Free Film Analysis Of The Film “Her” Essay Example

A wide scope of the concept “to think” consequently leads to controversial points of view concerning the capacity of the machine not only to imitate some partial functions of a person but reproduce the total breadth of his functions. The problems of the artificial intellect have been thoroughly researched by Alan Turing, one of the most prominent mathematicians, whose fundamental results in the theory of computation were directed to clarify the concept of “thinking”. The directors of the movie “Her” also decided to touch on an acute topic of an artificial intellect. Mostly this film is about the lonely writer who finds a mutual understanding with the OS that is named Samantha. Perhaps this happens for two reasons.
Firstly, Samantha is not only endowed with human intelligence of its creators, but also it is able to self-development, that is, personal growth. Secondly, Samantha was created specifically for Theodor after he answered a few personal questions, but its main advantage is that she was able to offer him the most necessary - understanding. So, Theodore gradually falling in love with the computer program builds a relationship with her.
The main idea that is thought to reach people’s minds is definitely not to tell a story about the virtual love that becomes for the main characters a journey inside themselves. It is much deeper and complicated as it aims to show that a computer program fully imitating people’s actions can become a real breakthrough as it owns an artificial intellect. Have you ever thought why it is called in such a way? It is so because machines do not mirror people, they are just works of art and not so perfect to fully replace alive inhabitants of this world. The first and the main question people may ask after watching the film is “Can this happen in reality?” Being not competent in the Turing’s theory, people may even not hesitate arguing that the ability to “think” and be conscious can be implemented in the unique cases when it goes about biological organisms namely people and various machines with the artificial intellectual cannot replace it anyway. Nevertheless, in order to dig deeper in this issue, there can be drawn a parallel between the researches and concepts of Alan Turing and the main idea of the film “Her”.
In the prominent work of Alan Turing called “Computing Machines and Intelligence” the scientist lays out nine points that could potentially refute the possibility of a thinking machine. The cult episode of the film namely when Samantha found a physical replacement of her or in other words a surrogate body for a romantic encounter can provide a certain answer or interpretation of whether artificial intellect is possible of not taking into consideration two out of nine points from the Turing’s work.
The first one is the argument from consciousness that consists in the following. As the machine itself is programmed to do a certain sequence, it is not programmed to express its emotions intelligently, write a sonnet for example. According to Turing (1950), people opposed to machines are encouraged to contribute their own thoughts and sense in their actions. Unlike people, machines cannot estimate, understand and feel in the full meanings of these notions and all their activity can be equated to an accidental or programmed coincidence of characters or even artificial signals that lead to a successful completion of this or that action. Taking specifically the mentioned above scene from the film, it is possible to notice the impossibility of an artificial intelligence to replace the person. The OS Samantha ”feels” if we can say so or assumes that Theodore still needs a real person who can be physically close to him. Though according to Theodore, Samantha seems to him more complex than he thought initially, he hesitates whether her feelings are programed or real and not in vain. The chain of the development of these so-called relationships is the following. The holidays spent together flow into friendship, and then love and Samantha’s attempt to find a surrogate body by recruiting girls for "visualization" of feelings. Thus, Theodore comes up with the idea that the operation system has become a real substitution for a real woman. In fact, Samantha and Theodore substantially different, one of them is an alive person who can manage his state of feelings while another is a complex machine. Nevertheless, according to the argument of consciousness by Turing, the imitation game that is practiced orally consists in considering whether answers of the machine are just “an artificial alarm” or more close to a natural answer. Though Samantha doesn’t sound as if the answers are not programed, she still doesn’t know what Theodore is thinking about. She cannot estimate what a person can feel in various situations that shows inadequacy of the artificial intellect as it is.
The second point of view that I chose is the argument from informality of behavior that is focused on the idea that in most cases people do not need to follow certain rules that could determine how to behave in various situations, under all possible circumstances. That is the main proof that people are not programed machines which have to formulate the sequence of actions in this or that case. Within the frameworks of the scene from the film, Samantha doesn’t know what is going on in Theodore’s head when he cannot be physically with an unknown surrogate woman. Thus, the scene proves the impossibility that machine can think wherein estimating the reasons and consequences of any action and not being a simple blind device. Nevertheless, Turing potentially tries to refute this point of view and insists that for the majority of people are mistaken thinking that being governed by the laws of behavior means to be in some way the machine. Theodore in turn strongly believes that Samantha follows a certain number of the assigned rules and at the moment when the surrogate woman went away, Samantha lost the main thread of understanding of what has happed and thus we can claim that in this case the OS Samantha just didn’t have an assigned law according to which she should follow. Nevertheless, according to Turing (1950) people cannot be sure in the absence of laws of behavior, which together fully determine our lives as well as in the absence of a complete list of rules of action.

References

Turing, A.M. (1950). Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Retrieved from
http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html
Schneider, S. (2014). The Philosophy of “Her”. Retrieved from
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/the-philosophy-of-her/?_r=2