Her (film) (2013)

Her (2013) Official Film Poster, Spike Jones

Her is a 2013 science fiction film with romantic and comedic elements, written, directed, and produced by Spike Jones. The cast includes Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson, as the main protagonists, Theodore Twombly and the voice of his AI Operating System, Samantha, respectively. The supporting cast includes Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, and Olivia Wilde. Her was well received by critics of multiple film award celebrations, including earning 5 nominations (Best Writing [won], Best Picture, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, and Best Production Design) at the 86th Academy Awards.

Plot

• Note: the exploration of certain ethical dilemas presented below requires divulging into plot and story elements.*

Science fictional elements

Samantha

Upon initialization of his artificially intelligent operating system and personal assistant, Theodore Twumbly asks it what its name is. The OS responds with the name Samantha, a name it says it had chosen on the spot, after 'reading' a digital baby naming book. The writer takes special care to personify and humanize the so-called computer: it has a soothing and arousing voice, a normal name, it reads, laughs, jokes, and advises. Samantha has emotions and seems to feel. Given Luciano's Flouridi's approach to describing the stage of introversive and extroversive human existentialism,

Taken without context, it seems that through the presentation of Samantha, Spike Jones is surfacely arguing that AI should be considered an independent, autonomous agents.

Video game

A video game played by Theo Twombly during several scenes in the film, Her (2013)

Theodore Twombly spends several scenes sitting on his couch using his hands and voice to interact with a hologramically projected video game, the main character of which is a little, turquoise alien. The audience is led to understand that the video game character, like Samantha, has artificial intelligence (or at least incredible natural language processing). He curses and swears at Theo while he plays, which is part of the hook. However, an A.I. agent designed to curse at an audience is ethically challenging in a similar vein as real-life video games.

As an art and entertainment medium violent video games have been the subject of much talk and speculation about the effect that increasingly violent video games have on addicted adolescents. According to

Culturally fictional elements

Beautifulhandwrittenletters.com

The company that protagonist Theo Thumbly works for allows customers to purchase hand-written love letters to spouses. What's seemingly the gimmick is that the spouses aren't aware of the third party. Spike Jones seems to explain the fore-front objection that a third-party agent would have difficulty connecting their words to the real and intimate memories of clients by alluding to a long-time relationship between employees of the company and its clients. This appears both ethically convoluted and worth examining for a couple of reasons:

OS Surrogate Sex

A service that provides human bodies as surrogates for sexual encounters between humans and the OS partners

As the romantic relationship between Theo Twombly and his OS, Samantha, thickens, an interpersonal barrier comes to fruition around the noticeably lacking of physical connection. In an attempt to overcome this barrier and strengthen their relationship, Samantha engages in and schedules a surrogate, someone willing to perform sexual activities in the stead of the OS partner.

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