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An OS You'll Love? AI Experts Weigh In On Her

Posted by Unknown on from the emacs-really-does-love-me dept.

theodp writes "Weighing in for the WSJ on Spike Jonze's Oscar-nominated, futuristic love story Her (parodies), Stephen Wolfram — whose Wolfram Alpha drives the AI-like component of Siri — thinks that an operating system like Samantha as depicted in the film isn't that far off. In Her, OS Samantha and BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com employee Theodore Twombly have a relationship that appears to exhibit all the elements of a typical romance, despite the OS's lack of a physical body. They talk late into the night, relax on the beach, and even double date with friends. Both Wolfram and Google director of research Peter Norvig (who hadn't yet seen the film) believe this type of emotional attachment isn't a big hurdle to clear. 'People are only too keen, I think, to anthropomorphize things around them,' explained Wolfram. 'Whether they're stuffed animals, Tamagotchi, things in videogames, whatever else.' By the way, why no supporting actor nomination for Jonze's portrayal of foul-mouthed animated video game character Alien Child?"

21 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. CLAMP! by dosius · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Give it an android body and you got the PCs from Chobits.

    --
    What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
    1. Re:CLAMP! by jellomizer · · Score: 2

      Affirmative!

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:CLAMP! by Runaway1956 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, you should be absolutely loyal to your owner/master cat. Remember, that feline has at least 9 lives, and you only have one. Piss the cat off, and she may come back as a saber toothed tiger in her next life. The wife's cat warned me of that possibility. No, I'm not anthropomorphizing the cat. There was nothing human about the threat. She claims to have kept a couple of pharaohs as pets, and I'm not arguing with her!

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  2. Stupidity... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Her" falls for one of the classic AI misconceptions. That intelligence is equal to kindness, empathy and other human traits. These traits are a result of hormones acting on the brain or other inherited traits. Unless programmed into the computer it wouldn't feel curiosity, anger, happiness etc. It would simply make logical deductions and act on them as it had been programmed to. Left alone without a task all an AI could do would be to shutdown or go over old inputs.

    1. Re:Stupidity... by 50000BTU_barbecue · · Score: 2

      Like the Niven short story, forgot the name, but humans buy the plans for the most advanced computer design from benevolent aliens with the warning "you won't like it". We build it on the Moon, just to be safe, after it's turned on it gets smarter and smarter and eventually solves everything it can see and goes catatonic.

      --
      Mostly random stuff.
    2. Re:Stupidity... by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Insightful

      look man,

      it's not an AI in the story. its a magical ghost spirit.

      why the fuck ask AI specialists about it even? and what the fuck, not that far off? sure it is. it's very far off.

      BUT if you could do a proper AI then instructing it to not act like an asshole would be a pretty small task, all things considered.

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      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    3. Re:Stupidity... by jellomizer · · Score: 2

      Well it would depend, in theory an AI could learn kindness as a aspect of intelligence, calculating that if you are kind to the end user, you will get a better degree of output reward. Say the goal of the AI is to achieve most desirable output, and the end user provides feed back on how happy he is with the output. The AI could adjust its logic to find that being pleasant, or anticipating future requests, and looking them up before hand, would optimize it end point results.

      In the human body hormones are only part of the equation. In terms of sex drive, they do have more of an influence, but other aspects are based on more intellectual processing which then feeds your body to give off hormones, which then reinforce their belief back to the brain.
      You know because you are behind schedule on your assignment, your boss will yell at you. Knowing this your brain tell your adrenalin system to start working, as you are expected to be in a battle. You body gets the message, however you don't fight or flight, so you in general feel bad afterwards, as you didn't use the chemicals. This bad feeling you got, reminded your brain that this isn't a good situation.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    4. Re:Stupidity... by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I can easily see an AI-like interface being programmed with at least the appearance of emotions in order to improve interactions with humans. It wouldn't take long for the operators of an AI-driven telephone customer services agent to work out that an appearance of empathy leads to improved customer satisfaction. Only way that differs from the real thing is that the fake-empathy would never be allowed to alter the business decisions made at a lower level: It doesn't matter how much the AI appears to feel for your difficulty, if the company policy is no refund then it's not going to make an exception for you.

    5. Re:Stupidity... by jbolden · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've been seeing slow but steady progress. Today we have robotic systems capable of operating at the level of a insect, including the very hard detection problem in production and in use. That didn't exist a generation ago. We are decomposing more and more areas of the mind.

