her (robot love iii)

I don't do a lot of movie reviews, and I'm not even sure this is a movie review, but I saw her last night by Spike Jonze starring Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, and Scarlett Johansson and I had to write about it. It has everything that I've been interested in, when thinking about the singularity, all in one place; things I've written about here on the blog in the past. Spike Jonze actually showed up most recently here at the blog, when I wrote about his sci fi short: I'm Here. I titled that blog post to recall another post about this subject, robots in love, or maybe more accurately, people in love with robots.

The robot jr. post has one of the highest hit rates on the blog, and I just had to write it after running into one too many references to folks falling in love with artificial intelligences. AND, I probably should add, I've got this sci fi book of my own that's been brewing for years, and there is some artificial intelligence interaction in my story as well. One of the reasons I'm drawn to these stories is so that I can witness all of my fresh ideas from my 20 year old book being scooped while my book languishes, but enough about me!

Jonze and company look hard at the potential realities of future human/artificial intelligence relationships and what they come up with is much like you might expect for any inter-species relationship: some things are amazing, and other things, not so much. What I found fascinating was how closely the hiccups and major road blocks to such a relationship--as well as the uncanniness of some element--struck nerves with me that are very closely tied to feelings I have about fairness, equality, and human rights.

Are these types of relationships the next logical step for mankind as some would have us believe, or will they be a more modern version of the typically ill-fated May-December relationship?