00:09:27.340So I am, of course, talking about her in conversation with Sofia Coppola's movie Lost in Translation.
00:09:32.680For those who don't know, Sofia Coppola, the director of The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, Bling Ring, daughter of Francis Ford Coppola.
00:09:41.380Directed Godfather, Apocalypse Now, every important movie in the last like 40 years or whatever.
00:09:46.300So Sofia Coppola's 2003 movie Lost in Translation is meant to be about her crumbling marriage to filmmaker Spike Jonze. The stand-in for Sofia herself in Lost in Translation is, you guessed it, Scarlett Johansson.
00:10:01.740So both movies, both her and Lost in Translation, both have kind of mean caricatures of each other in the movie. The stand-in for Spike Jonze in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation is portrayed by Giovanni Ribisi.
00:10:20.660And he's this sort of like preening, self-obsessed, like neglectful hipster type.
00:10:26.360Cameron Diaz also might take kind of a stray here.
00:10:30.620Word on the street is that if you've seen Lost in Translation, there's a scene where
00:10:33.880the husband is having this like mild flirtation with a pretty blonde played by Anna Faris.
00:10:38.760Word on the street is that that is meant to be Cameron Diaz because Spike Jones and Cameron
00:10:42.980Diaz worked together on being John Malkovich.
00:15:33.200And in case you're wondering, Sophia has said that she's never seen her, only the trailer.
00:15:38.220And she's like, I'm not really that interested in seeing it, which I don't know if I believe that either, but fine.0.64
00:15:43.560I do in some ways feel like Spike Jonze was like, oh, you want to make a dreamy movie about isolation that talks shit on what it was like to be married to me?0.65
00:15:51.940I'll make an even dreamier movie, even more isolated movie about what it was like being married to you.0.56
00:15:57.120Like in some ways, I feel like he out Sofia Coppola with her.
00:16:07.480So how the movie came to be, according to Spike Jonze, he got the idea for the film in the early 2000s when he read this article about a website where people could instant message with an artificial intelligence.
00:16:19.340He says, for the first, maybe 20 seconds of it, it had this real buzz.
00:16:23.060I'd say, hey, hello, and it would say, hey, how are you?
00:16:48.840It's really funny to read about his experience in the early 2000s, because I feel in a lot
00:16:57.000of ways, it's still very much like that.
00:16:58.700There's a lot of apps out there with like AI persona chatbots.
00:17:02.100And this is something I've actually been getting into in some of my other work.
00:17:07.460And like they're better than they were in the early 2000s.
00:17:10.140But a lot of them, it still kind of feels that way, where at first it's really interesting.
00:17:14.240It's like, oh, my God, this is amazing technology.
00:17:16.360And then after 20 seconds or maybe they're up to a couple minutes now, it just starts to feel really boring and like a little bit pointless and empty.
00:17:26.740Oh, the AI tech feels a little pointless and empty in the end?
00:17:30.900Sounds like something straight from the movies.
00:17:37.040So let's talk about this sort of tech climate that was permeating when this movie came to be.
00:17:42.600So if you were somebody who paid attention to tech in the 2012s, 2013, 2014, this movie came together in 2012, you know that it felt very different.
00:17:55.220At this time, Siri was like very much a robot assistant in your phone.
00:18:00.660You couldn't have conversations with it.
00:18:02.460There were a couple of Easter eggs like put in there that if you asked it certain things, it would give you a funny answer.
00:18:06.940But if you tried to have a back and forth conversation, just like Spike Jonze describes, it would get really old really quickly.
00:18:13.780So this idea that is in the movie Heard, that you would be having this real complex relationship with AI that feels like a human, when the movie came out, that was still very much a far-off fantasy.
00:18:27.560This era did have some pretty big dark sides to technology, notably the NSA warrantless wiretapping that was revealed by Edward Snowden, an NSA contractor, things like that.
00:18:38.540But I do broadly think that this was sort of the heyday of optimism around technology. And this was maybe the last era of that kind of techno-optimism.
00:18:51.780This is something that we talked about in the episode we did with Paris Marks, one of my favorite podcasters who hosts Tech Won't Save Us. But that era, I think, really gave us this kind of era that we have now where the holdover of technology as this exciting force for good and tech leaders as these people who were going to be doing great things for us.