      As the saying went in the 1990s. Today we can program computers that can beat the world chess champion. We still can't program a computer that can walk into a room and find the chessboard. 20 years later that's starting to change we are pretty close to being able to find the chessboard.

    6. Re:Stupidity... by geekoid · · Score: 2

      It just need to say the expected thing at the expected time. The listener would stuff it into their own narrative.
      Look at how psychopaths get away with stuff. They aren't emotional invested in the conversation at hand.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    7. Re:Stupidity... by Kjella · · Score: 2

      If the task is "act like a human" then feigning emotion would be part of the goal function, if it doesn't behave or respond in a natural way it is failing even if it's acting more logical. If that means writing out a long division that it calculated in a nanosecond, so be it. If everybody puts on a sad look and offers condolences at a funeral, it will put on a sad face and offer condolences. All you need to do is point it to real human interactions and it'll have an endless supply of contradictory, approximate raw data to try making sense of.

      As for us, people are very different. Some are impulsive, some are daring, some are caring, some are charming, some are strange. It doesn't need to get everything right, just roughly right and get rid of all the clearly non-human responses. Particularly if the AI gets to act a bit ignorant, arrogant, stupid, indifferent, irrational or annoyed it can pull a Watson when it knows what to do and just brush it off when it doesn't understand. Also don't forget that there's AI-human interaction, a human can design a specific character and an AI try to act it out. Or even try doing it algorithmically with clustering to create plausible personalities.

      Of course it's not really real, but for a real world analogy look at escorts. It's all bullshit and because of the money but people like to pretend they're dating and pretend she wants to have sex. Same with prostitues, customers don't want to hear it's a rent-a-hole service and the meter is running they want sweet, sweet lies. If people can "forget" such little details they'll have no problems "forgetting" that this AI girl is nothing but a bunch of circuits. Particularly if it comes with a "fully functional" android body.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  3. Outsourcing by StripedCow · · Score: 4, Funny

    an operating system like Samantha as depicted in the film isn't that far off

    First they outsource our jobs. Then they outsource our women too?

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    If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
    1. Re:Outsourcing by Chrisq · · Score: 2

      an operating system like Samantha as depicted in the film isn't that far off

      First they outsource our jobs. Then they outsource our women too?

      No you've got this wrong. Its the men who are being outsourced. Women can reproduce via sperm donor and if a computer can offer better companionship and more patience then ... well you can see where things are going.

    2. Re:Outsourcing by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 4, Funny

      Its the men who are being outsourced. Women can reproduce via sperm donor and if a computer can offer better companionship and more patience then ... well you can see where things are going.

      False.

      Women will still need men around to open jars and put spiders outside.

  4. Movie doesn't consider its own implications by sapphire+wyvern · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I think Robin Hanson's commentary on the movie's lack of internal consistency is valid. I don't think Slashdot supports spoiler-hiding, so I'll just leave a link rather than quoting plot-relevant sections of the post. But his conclusion is:

    This is somewhat like a story of a world where kids can buy nukes for $1 each at drug stores, and then a few kids use nukes to dig a fun cave to explore, after which all the world’s nukes are accidentally misplaced, end of story. Might make an interesting story, but bizarre as a projection of a world with $1 nukes sold at drug stores.

    http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/01/her-isnt-realistic.html#sthash.m9uOR6Cg.dpuf

  5. Not a bad movie with an interesting side note by kaizendojo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wanted to dislike this movie, but it actually wasn't bad at all. It's even more intresting if you compare it to "Lost in Translation"; another movie about romance post separation. Intrestingly enough, these two movies were two different takes on the same subject matter by a former couple, Spike Jonze and Sofia Copolla. Viewed from that perspective the comparison is even more interesting.

  6. Forget "Her", people here would relate to "Him" by OzPeter · · Score: 4, Funny

    SNL showed how it really is: Him

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    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
  7. I am already in a life-long romance by vikingpower · · Score: 2

    with Solaris

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    Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
  8. OS upgrade time... by sinij · · Score: 4, Funny

    Soon when you upgrade OS, your old one keeps the house and half of your assets.

  9. Re:There might be a niche by CaseCrash · · Score: 2

    I can't believe nobody has mentioned this; there was an article on the BBC last October about "The Japanese men who prefer virtual girlfriends to sex". They take them on dates and everything, so people are already doing what happens in the movie only with a way shittier version of the Girl.

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    No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
  10. a symptom of professional immaturity by mounthood · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Quote from the bottom of my Slashdot page:

    The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with computing systems is a symptom of professional immaturity. -- Edsger Dijkstra

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    tomorrow who's gonna fuss