When Spike Jonze's Her came out in 2013, the film about a lonely man falling for an artificially intelligent operating system won widespread praise. Watching today, the qualities critics celebrated at the time are still there--it's a gentle, enjoyably melancholy story, twee but not damnably so--but something else stands out. Though set in the near-future, Her captures Obama-era techno-optimism better than any other movie. It's a time capsule, preserving dreams about the future that appear more naive the further we get from the 2010s. Her takes place in a highly-stylized version of Los Angeles from a future near enough that its protagonist is a former LA Weekly journalist but distant enough that the skyline rivals Shanghai.

A lonely single man sits down at his computer and meets the love of his life. It seems like a plausible scenario that could occur today. There's just one catch: the love of his life isn't a profile photo of a human on a dating website -- it's an artificially intelligent operating system that adopts a female-sounding voice and goes by the name "Samantha." Released in 2013, the sci-fi drama Her was ahead of its time in anticipating the lightning-fast advances in AI that are now starting to shape our everyday lives. But was its depiction of artificial intelligence scientifically accurate?

By Dec 22, 2019 0 A couple years ago I took part in a marketing video where I was recorded answering questions about my career path, interests, and goals. The next day, the videographer offered to show me the footage, so I took him up on it. As I watched myself, I became dismayed. My eyes darted from left to right instead of looking into the camera. And my head did this weird, reflexive sort of mini-nod whenever I said something I felt strongly about.