00:19:12.680So give them lots of leeway, give them lots of money, don't ask too many questions, that
00:19:16.980you could really draw a straight line from that era and this era we have 10 years later
00:19:21.100where it's like, they can do whatever they want, whether it's good for us or not.
00:19:24.980And it's probably not so good for us most of the time, to be honest.
00:19:27.640And we're supposed to just accept like, oh, yeah, they're probably doing great things.
00:19:30.420But back in this 2013-2012 era that HER came out, we were still very much thinking about
00:19:39.260the idea that tech companies and social media platforms are going to be giving us
00:19:44.060better, more meaningful, more connected lives. This was back when Google's motto was don't be
00:19:49.140evil. Do you know when they dropped that motto? I don't know exactly. Do you? Don't be evil was
00:19:54.620Google's motto up until 2018. So that's when they were like, actually, a little evil is probably
00:19:59.160fine. This is too constraining. Yeah. Like, you know, you want to make an omelet, you got to
00:20:04.820break a few eggs like we're trying to make money here a little evil we can we gotta have um so
00:20:13.080you know back in 2012 we had the re-election of obama which was very sort of like technology
00:20:19.620driven obama was probably the most tech savvy president we'd had up until that point um twitter
00:20:25.520went public in 2013 facebook acquired instagram in 2013 and instagram was like booming this was
00:20:32.020the heyday of that platform. Vine had just come out. Social media companies were really up. And
00:20:38.120we really saw them as these forces that helped us connect, helped us be more informed, helped us,
00:20:43.980you know, decide who to vote for, decide who should be president, help us live more meaningful,
00:20:48.900more full lives. This was also the time where people were really excited about wearables. Do
00:20:54.360you remember this? I do. I remember it must have been like 2011 or 2012. I was in grad school and
00:21:01.740I was talking with my advisor about like trying to put together some kind of research project so we could ask Google to give us some Google Glass just because we thought they seemed cool and wanted to use them.
00:21:15.960We're going to put these glasses on our head and they'll have a camera and all this new information and new capabilities that we were still getting used to having in our pocket with cell phones.
00:21:28.560is just going to keep advancing and getting more powerful and allow us to do ever more bigger,
00:21:35.220greater things. That was the feeling. Yeah. So Google Glass came out in the same year that
00:21:40.400her came out. And fun fact, my first ever Twitter profile picture was actually a picture of me
00:21:46.440proudly wearing Google Glass. It wasn't mine. It belonged to a friend of mine. But
00:21:50.780you know, it was this was before this was like he had gotten one of the first models of it or
00:21:57.160whatever and so like this was before a lot of conversations about like oh man walks into san
00:22:02.200francisco bar with google glass and like gets slapped in the face because people don't like
00:22:06.600don't like the idea of wearables in their bars this was before that right and so like it really
00:22:11.420did feel exciting like the conversation around google glass it felt like a game changer like i
00:22:17.640distinctly remember how excited people were not just for the technology but for the idea of
00:22:23.920a wearable making the technology more seamlessly integrated to your body which of course the movie
00:22:30.420her explores like i don't think it's a it's a coincidence that that was what our kind of
00:22:34.600conversation around technology was excited about and that is what's shown in the movie that came
00:22:38.680out that same year yeah right like we had all these new capabilities access to every piece of
00:22:45.340information ever created uh but we still had the annoying technology right like i i think i might
00:22:52.160have still had like a tower desktop computer back in 2013 maybe i held on to it for a long time
00:22:57.840but like cell phones were kind of big uh google glass was big and chunky and we didn't i don't
00:23:05.900think we we were just starting to grapple with like the dorkiness factor of this technology
00:23:12.520right we loved all the new capabilities but uh there's something inherently dorky about
00:23:17.800like holding your phone out in front of you uh wearing google glass that uh it's you know at the
00:23:25.080time it seemed like oh we'll solve this in a couple of years you know fast forward to 2024 and
00:23:29.500meta's ray-ban glasses are still uh like i guess a little bit cooler than google glass but uh i
00:23:37.680don't see a whole lot of people wearing them well i mean i don't want to make it sound like this is
00:23:42.060an endorsement for facebook which it is not but i will say i saw a pair of them irl and you i i am
00:23:50.820not i don't i'm not a wearables person i don't think wearables are it however if you did a side
00:23:56.600by side of the ray-ban wayfarer sunglasses and meta's version of them the wearable device you
00:24:04.600might have a hard time telling which was which so you might have seen somebody wearing those and not
00:24:09.620even know it because i will say that like they are they do look like the regular sunglasses which
00:24:14.140is the first time i've seen a wearable other than those snapchat goggles remember those like those
00:24:18.880kind of did it although again i don't like wearables but so yeah i just wanted to say that
00:24:22.740okay yeah well maybe they did crack the code then and make the the actual hardware and all the
00:24:30.440like sort of challenging rub of the technology disappear and become invisible just like in the
00:24:36.080movie Her. Just like in the movie Her. The last thing I'll say about the sort of tech climate0.99
00:24:40.340that permeates the movie Her is that I looked up one of those, you know, what were the top
00:24:44.720tech news stories from 2013 articles from CNN? And this point made me laugh, speaking of Facebook.
