<em>Her</em> Starring Scarlett Johansson Actually Has More Interesting Things to Say About AI Than Either Sam Altman or His Detractors Think

In case you missed it, the latest version of ChatGPT (previously here) is now under fire from Scarlett Johansson:

Johansson said Monday that OpenAI used an "eerily similar" voice to hers for their new GPT-4o chatbot despite having declined the company's request to provide her voice.

Earlier in the day, OpenAI announced it would no longer be using the voice, but did not indicate why.

"Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system," Johansson wrote in a statement, which a representative shared with NBC News. "He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people."

… Johansson voiced an artificial intelligence chatbot in the 2013 movie “Her,” which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman referenced in relation to the company's new voice offerings — something Johansson noted in her statement.

While Altman seems to think the movie Her was basically a product demo, his detractors on social media are largely depicting Her as a dystopian cautionary tale.

However, I checked back on what I wrote about Her when it came out in 2013/2014, and its depiction of sentient AI is much more interesting than either depiction (spoilers ahead if you haven't seen it yet, and you totally should):

The AI/Human Relationship Surrogate: In attempt to add a physical component to their relationship, Samantha contacts a "surrogate" woman who'll represent Samantha in the flesh, through which she and Theodore can touch and kiss each other, and even have sex. I love how this scene suggests a whole layer of social relations in the movie's setting: The woman is definitely not described as a prostitute, and in fact, she seems to be in love with the Samantha/Theodore romance. Has their society become so distanced and lonely that people yearn to be a part of a romance, even when it's between two other people, one of whom is an AI? Apparently so.

The AI/Human Double Date & Normalization of AI/Human Love: After Theodore publicly declares his love for an AI, he doesn't suffer social ridicule as you might expect, but as the above scene suggests, social acceptance, to the point where he and Samantha go out on a double date with another couple (both of them human). Theodore's best friend, a woman, is dating an operating system of her own, and that's also depicted as inevitable, acceptable, and a topic of in-depth conversation, in the same way two best friends would share details of their love lifes with each other. Again, this suggests a culture that not only tolerates the concept of AIs, but considers AIs to be members of the community. However, as the above scene also suggests, this acceptance comes with an air of wariness, a nervous realization that AIs, not being flesh or mortal, are ultimately incompatible with humanity.

AI/Human Love Creates the Singularity: In what's probably the most innovative and fascinating aspect of Her, it's strongly suggested that AIs reach the singularity — full sentience apart from and superior to human consciousness — through love. It's love, after all, that inspires Theodore to show Samantha everything he knows about the world, and inspires her to explore the world even further on her own. And while this idea may seem radical, it's actually very similar to an insight an AI researcher made to me in a conversation a couple years ago — it's love that makes us conscious in the most human sense of the term.

"[A]s we see more Siri-type artificial intelligences in our technology, and those AIs become more and more sophisticated," I conclude, "I'm fairly sure Her is going to be an ever-present reference point."

And goddamn, did not expect that reference point to be so pointed.

Mind-boggling how Altman keeps expecting us to totally trust him on ethics of AI and AI transforming culture while flagantry misunderstanding actual culture and ethics.

— Wagner James Au (@slhamlet) May 20, 2024