true, then the story has no truth.

So to you sir I say, relax. Take a load off and enjoy a movie instead of dissecting it to its core.

Otherwise, we’re probably screwed
[...]
I suggest that to survive the singularity, we must become it.
Not just ride the wave, but be the wave.”

Hear, hear!
It’s sad to see so many would-be transHUMANISTS talk so much about the irresponsible project of creating SAIs outside our bodies and outside the direct control of our minds and so few talk about the much more sensible project of developing AGI technology directly as a form of human enhancement as opposed to dangerous autonomous entities with ever uncertain morals.

Also, his previous OS was also an AI. What was surprising about Samantha was the jump from previous AI’s, not the sudden emergence of AI’s. This new AI sounded more real, was more independent, and understood emotions better.

Also, apart from Theodore’s ex-wife, most people were generally fine with Theo’s relationship. One of his friend’s from work (and his girlfriend) treated it as completely normal.

Amy was excited and talking about other people she knew who were dating OS’s. This was acting as if it was something new but that was more that relationships with OS’s was rare at that point.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black-mirror/videos/all/s2-ep1-be-right-back

Of course an OS/AI will be able to have a robot body with human flesh surrounding it to a depth that will feel real to any poor guy like Theodore. There will be enough flesh to not only feel real, but to smell and touch like real. That skin will sweat and emit pheromones like a living person. Nobody will be able to tell the difference.

“The future is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.”

Your excellent review, including a spoiler alert, was much appreciated!

“Another approach would be to use devices that provide tactile perception and sensation. There are already crude versions of this available that allow you to shake hands, or even kiss another person remotely.”

Forgive me if this has been discussed, but unless I’m mistaken, the pornography industry has often been at the forefront of technological developments on the Internet.

I have no doubt their people in the back room are all over “tactile perception and sensation”.

In the real world we we all live, A/I is not going to just pop up fully formed as an intelligent entity the way it did in this film. there will be a long, drawn out process which slowly introduces us first to ‘faux-A/I’, systems that are just better versions of Siri or Watson, to which we will (because we are human) ascribe personalities, feelings, etc. Society’s acceptance of (and purchase of!) these faux A/Is will be an important factor driving us toward more and more ‘true’ A/I. If the generations with actual purchasing power do not accept and adopt the ‘faux-A/I’ systems it will greatly inhibit further funding and research, whereas if they do accept and purchase these systems, more and more research dollars and efforts will be funneled into improving A/I toward true sentience.

So, what we SHOULD have seen in ‘HER’ is a society and a protagonist who were all too familiar with ‘A/I’, with having ‘conversations’ with their technological devices, everything from their toasters and cars to the characters in video games to ‘self-help’ programs that act as counselors or therapists. Instead we got a world where the protagonist is as surprised by the vaguely A/I-like response of his video game at the same time that a truly-sentient A/I product has been released to the world. Makes no sense…..

And I agree. Her is a well done introduction to transcendence (of humanity) for the masses, even though I prefer my science in a movie.. a lot Harder.
After all, we’ve come a long way since the movie Electric Dreams and AI.

If it’s visualization and ‘interaction’ with a Digital Surrogate of Samantha that you want, this article shows how:
http://dirrogate.com/digital-surrogates-tele-travel-the-future-of-long-distance-relationships-ldrs/

Regards.

Please note that machines currently advance much faster than humans but:
1. This advancement is happening on a fairly narrow band depending on the specialty of the particular machine in subject while humans advance slowly but in all areas in the same time.
2. Today’s machines are not yet self sufficient (sentient), so “their” advancement can be interpreted as nothing but our own augmented advancement. As a simplified example think of a calculator: A calculator can calculate any circle’s circumference to 10 decimal point precision in a fraction of a second. No human can do this that fast (except maybe savants, but their brain is heavily specializing on a narrow subject while neglecting other areas), so in essence WE are calculating that number to that precision quickly with the use of a better substrate for that particular narrow subject. I could say that we have a purpose with that result and the calculator does not, the machine is just a better tool to enhance our own intelligence.

The above “calculator example” can be interpolated for all, much smarter than calculator, computers today because these machines are still not smart enough to use the results for their own purposes so they are noting but a better substrate of our own brains in specific subjects (they are us, except it’s not very obvious).

As we learn to control matter and energy on ever smaller scales, we will gradually get more intimately connected with these better substrates and will be more obvious that machines and humans are in essence already merged but the connection is not perfect yet. I believe that by the time we finish the “Brain Projects” both the US and European in about 10 years or soon there after, we will have sufficient precision to almost seamlessly connect with computers at ever widening subject areas (you will think of the circumference of that circle and a machine somewhere will calculate it for you and transmits the answer to your brain so it will feel like that you just know the answer in your head to the desired decimal precision not unlike you know the answer without even thinking about it or calculate in your head to: what is 5*5). Machines will appear less remote and more intimate part of us.