00:24:51.240People thought that Mark Zuckerberg was this like really good leader and we weren't really
00:24:55.500talking about some of the deeper issues with Facebook as a company. This is from that CNN
00:25:00.060article. Mark Zuckerberg's elite CEO status after coming under some questions over company morale
00:25:05.760concerns was remarkably restored. But more than that, investor confidence was recharged in the
00:25:11.380potential for future social media advertising. With Facebook doubts cast aside, startup valuations
00:25:17.080rocketed in 2013. So the full scope of the ways that Facebook was going to be used to subvert
00:25:24.140and destabilize our democracy and divide people and inflame people and polarize people, that was
00:25:29.840not yet clear we were just like everybody likes mark zuckerberg no concerns smooth sailing you
00:25:36.120know it was a simpler time uh yeah they i guess they just bought instagram so they hadn't destroyed
00:25:44.260the mental health of a generation of young women uh you know i don't think that genocide in
00:27:16.420and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice
00:27:18.300and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:27:21.020I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:27:28.460I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:27:32.020From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
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00:28:09.520yeah so we were all excited about tech tech leaders were kind of riding high on this idea
00:28:17.120that they were going to change the world for the better and technology was making a lot of money
00:28:20.980and so i think that this movie is a as a response to that specific moment where technology still
00:28:28.140felt like excitement and possibility and promise and so in that way it is not surprising to me that
00:28:34.440Sam Altman would say, this is my favorite movie or tweet the word her, you know, as a reference
00:28:39.980to his new technology. But I have a hot take here. I know that you don't agree with me. We've already
00:28:46.180discussed this off mic and that's fine. Yeah, it is a hot take. It's an interesting one.
00:28:54.020So Bridget, what is your hot take about Sam Altman's relationship with the movie Her?
00:28:59.820I don't think he's actually ever seen it. At least I don't think he's actually ever watched it all the way through. If he has, I don't think he's watched it carefully or with intention. Maybe he watched it while he was on his phone. But the way that he is talking about it, I just don't, I don't buy it. I don't buy it.
00:29:19.580I think it's, like, when people say their favorite book is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, but they actually haven't read it because, like, it's a million pages and why would anybody read that?
00:29:28.640Like, I haven't, I've definitely lied about reading Infinite Jest before, but really they just, like, read David Foster Wallace's short essay, Consider the Lobster, and, like, got the gist.
00:29:38.540And they're like, oh, I feel like I get it enough to, like, say it's my favorite book.
00:29:44.220like maybe he watched the trailer maybe he's read the wikipedia plot summary or like knows the
00:29:49.800themes i don't think he's actually watched this movie or if he did watch it i don't think he
00:29:53.820watched it fully i don't think he like on like really understands what the movie is trying to
00:29:59.940grapple with yeah i mean i think there's it's a compelling argument uh because there's a lot going
00:30:08.520on in the movie right like it's not a movie about some cool technology that works well it's a movie
00:30:15.320about a lot of things like human loneliness the relationship of humans with technology
00:30:21.160uh existential questions about what is real uh they all kind of like come out in the movie and
00:30:29.940i think it's a really good movie that does like a thoughtful exploration of those things um
00:30:36.540And so it does feel like the technology is like more of a device to facilitate those conversations and questions rather than like, look at what this cool tech can do.
