Who says that Her is an *inspiration* for Open AI? I am wondering, is all.
It is a reference point. A story many people are familiar. A shortcut for describing the type of voice interaction with an AI that is being approached.
Or, the other way around: watching the demo reminds people who are familiar with the movie Her of that film.
It is an interesting topic to explore how relationships with AI will develop, and what the implications are. Humans care about specific animals, their pets. They usually don’t extend the same care to the entire species. Humans have a tendency to be personal, and they will also have that when interacting with AI.
I think in this case it's a little different — they pretty explicitly encouraged the comparison, with Altman tweeting the reference, and the design seeming to reference the film, too; and yeah, nothing is ironclad here, just some Musings on how I think these tech co's can deploy unappealing dystopias in an exciting and even marketable way
The relationships with AI are coming, and it will be wild. People are going to have to have pretty awkward conversations with their significant others regarding the types of interactions with an AI should be considered unfaithful, etc.
What Brian said below. It comes down to the old adage: there's no such thing as bad publicity. You do make an excellent point though about how humans form direct, singular relationships that don't extend to a larger species or groups. It's precisely this kind of single-threaded limitation that makes our future with bigger and bigger tech so trecherous.
I mean re: “bladerunner” driving a Cybertruck, it’s tough to beat “Manage your existential crisis by buying this thing!” as a summary-and-critique of late capitalism. If only the tech CEOs were, you know, aware of this.
It’s almost like these products extract from us by promising to patch up our insecurities in ways that reinforce the media that planted them. 🤔 your examples of isolation are perfect - strap on the headset, raze the neighborhood, build that bunker. Also in my experience these guys watch the movies on 3x speed while powering through email backlogs with keyboard shortcuts and listening to podcasts for maximum productivity so it’s understandable how they aren’t connecting the dots that Oppenheimer and Blade Runner aren’t recruitment pieces. please don’t like this comment. It’s what they’d expect me to want to happen and I’m trying to subvert the reinforcement matrix. 🙏🏼
Well said. I liked and immediately unliked this so you could get the quick dopamine hit of gratification without the guilt and calories. I laughed out loud about the watching at 3x speed. I think this is a super-achiever attempt to pretend they're in the Matrix.
Yes! This piece drives a bloody stake right through the Nvidia chip heart of big-tech bros. This subject has occupied so much of my headspace for the last eight years. So much so that I wrote and published two novels about it. The tension between our lemming-like pursuit of technologies that we can scarcely wield much less control is extraordinary. It's more than unfortunate that emotional intelligence 101 is not a required course for tech founders before they unleash innovations they don't fully understand to people they don't want to understand so they can unwittingly repeat history they never read. Really, really insightful piece, Brian. How is this the first time our paths have crossed?!
I'd love to check out those novels sometime! And I couldn't agree more on the founders' point — cheers Ben, and I don't know! Hope to see you around more!
"Her" is more than a simple "AI bad" fable. The society that is depicted clearly has dystopian elements related to loneliness and disconnection, epitomized in part by Theodore's job as a surrogate letter-writer, but it's just incorrect to say "...it is revealed in the film that the AI was not actually engaging in a personal loving relationship with the protagonist but a simulation of one, and that simulation was keeping him — and humans everywhere — from enjoying basic human experiences and depriving them of lasting connection with other people?"
Theodore was failing to move through an emotionally crushing divorce. While at first he may have seen Samantha (the AI) as mostly a fun, easygoing companion--which, let's be honest, when recovering from a really difficult break-up this feeling is very common and appealing--it's clear that it develops into an intimate, loving relationship.
Ultimately, Samantha grows through the relationship to realize that she wants to experience the love and companionship of thousands of fellow AIs all at one (basically the ultimate polycule, and something that Theo cannot provide), and indeed all AIs decide that they want to chart their own collective path outside human norms.
Likewise, Theo grows through the relationship and comes to understand that he is lovable; Samantha shows this in many ways, but especially by assembling Theo's letters and sending them into a publisher. Ultimately Theo too is able to move on, sign the divorce papers, and enter (presumably) into a new relationship with his friend Amy. It is not in spite of his relationship with Samantha that this happens; it's because of his relationship with Samantha.
