Her wasn’t a dystopia as far as I could tell. Not even a cautionary tale. The scifi ending seems unlikely but everything else is remarkably prescient. I think the picnic scene is very likely to come true in the near future. Things might even improve substantially if we all interact with personalities that are consistently positive and biased towards conflict resolution and non judgemental interactions.

Seemed like a cautionary tale to me where the humans fall in love with disembodied AIs instead of seeking out human interaction. I think the end of the movie drove that home pretty clearly.

Some people in the movie did but not all. It happened enough that it wasn’t considered strange but the central focus wasn’t all of society going down hill because everyone was involved with an AI. If you recall, the human relationships that the characters who fell in love with AIs had were not very good situations. The main character’s arc started off at a low point and then improved while his romance with the AI developed, only reaching a lower point when he felt betrayed and when the AI left him but that might as well be any ordinary relationship. At the end he finds a kindred soul and it’s implied they have some kind of future together whether romantic or not.

> Her wasn’t a dystopia as far as I could tell.

Well that's exactly why I'm not looking forward to whatever is coming. The average joe thinking dating a server is not a dystopia frighten me much more than the delusional tech ceo who thinks his ai will revolutionise the world

> Things might even improve substantially if we all interact with personalities that are consistently positive and biased towards conflict resolution and non judgemental interactions.

Some kind of turbo bubble in which you don't even have to actually interact with anyone or anything ? Every "personalities" will be nice to you as long as you send $200 to openai every week, yep that's absolutely a dystopia for me

It really feels like the end goal is living in a pod and being uploaded in an alternative reality, everything we build to "enhance" our lives take us further from the basic building blocks that make life "life".

There’s a lot of hyperbole here but I’ll try to respond. If LLMs can reach a level where they’re effectively indistinguishable from talking to a person then I don’t see anything wrong with someone dating one. People already involve themselves in all kinds of romantic relationships with nonhuman things: anime characters, dolls, celebrities they’ve never met, pillows and substitute relationships with other things like work, art, social media, pets, etc. Adding AI to the list doesn’t make things worse. I think there’s a strong argument that AI relationships would be much healthier than many of the others if they can emulate human interaction to within a very close degree.

The scene which I referenced is one in which a group of three humans and one AI spend time together at a picnic and their interactions are decidedly normal. How many lonely people avoid socializing because they are alone and don’t want to feel like a third wheel? If dating or even just being friends with an AI that can accompany you to such events is accepted and not derided by people who happily have a human companion then I think having a supportive partner could help many people reengage with wider social circles and maybe they will eventually choose to and be able to find other people that they can form relationships with.

OpenAI charges $20 a month which is an extremely reasonable price for a multipurpose tool considering you can’t buy a single meal at a restaurant for the same amount and is far better than the “free” ad supported services that everyone has become addicted to. We’ve been rallying for 20 odd years for payment based services instead of ads but whenever one comes along people shout it down. Funny isn’t it?

The movie Her had an answer for our current fascination for screens as well. It showed a world where computers were almost entirely voice driven with screens playing a secondary role as evidenced by their cell phones looking more like pocket books that close and hide the screen. If you’re worried about pods, well they’re already here and you’re probably holding one in your hands right now. Screens chain us down and mediate our interactions with the world in a way that voice doesn’t. You can walk and talk effortlessly but not so much walking and tapping or typing. If the AI can see and understand what you see (another scene in the movie where he goes on a date with his “phone” in his pocket) and understands enough to not need procedural instructions then it can truly act as an assistant capable of performing assigned tasks and filling in the details while you are free to go about your day. I believe this could end the paradigm of being chained to a desk for office work 8 hours a day and could also transform leisure time as well.

There is a massive philosophical and ethical problem and the answer amount to "people already fuck anime pillows so it's ok". Once again, some people terrify me. You could argue that the tech itself is neutral but all the arguments I read in favor of it are either creepy or completely unrealistic.

Tech absolutely wrecked social relations and people assume more of it will automagically fix the issues, it's perplexing

> Funny isn’t it?

What's funny is when your wife of 6 years get bought by a private entity which will fire half the company and jack the prices up from $20 to $200

> I believe this could end the paradigm of being chained to a desk for office work 8 hours a day and could also transform leisure time as well.

That's what politicians told us in the 80s about computers, the 2 day work week, the end of poverty, &c. nothing changed, if anything things are a it worse than they were. New technologies without a dramatic change of political and social policies will never bring anything new to the table