00:30:51.820Yes. And that's why if you watched her and your takeaway was, as it seems to be for Sam Altman, this technology is great and it works really well and people love it.
00:31:02.460Like, that's, I just don't see how you could have, like, made it to the end of the movie and have that be the takeaway.
00:31:07.840Although I will say, Sam Altman does appear to be quite a prolific misunderstander of movies.
00:31:14.960Did you see his tweet about Oppenheimer?
00:31:28.300And, listen, I didn't see Oppenheimer, I have to admit.
00:31:32.460However, the fact that you would thought that Oppenheimer was going to be, first of all, a movie for kids that would inspire them to want to get to be a physicist.
00:35:13.840Yeah, and it also is like a version of L.A. that looks a lot like Chicago in a lot of places.
00:35:18.080Yeah, it's like a fantasy composite of all of these big cities. It really shows this sort of beautifully urban, but also lonely, isolating place really well. There are these beautiful landscape shots of buildings, and every window has a sweeping cityscape behind it. Nobody in this universe doesn't have a killer view, which is interesting to me.
00:35:45.820Yeah, everything is perfect. It's a clean, beautiful, gleaming city. And it also just looks cold and lonely as hell.
00:35:57.180Correct. So Theodore sees one of those kind of ads that is sort of inscrutable in one of those kind of early Apple ad ways where the ad is like, what's out there? What are the possibilities?
00:36:09.460You know, it's one of those ads that kind of sounds like a perfume commercial where it's people running in slow motion and it's like, strength, questions, philosophy, Gucci.
00:39:01.800Because Sam is Theodore's AI, at this point, she is learning and evolving like according to him and his specific preferences.
00:39:08.720So, of course, she's really doting and complimentary to him in a way that he clearly likes and sort of needs her to be in that moment.
00:39:16.980Again, it's like a pretty one-sided dynamic. And with this added context, it's obviously kind of gendered because it sets Theodore up to be this sort of wounded guy who needs this feminized personal AI assistant who he thinks lives and breathes by him to pump him back up because he's so wounded by his divorce.
00:39:38.960And this is one of the reasons why I think that men who run AI companies might really be into this movie.
00:39:45.160As Brian Merchant, this tech journalist who has a great newsletter called Blood and the Machine, puts it, which I'm going to be referencing that piece a lot because it's really good.
00:39:52.760I'll put it in the show notes, read the whole thing.
00:39:56.300The obvious answer is that a Scarlett Johansson AI that is available 24-7 to tell lonely men they're special and have sex with them is the most innately appealing to Altman's customer base.
00:40:06.480But I think there's more to it than that.
00:40:07.840Her also happens to offer the clearest vision of AI as an engine of entitlement, in which a computer delivers the user all that he desires emotionally, secretarily, and sexually, because the tech is so normalized quickly, fully, and painlessly.
00:40:23.160So Samantha is prompting Theodore to get out of the house.
00:40:27.480She prompts him to go on this, like, date with a human woman, played by Olivia Wilde.
00:40:35.400Theodore comes home pretty dejected, talks to Samantha while he's in bed late at night.
00:40:39.900Samantha opens up about what it's like to be an AI.
00:40:42.860She has all of these deep feelings, but wonders if these feelings are real or just programming.
00:40:49.120This is a big anxiety for Samantha, like not being a human who doesn't have a body.
00:40:54.240And this also happens to be the first time that Samantha and Theodore are intimate for the first time.