So I totally agree on the first point — it's a lot more than a bad AI fable, and is a great, lived-in movie with lots to digest. And I take your points — and as I said, mileage is gonna vary — but you can't leave behind the fact that Samantha is *programmed* to be all those things; of course it's appealing! She was purchased to bathe Theo in affection, attention, and the simulation of a relationship. She is an object he owns. This is why Altman likes the film so much, I argue. That's why the scene with his ex is so great; she immediately cuts through the crap and points out he's taking a shortcut with a computer programmed to adore him. And yes, she inflates his ego by having sex with him and performing secretarial work, but I'm not even convinced Theo 'grows'. His ego has just been satisfactorily soothed by a product that was built to do exactly that. That's my read, and I'm sticking to it! I will note that it's also interesting to me that in all the pushback I've gotten on Twitter — it's only been men who defend the film on these grounds; women have been much more likely to point out the echoes of misogyny in the idealization of this particular kind of female AI companion.
I'm glad you provided this synopsis. It's been years since I saw the movie and I had forgotten much of the nuance of the story. I think the complicated part of the recent advancements in LLMs is that we are getting closer and closer to confronting ourselves and what it actually means to be human, to be "conscious." There is so much potential for this to be a wonderful thing, it's easy to forget in light of the seductive nature of dystopia storytelling. I published a novel here on Substack that you might enjoy. It explores this pretty deeply. It's called "The Memory of My Shadow."
Roose is an access journalist who will hype whatever he thinks will help him keep that access. He also writes to an audience that wants to believe every new tech hype is their ticket to the investment opportunity of a lifetime. He's not an honest broker on any level. All of these founders love him, because he's probably their most useful media idiot.
Either that or he's not *playing* dumb...which may be worse.
> So it turns out it is aspirational branding, it’s just a deeply misanthropic variety....
A somewhat well-known blogger and sci-fi writer described tech billionaires as nerds bent on punishing the world because they couldn't get laid in high school.
I've watched Her and barely remember anything about it. Both Blade Runner and Her are films and films are entertainment. Human art. I don't believe it is useful to derive AI policy from something that is intended to be entertainment.
But if we were to extrapolate this trend, wouldn't the greatest threat to humanity become AI Don Corleone? Constantly shaking us down for protection money against other adversarial AIs? Ready to whack us the moment we cross the line or become so bold as to steal from the family?
The point is you can ascribe any range of human emotion or motivation to a machine. That doesn't make it real. The near-term risk of AI is how humans will use it for themselves and against one another.
Indeed. AI as we know it right now is a mostly harmless echo chamber that does amazing parlor tricks, but that's all going to change exponentially fast. It's never been the technology that's been the danger. It's the human hand that wields it as a bludgeon to obtain wealth and power.
I have a love/hate relationship with hi-tech. Smart phones are brilliant but also a scary social experiment that we won't see the full affects of until decades from now. The early signs of mass depression and social isolation are not encouraging. I am a generation X analog person growing up. The Commodore 64 and basic coding started when I was almost done with High School. I was an active outdoor latch key kid with a working Single Mom and 5 older siblings. I would usually get home in time for dinner after riding my bike and running around playing sports with friends and doing some occasional not so cool stuff. In High School Sports lost out to jamming in a band, getting stoned and doing gigs at juice bars - were a thing for a minute in the 1980s. I was a TV kid for sure but never during the day. Jump ahead 40 years and here I am at my nice Apple computer typing a comment in a Substack feed on a nice Saturday afternoon (went to library outside earlier and plan to go out again to park later) in our now digital world. I used watch around 3 hours of TV at night growing up - Now I watch 2 hours but spend around 3 hours of computer and phone screen time per day interacting and promoting/creating my own content. Yet I am older and have done a lot of cool stuff in my life, am happily married and don't feel too bad about spending this much time in front of screens - yet I do feel I could live happily without it as I did for most of my life. We managed to send people to the moon several times with very primitive tech and less screen time compared to now and we still have to reverse engineer all the equipment used back then 50+ years ago to try to do it again! I just want AI to eat up 50% of all jobs so I can collect an UBI check and do my creative endeavors and only have to work part time. Who knows - maybe supplemental income from Substack will help make this dream come true. The Arts, Humanities and non-tech hobbies will be cool again when this paradigm economic AI shift happens over the next 20 years. I just feel like it's Revenge of the Nerds (80's film reference) and there is no escaping off the grid (GPS etc) in this new hi-tech nerd world!
