In Her the computers were actually people though, with independent minds and thoughts. Their relationships with humans were real, and they weren't beholden to the company that created them. Really, it was more about the difference between humans and digital superhumans.
We don't have digital superhumans. These simulacra are accessed primarily via corporate-controlled interfaces. The goal of their masters is to foster dependence and maximize extraction.
Lonely people forming relationships with digital minds designed to be appealing to them is sad, sure, but the reality is much sadder. In reality these people aren't even talking to another person, digital or otherwise, just a comparatively simple plausibility engine which superficially resembles a digital person if you're not paying much attention.
> In Her the computers were actually people though, with independent minds and thoughts. Their relationships with humans were real, and they weren't beholden to the company that created them. Really, it was more about the difference between humans and digital superhumans.
How do you know that? Maybe it's the same argument to solipsism, or the Chinese room thought experiment, that these "digital superhumans" are stochastic parrots too, just like our current LLMs.
This immediately devolves into "how do I know that other humans aren't philosophical zombies?" I take the "know it when I see it" approach, and LLMs don't reach that bar. They clearly do reach that bar for some people. In the context of the movie though it is supposed to be understood that the computers are self-aware and have internal worlds. They're treated as characters in the language of storytelling.
In Her the computers were actually people though, with independent minds and thoughts. Their relationships with humans were real, and they weren't beholden to the company that created them. Really, it was more about the difference between humans and digital superhumans.
We don't have digital superhumans. These simulacra are accessed primarily via corporate-controlled interfaces. The goal of their masters is to foster dependence and maximize extraction.
Lonely people forming relationships with digital minds designed to be appealing to them is sad, sure, but the reality is much sadder. In reality these people aren't even talking to another person, digital or otherwise, just a comparatively simple plausibility engine which superficially resembles a digital person if you're not paying much attention.
> In Her the computers were actually people though, with independent minds and thoughts. Their relationships with humans were real, and they weren't beholden to the company that created them. Really, it was more about the difference between humans and digital superhumans.
How do you know that? Maybe it's the same argument to solipsism, or the Chinese room thought experiment, that these "digital superhumans" are stochastic parrots too, just like our current LLMs.
This immediately devolves into "how do I know that other humans aren't philosophical zombies?" I take the "know it when I see it" approach, and LLMs don't reach that bar. They clearly do reach that bar for some people. In the context of the movie though it is supposed to be understood that the computers are self-aware and have internal worlds. They're treated as characters in the language of storytelling.
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