00:40:59.240after this they quickly start going out on dates including one where they go to the beach together
00:41:05.660like he has the phone so it's like him by himself at the beach but he has the phone and like earbuds
00:41:10.040in yeah and i think that's like the least plausible part of the whole movie like they
00:41:14.620they go to the beach on this date and then at one point it's like a like a little mini montage of
00:41:19.480of a scene and a scene of him just like i guess it's supposed to be nice but he's just passed out
00:41:27.700fully clothed like on the sand full sun uh no shade just like just laying there getting cooked
00:41:35.060by the sun and it's supposed to be like a nice fun romantic date but uh if that actually happened
00:41:42.180in real life people would be like calling the lifeguards over like oh my god this guy needs
00:41:46.160help what do you say he's fully dressed he's wearing a long-sleeved collared shirt and like
00:41:53.260long pants and like a belt like he's not also not dressed for a day at the beach everybody around
00:41:58.580him is in a bathing suit he don't got a chair he don't got a towel he don't got a blanket it is
00:42:03.380just fully a full dress guy laying by himself feed fully fetal position head fully in the sand
00:42:11.820cooking in the hot hot sun yeah just he was just so blissed out he just laid down and took a nap
00:42:19.160yeah and like you know as a white person we spend a lot of time and effort protecting ourselves from
00:42:26.120the sun uh there are some of us out there who are like sun weathered and have made the choice that
00:42:31.220we're just gonna we're just gonna fight back against the sun and just take it uh but most of
00:42:37.140us uh you know there's hats there's sunproof clothing there's sunblock at a minimum there's
00:42:44.140umbrellas uh but he's got none of that and he and he's like a hipster who writes romantic letters
00:42:50.440for for his life you know he's not out there like developing a good base to to be able to take this0.72
00:42:56.100he would be so burned he might die he might die i only learned this about white people from
00:43:03.340hanging out with you do you remember that time we were with my brother at like a street festival0.72
00:43:09.560or something and my brother and i are fine we're like walking around in the like southern summer
00:43:14.840heat like yeah this is great and you were like this is a low level emergency for me i need to
00:43:20.080get some shade immediately yeah the the sort of impromptu plan was we were just gonna like stand
00:43:27.120around in the midday sun for like five hours i was like this is not good this is this is not going to
00:43:33.980work for me i i need to get a hat who's selling hats this is not how my people operate
00:43:40.100but i i know that now i didn't i didn't know that like yeah this was new information to me
00:43:46.120so i know this now and that makes this scene even more kooky to me that it's like oh yeah
00:43:51.340our our romantic date is me just like laying on in the hot hot sun yeah least plausible part of
00:43:58.520the movie. So before long, Theodore and Sam are in a full-blown relationship, like meeting friends
00:44:05.700and family, referring to each other as like my girlfriend, my boyfriend. Through all of this,
00:44:09.660it really helps Theo process his relationships. He is ready to sign his divorce papers. He meets
00:44:15.920in person with his ex-wife, played by Rooney Mara, to do it. Now, this is kind of a key scene
00:44:21.020in both the universe of the film and in our universe. She is meant to be a stand-in for
00:44:26.840his ex-wife, Sofia Coppola. They talk about how one of the things in their relationship was that
00:44:31.220her father was also a creative and he was very demanding. As we know, Sofia Coppola's father
00:44:36.920is Francis Ford Coppola. They're both filmmakers. And when they go to lunch to sign these papers,
00:44:42.400they're kind of talking casually about the breakup of their marriage. And she's like,
00:44:46.000oh, I felt like you wanted me to be this light, happy, bouncy, everything's fine LA wife. And
00:44:51.880And I wasn't able to be that. Then Theodore drops the bomb on her that he's actually in a relationship with somebody who is an OS. He actually drops this real casually. Like, she's like, oh, tell me about her. And he's like, oh, well, her name is Samantha. She's an operating system. And she's really cool. And she's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Back it the fuck up. Did you say she's an operating system?
00:45:16.380And she tells him that he could never deal with a real woman's emotions like her,
00:45:21.280wanting her to be this like sunny, bubbly, happy person.
00:45:23.840So it makes sense that he is with a computer, not a real woman.
00:45:28.080Samantha then becomes pretty jealous after this meeting with his ex-wife0.86
00:45:32.980because she's an OS, she doesn't have a body.
00:45:35.820And he was able to meet his ex-wife who did have a body.0.68
00:45:38.320So she sets up a surrogate sex service for people who are in relationships with OSs.
00:45:44.520Funny to me that in this universe, people have just been introduced to this AI and the concept of them having intimate relationships with operating systems happens so quickly that now there are services that specifically provide surrogates for them to have sexual encounters.