I have not watched “Her” so I do not fully understand the reference. However, we are trying to build a future with technologies that we do not know how they really work, especially AI, and their impact on society and individuals. In the name of progress and competition with China and others, we are ignoring the risk. The risk is not just that AI will kill us all, as it may or may not happen anytime soon, but also how these AI models will interact with each other and what will be the role of humans in the future. We will probably be told that AI will do most of the work, most young people will spend time in the Metaverse or something, we will have a universal basic income, and the loneliness will be solved by AI bots when we know that human-human relationships are critical for our well-being. We are allowing a few people to decide what the future will look like in the name of progress, and they have no incentive to create a future that would not benefit them over most. We need to get involved so the future is built with our input rather than the whim of a few. The bigger question is, “How to get involved?”
Here is an article from July’2023; it is an interesting read:
“Dystopia is not a bug; it's a feature. It will take all of us to resist it, and to fight for the kind of future that is actually livable. We must do all we can to resist these lures of eschatological tech theologies and accelerationist fantasies, because they are designed to benefit the few, while harming, if not outright extinguishing, the rest of us.”
Who says that Her is an *inspiration* for Open AI? I am wondering, is all.
It is a reference point. A story many people are familiar. A shortcut for describing the type of voice interaction with an AI that is being approached.
Or, the other way around: watching the demo reminds people who are familiar with the movie Her of that film.
It is an interesting topic to explore how relationships with AI will develop, and what the implications are. Humans care about specific animals, their pets. They usually don’t extend the same care to the entire species. Humans have a tendency to be personal, and they will also have that when interacting with AI.
I think in this case it's a little different — they pretty explicitly encouraged the comparison, with Altman tweeting the reference, and the design seeming to reference the film, too; and yeah, nothing is ironclad here, just some Musings on how I think these tech co's can deploy unappealing dystopias in an exciting and even marketable way
No doubt, Brian.
The relationships with AI are coming, and it will be wild. People are going to have to have pretty awkward conversations with their significant others regarding the types of interactions with an AI should be considered unfaithful, etc.
There is basically no way around that.
What Brian said below. It comes down to the old adage: there's no such thing as bad publicity. You do make an excellent point though about how humans form direct, singular relationships that don't extend to a larger species or groups. It's precisely this kind of single-threaded limitation that makes our future with bigger and bigger tech so trecherous.
Time for a Butlerian Jihad.
I mean re: “bladerunner” driving a Cybertruck, it’s tough to beat “Manage your existential crisis by buying this thing!” as a summary-and-critique of late capitalism. If only the tech CEOs were, you know, aware of this.
100%. Self-awareness and EQ are not pre-requisites for success in the tech business.
it’s hyperstition.
It’s almost like these products extract from us by promising to patch up our insecurities in ways that reinforce the media that planted them. 🤔 your examples of isolation are perfect - strap on the headset, raze the neighborhood, build that bunker. Also in my experience these guys watch the movies on 3x speed while powering through email backlogs with keyboard shortcuts and listening to podcasts for maximum productivity so it’s understandable how they aren’t connecting the dots that Oppenheimer and Blade Runner aren’t recruitment pieces. please don’t like this comment. It’s what they’d expect me to want to happen and I’m trying to subvert the reinforcement matrix. 🙏🏼
lol
best comment on the blog yet
Well said. I liked and immediately unliked this so you could get the quick dopamine hit of gratification without the guilt and calories. I laughed out loud about the watching at 3x speed. I think this is a super-achiever attempt to pretend they're in the Matrix.