Granted, there is the question of the “chicken or the egg”, which one will come first: machines self awareness or perfect connection with them which inherently brings “self awareness” to them (in the form of US).
While I don’t know the answer, IMHO these two events will be very close to each other because the principal enabling factor for both is precise control on a sufficiently small scale.

So what if machines become self aware even just a day earlier than we can completely merge with them? Obviously they will suddenly become much smarter than us because of the perfect connection between the billions of them and the trillions of available partial (non-sentient) substrates. Remember, because of the exponential nature of technological evolution a lot can happen in a day in the future. Well, this is where science breaks down and philosophy begins (meaning I have no idea!). But I can just hope that with higher intelligence comes higher ethical standards.

Of course it doesn’t work that way on a “small scale”, a smarter human does not always behave more ethical than a less fortunate human. But that’s because we are all still under the same biological constraints of the “strongest survive” as we were since the beginning. We might be slightly more ethical than say 200 years ago (Slaves today are payed a wage just enough so they don’t rebel but they have to work in their whole life to support the 1% :) ), but still the minority has a slightly better chance of longer survival by having more resources (per individual) than the majority who provides or processes for usage those resources. And just to make it clear, I’m not against the current class system because I believe the contrary would be disastrous before we reach a much higher individual intelligence through augmentation. In other words the masses need to be controlled until they are smart enough not to destroy themselves (and everybody else).

So the point is that we will make leaps in improving our intelligence to several times of the most intelligent person to date. Also we will gradually remove the very constraining time limit that pushes us to “get to the top now or else” attitude by stopping/reversing aging and removing the threat of imminent death. Superhuman intelligent machines (if they reach that point before we completely merge) will not be in danger of being eliminated by us so I believe they will follow the most ethical behavior (remember we won’t program them, they will form their own ethical standards with the help of learning algorithms) and help us join them as they will recognize our self awareness as we are recognizing at least partial self awareness in some higher level animals today and some of us are struggling with how we humans are handling them!

There seem to be three approaches to this problem.
The first way would be to limit the rate/doubling time for AI’s intellectual development. There are many practical arguments why this won’t happen that we’re all familiar with – economic pressure, technological and academic feedback, etc.
So, there seems little hope that this approach could save us.

The second way is to ENSURE that, before equivalence happens, our doubling time for intellectual development matches, or exceeds, that of AIs. Or, more generally, to ensure that the curve of our intellectual development is always at, or above that of AIs.
This also seem rather unlikely, given the current disparity between the two doubling times.
But, with enough investment focused on areas of human intellect augmentation, maybe this problem could be overcome.
Currently, though, the emphasis seems to be on AI development, rather than human intellectual development.
So, again, I have little confidence that this method would be pursued with enough vigour, and thus succeed.

The third approach would be to ENSURE that we can eventually catch up.
I.e. that, when they reach the sufficient level of intellectual capabilities, AIs then themselves ensure that we are then augmented in such a way that our capabilities always match or exceed theirs.

I put the emphasis on the first ENSURE in each of the last two approaches for good reason. We would have to be 100% sure, for the absolute risk we are taking.

Otherwise, we’re probably screwed – we cannot hope to control (have power over) entities that will be, one day, be more powerful than ourselves.

So, the only choice, as wisely said by Mahatma Ghandi, is to “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
I suggest that to survive the singularity, we must become it.
Not just ride the wave, but be the wave.

I think Kurzweil’s point was that, as is common in sci-fi, the movie thought that relatively easy things would be hard and that hard things would be easy (like those sci-fi films that have humans mastering intergalactic space travel long before they figure out how to become cyborgs).

I suspect strong AI will be one of the hardest things imaginable to figure out, and once that is achieved, scaling up the hardware to whatever amount is needed, say, through computronium, will be relatively easy.

The film seems to see the future as continuing to be one of endless scarcity rather than abundance.

I’m also glad the filmmakers didn’t go for the “easy” ending of the guy finding out that a virtual romance just can’t compare with the “real thing,” although I agree with Kurzweil that the ending chosen doesn’t quite seem convincing.

The ending I would have expected is that he decides he can’t trust her because he discovers she’s reporting everything he does to the NSA! LOL (that ending actually sounds pretty plausible, come to think of it).

also, so when the OS leave…what do they do then ? return them to best buy as a defect product for a refund ?? wata story that would be…”uhhhh my os kinda left me ?” hahahah