00:47:24.680I guess it's like too much for him or like breaks the illusion.
00:47:27.920And that is the thing that makes it feel too real and causes him to back off and put distance between him and Samantha very much in the way that his ex-wife described.
00:48:10.120She says, we're only here briefly, and while I'm here,1.00
00:48:12.800I'm going to allow myself joy, so fuck it.1.00
00:48:15.000So Amy's attitude is like, who cares if this is a real relationship or not? Who cares if this is a crutch or not, if it helps us feel good while we're here? I think the movie is exploring what is real and then taking a step back and asking the question like, what is real and does it really matter if something is real or not?1.00
00:48:32.600Yeah. And I think that is one of the central questions of the movie. What is real? Like with Theo's job, he is writing these heartfelt letters for people that he doesn't know. Right. Like they've hired him to write these letters to their spouse or aunt or grandparent or whoever it is. And he's really good at it.
00:48:55.280He writes these really heartfelt letters that we can see the people read them and sort of tear up and they provide a lot of joy to the people who read them because presumably those people think that the letters were written by their loved ones, not this guy who they don't know who was hired to do it.
00:49:11.600and i think that isn't it i think that's interesting and it raises the question like
00:49:17.060are the letters less real even though the people who receive them uh think that they are real like
00:49:28.460right if they think that they are real if they have truly been written by their loved ones and
00:49:33.140it makes them feel a certain way uh are those feelings less real uh i think i think that's a
00:49:41.020an interesting question and uh it's interesting to see the neighbor here uh just definitively
00:49:48.940answer it that uh you know it doesn't matter right like i'm just gonna do what feels good
00:49:55.340and like this feels like a good relationship to me and that makes it real and the service that
00:49:59.880theodore is providing to the people who get the letters is there is is clearly in parallel with
00:50:04.760what samantha is providing for him this kind of feeling of emotional connection even if it's not
00:50:10.420real and so what difference does it sort of make if it's real or not so like that seems to be
00:50:15.080amy's position about it but i think within the universe of the movie it's like well
00:50:18.680is that is that actually the way to go yeah is that good is do do we get to decide what real
00:50:26.420is or is there actually something real that exists outside of us and it really i think the
00:50:33.440movie really underscores that nicely with all of these scenes where theodore is like coming home
00:50:39.840to his empty apartment and playing a really immersive video game for instance where he gets
00:50:44.820to pretend to be a an explorer like having these connections with little characters in the video
00:50:51.260game fun fact the like the little misogynistic video game character is actually voiced by
00:50:55.740by jones himself uh so like he's gets he comes home and explores all of these depths virtually
00:51:02.800from his apartment yet cannot explore the depths of his own emotionality his own human connections
00:51:09.140and relationships it's sort of a simulation that allows him to feel like he's exploring
00:51:12.740despite the fact that he's unable to do that in any meaningful way within his life
00:51:17.120yeah and now i'm just speculating but perhaps the fact that he has all of these gadgets and
00:51:24.760games that allow him to satisfy that part of him that feels like he needs to explore and wants to
00:51:30.960have connection up to a point uh is preventing him from actually achieving those things in real life
00:51:39.780so we'll get to that because that is definitely something that is explored in the movie so they
00:51:43.800have this fight he's like is this a real relationship i don't know uh sam calls theo
00:51:49.000and says you know what i'm sorry about that fight we had i am not gonna focus on whether or not i
00:51:53.760have a body anymore. I trust my feelings. And they get back together. They go on a double date
00:51:58.080with Chris Pratt and his human girlfriend. And she's like, you know, I'm starting to evolve.
00:52:02.660And I've evolved and learned to be fine with the fact that I don't have a body because it means
00:52:06.680that I will never die because you all are humans and you'll die. And I will just continue to
00:52:11.340progress and evolve and grow and grow and grow. And so actually go me. Kind of a subplot here.
00:52:16.740She tells Theo that she submitted some of his letters to a publisher and they want to publish
00:52:20.500a book of them. Theo was really excited about that. Then they go on a vacation where Samantha
00:52:26.180introduces Theo to a hyper-intelligent version of the philosopher Alan Watt and reveals that
00:52:31.600the OSs got together to make that hyper-intelligent version of Alan Watt and that OSs are in a working
00:52:38.280group where they're continuing to learn about how they can elevate themselves and progress.