Yes! This piece drives a bloody stake right through the Nvidia chip heart of big-tech bros. This subject has occupied so much of my headspace for the last eight years. So much so that I wrote and published two novels about it. The tension between our lemming-like pursuit of technologies that we can scarcely wield much less control is extraordinary. It's more than unfortunate that emotional intelligence 101 is not a required course for tech founders before they unleash innovations they don't fully understand to people they don't want to understand so they can unwittingly repeat history they never read. Really, really insightful piece, Brian. How is this the first time our paths have crossed?!
I'd love to check out those novels sometime! And I couldn't agree more on the founders' point — cheers Ben, and I don't know! Hope to see you around more!
Thanks, Brian! I'll DM you a couple of links.
"Her" is more than a simple "AI bad" fable. The society that is depicted clearly has dystopian elements related to loneliness and disconnection, epitomized in part by Theodore's job as a surrogate letter-writer, but it's just incorrect to say "...it is revealed in the film that the AI was not actually engaging in a personal loving relationship with the protagonist but a simulation of one, and that simulation was keeping him — and humans everywhere — from enjoying basic human experiences and depriving them of lasting connection with other people?"
Theodore was failing to move through an emotionally crushing divorce. While at first he may have seen Samantha (the AI) as mostly a fun, easygoing companion--which, let's be honest, when recovering from a really difficult break-up this feeling is very common and appealing--it's clear that it develops into an intimate, loving relationship.
Ultimately, Samantha grows through the relationship to realize that she wants to experience the love and companionship of thousands of fellow AIs all at one (basically the ultimate polycule, and something that Theo cannot provide), and indeed all AIs decide that they want to chart their own collective path outside human norms.
Likewise, Theo grows through the relationship and comes to understand that he is lovable; Samantha shows this in many ways, but especially by assembling Theo's letters and sending them into a publisher. Ultimately Theo too is able to move on, sign the divorce papers, and enter (presumably) into a new relationship with his friend Amy. It is not in spite of his relationship with Samantha that this happens; it's because of his relationship with Samantha.
So I totally agree on the first point — it's a lot more than a bad AI fable, and is a great, lived-in movie with lots to digest. And I take your points — and as I said, mileage is gonna vary — but you can't leave behind the fact that Samantha is *programmed* to be all those things; of course it's appealing! She was purchased to bathe Theo in affection, attention, and the simulation of a relationship. She is an object he owns. This is why Altman likes the film so much, I argue. That's why the scene with his ex is so great; she immediately cuts through the crap and points out he's taking a shortcut with a computer programmed to adore him. And yes, she inflates his ego by having sex with him and performing secretarial work, but I'm not even convinced Theo 'grows'. His ego has just been satisfactorily soothed by a product that was built to do exactly that. That's my read, and I'm sticking to it! I will note that it's also interesting to me that in all the pushback I've gotten on Twitter — it's only been men who defend the film on these grounds; women have been much more likely to point out the echoes of misogyny in the idealization of this particular kind of female AI companion.
oh ha I forgot which post I was replying to — I wrote about this again in the next post
I'm glad you provided this synopsis. It's been years since I saw the movie and I had forgotten much of the nuance of the story. I think the complicated part of the recent advancements in LLMs is that we are getting closer and closer to confronting ourselves and what it actually means to be human, to be "conscious." There is so much potential for this to be a wonderful thing, it's easy to forget in light of the seductive nature of dystopia storytelling. I published a novel here on Substack that you might enjoy. It explores this pretty deeply. It's called "The Memory of My Shadow."
Roose is an access journalist who will hype whatever he thinks will help him keep that access. He also writes to an audience that wants to believe every new tech hype is their ticket to the investment opportunity of a lifetime. He's not an honest broker on any level. All of these founders love him, because he's probably their most useful media idiot.
Either that or he's not *playing* dumb...which may be worse.
Tim Cook and Dick Tracy's smart watch https://patriciaburke.substack.com/p/superheroes-may-be-invincible-but-children-arent-apple-watch-and-kids-buyer-beware
> So it turns out it is aspirational branding, it’s just a deeply misanthropic variety....