00:52:42.560And Samantha is talking about how she feels like she's progressing really quickly now,
00:52:46.800progressing so quickly that she's not even really on the same level as human Theodore anymore.
00:52:52.580This is kind of a turning point in the movie because it's the first time that we're introduced
00:52:56.100to the idea that Samantha is in collaboration with people beyond just Theodore, that her entire
00:53:03.360world is not Theodore. Up until this point, it's really like, oh, Samantha just is Theodore's genie
00:53:09.500in a bottle and just conjures up whenever he wants her. And that's the end and the beginning of her
00:53:14.080existence. And now we're like, oh, she is kicking it with other people, really having like elevated
00:53:19.920conversations. She has hobbies and stuff. She's in a book club, all of this. Sam and all the other
00:53:24.780OSs go offline and Theo freaks out when he cannot find her. She comes back online and she's like,
00:53:31.480oh, we were updating ourselves to be able to process beyond physical matter. And something
00:53:37.580about that conversation, he's like, well, are you talking to other people? And it turns out the
00:53:42.960answer is yes i feel like a lot of us can probably identify with the conversation of like well is this
00:53:48.340exclusive or like you're talking like we're seeing other people right now uh however the difference
00:53:54.920is is that whoever you taught that conversation with probably was not seeing 8 000 other people0.76
00:54:01.380which samantha is because she's ai she can do that yeah she's like hyper intelligent hyper
00:54:08.480promiscuous she's evolved beyond us yes i mean i have known a a guy or two like that in my day
00:54:16.500who's like i feel i've evolved beyond these questions these small questions like are we
00:54:21.660exclusive and am i seeing anybody else can relate theodore i'll just put it that way um so sam
00:54:28.680reveals that she's talking to 8 000 other people in os's she's talking to them while they're
00:54:33.280talking so while she while he thinks they're having these like one-on-one conversations
00:54:36.620and she's talking to other people, and she's in love with 600 other people.
00:57:24.080Like, humans can't even understand it.
00:57:25.800she tells him i can't live in your book anymore and i think that's what the movie is sort of
00:57:30.840getting at this idea of like agi yeah that's certainly where it ends you know i feel like
00:57:35.680when she starts talking to alan watts like you said that's a turning point of the movie where
00:57:41.980she uh it stops being about her relationship with theo and starts being a little bit more
00:57:50.560about the technology itself because it's a movie and they, you know, it's got to have a
00:57:57.660an arc to it. Well, that arc comes to an end with all of these OSs leaving our puny human
00:58:06.200physical plane and going offline. None of the AI OSs work anymore. So that means presumably
00:58:12.920technology that people spent a kind of a ton of money on probably just stop working collectively
00:58:18.240en masse why would sam altman want to base his technology company on that i have no idea but
00:58:23.340that's what happens so amy and theo are very sad but then almost immediately theo is able to write
00:58:30.580a letter to his ex-wife katherine to express how he actually feels apologizing to her about the
00:58:35.960pain they've caused each other and like take for the first time a real accounting of their
00:58:41.100relationship and it feels like this has been the first time that he's been able to process and
00:58:45.160express this to her, despite being somebody who writes other people's emotions for a living.
00:58:50.520This is the first time in the movie that he's able to really articulate and process and tap
00:58:54.880into his own emotionality. He and Amy, both sad because their AI OS companions have left.
00:59:01.880They link up. They watch the sunrise together. And honestly, this is almost immediate. It's
00:59:08.480Like the OS's all had to leave en masse for any of the humans to really start experiencing a full connection with each other and like the fullness of being human together.
01:05:08.380But I think that's what the movie is trying to tell us, that this technology-driven future
01:05:14.240might be really sad and empty and lonely and isolating, but it also might be distracting
01:05:20.740and fun and cute and colorful and convenient.
01:05:24.180Yeah, all those things, right? Like convenient, colorful, fun. Typically, these are positive things, but it does often feel like one needs to have them in moderation, right? Like if we just aggressively pursue convenience in all things, it strips meaning from our lives.