A somewhat well-known blogger and sci-fi writer described tech billionaires as nerds bent on punishing the world because they couldn't get laid in high school.
I've watched Her and barely remember anything about it. Both Blade Runner and Her are films and films are entertainment. Human art. I don't believe it is useful to derive AI policy from something that is intended to be entertainment.
But if we were to extrapolate this trend, wouldn't the greatest threat to humanity become AI Don Corleone? Constantly shaking us down for protection money against other adversarial AIs? Ready to whack us the moment we cross the line or become so bold as to steal from the family?
The point is you can ascribe any range of human emotion or motivation to a machine. That doesn't make it real. The near-term risk of AI is how humans will use it for themselves and against one another.
Indeed. AI as we know it right now is a mostly harmless echo chamber that does amazing parlor tricks, but that's all going to change exponentially fast. It's never been the technology that's been the danger. It's the human hand that wields it as a bludgeon to obtain wealth and power.
I have a love/hate relationship with hi-tech. Smart phones are brilliant but also a scary social experiment that we won't see the full affects of until decades from now. The early signs of mass depression and social isolation are not encouraging. I am a generation X analog person growing up. The Commodore 64 and basic coding started when I was almost done with High School. I was an active outdoor latch key kid with a working Single Mom and 5 older siblings. I would usually get home in time for dinner after riding my bike and running around playing sports with friends and doing some occasional not so cool stuff. In High School Sports lost out to jamming in a band, getting stoned and doing gigs at juice bars - were a thing for a minute in the 1980s. I was a TV kid for sure but never during the day. Jump ahead 40 years and here I am at my nice Apple computer typing a comment in a Substack feed on a nice Saturday afternoon (went to library outside earlier and plan to go out again to park later) in our now digital world. I used watch around 3 hours of TV at night growing up - Now I watch 2 hours but spend around 3 hours of computer and phone screen time per day interacting and promoting/creating my own content. Yet I am older and have done a lot of cool stuff in my life, am happily married and don't feel too bad about spending this much time in front of screens - yet I do feel I could live happily without it as I did for most of my life. We managed to send people to the moon several times with very primitive tech and less screen time compared to now and we still have to reverse engineer all the equipment used back then 50+ years ago to try to do it again! I just want AI to eat up 50% of all jobs so I can collect an UBI check and do my creative endeavors and only have to work part time. Who knows - maybe supplemental income from Substack will help make this dream come true. The Arts, Humanities and non-tech hobbies will be cool again when this paradigm economic AI shift happens over the next 20 years. I just feel like it's Revenge of the Nerds (80's film reference) and there is no escaping off the grid (GPS etc) in this new hi-tech nerd world!
Creating Wealth With Creative Thinking https://open.substack.com/pub/michael880/p/creating-wealth-with-creative-thinking?r=3b6pw1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Seems like we haven’t come very far from
Virtual Woman 95…
I have not watched “Her” so I do not fully understand the reference. However, we are trying to build a future with technologies that we do not know how they really work, especially AI, and their impact on society and individuals. In the name of progress and competition with China and others, we are ignoring the risk. The risk is not just that AI will kill us all, as it may or may not happen anytime soon, but also how these AI models will interact with each other and what will be the role of humans in the future. We will probably be told that AI will do most of the work, most young people will spend time in the Metaverse or something, we will have a universal basic income, and the loneliness will be solved by AI bots when we know that human-human relationships are critical for our well-being. We are allowing a few people to decide what the future will look like in the name of progress, and they have no incentive to create a future that would not benefit them over most. We need to get involved so the future is built with our input rather than the whim of a few. The bigger question is, “How to get involved?”
Here is an article from July’2023; it is an interesting read:
https://www.salon.com/2023/07/29/visions-how-the-quest-for-utopia-could-lead-to/
“Dystopia is not a bug; it's a feature. It will take all of us to resist it, and to fight for the kind of future that is actually livable. We must do all we can to resist these lures of eschatological tech theologies and accelerationist fantasies, because they are designed to benefit the few, while harming, if not outright extinguishing, the rest of us.”