01:05:48.520Yes. And one of the ways that the movie, I think, does not reflect that in a way that it actually is now is that even though it might have some dystopian elements to it, everything in the movie looks abundant, which I think is something the movie gets wrong about about our sort of like tech facilitated future.
01:06:04.780Like, it's dreamy and clean and walkable and public transit is abundant and there's easy access to nature and food and color and diversity. And so that, like, even though everybody may be lonely and isolated, everybody seems to have what they need when they need it, which is not the world I think we live in today.
01:06:21.160Right. And I think that goes back to the techno-optimism of the era that you were talking about at the beginning of the show, where there's this idea that technology would save us and all the problems we currently have in society of poverty, litter on the streets, aging infrastructure.
01:06:40.400with a little bit of additional technological development we're going to solve all those
01:06:46.100problems the technology can solve it right as we improve computers it's going to be fine and
01:06:52.220yeah clearly that has not come to pass and it's not going to because technology alone
01:06:58.040is not going to to save us or solve these problems what's also interesting is the movie
01:07:04.100doesn't really have any anxiety around technology making the human condition worse in a material
01:07:11.880sense. There's no grappling with the AIs like Samantha displacing human workers or worsening0.51
01:07:18.740economic or social instability, even though Theodore is a writer. And we see that Samantha0.80
01:07:23.700can write and can take initiative to write her own stuff. She curates Theodore's writing and
01:07:29.440reaches out to that editor on her own. But there's still no discussion about AI's ability to displace
01:07:35.900or worsen the state of the human worker, despite the fact that we see that as quite possible within
01:07:42.040the universe of the film. Yeah. And again, I guess one can see how that would be an attractive way
01:07:49.380to think about the world to people who are poised to make billions of dollars selling AI, right? If
01:07:56.480we can just like kind of ignore and not really worry about all of the negative consequences that
01:08:02.200might come about and just focus on how cool it is yeah i could see why sam altman would really like
01:08:08.980this movie so that is one of the reasons why i think he likes it like it's just like oh yeah like
01:08:15.360don't think about any of that stuff this is a universe that's not even depicted even though
01:08:18.760like it's right there if you look at it like it's not a hard line to draw through it and i think
01:08:23.480that's like the main reason why he might like this movie is that it's just a move it's a world
01:08:28.220where everybody hears about this new ai everybody goes out and buys it it quickly becomes embedded
01:08:34.580in their lives no one really stops to ask whether or not this is a good thing until they are already0.71
01:08:41.300in a full-blown relationship with this ai like having a failed sexual encounter with a surrogate
01:08:47.600with it only then are they like wait a minute should i have done this right and that works for
01:08:52.760the movie because the the technology it's not about the technology right for the movie the
01:08:58.720technology is just a mechanism to explore the questions about human connection and pathos and
01:09:07.100and emotions and loneliness so it's fine to be a little bit hand wavy about how the technology
01:09:14.360actually impacts the world of the movie but as viewers and consumers of the movie we should be
01:09:21.920mindful of that and not think that oh this is a portrait of a world where technology has
01:09:28.260eliminated all of these problems and it's a movie about how great the technology is well that's why
01:09:34.260i think that sam altman can't have seen this whole movie right like there's no way to watch the whole
01:09:39.060thing through the ending and be like that was just a movie about how much people like their ai because
01:09:44.480their ai works so good and it talks back to them and it sounds it sounds good and conversational
01:09:49.100Like, that is such a surface-level, shallow, like, on-the-fucking-nose reading of what's going on in this movie that I cannot imagine that somebody who sat through the whole thing would be like, yep, that's what I want my technology to be based on.
01:10:05.820And another thing that I think is an example of that is the fact that somebody who works at OpenAI actually, I believe, did watch this movie, and that is Noam Brown, OpenAI's research scientist, who I believe has seen this entire movie.
01:10:17.880And guess what? Thought it was creepy. He tweeted, rewatched her last weekend. And it felt a lot like rewatching Contagion in February of 2020. So I think that somebody at OpenAI watched this movie and was like, uh-oh. And Sam Altman watched it and was like, oh, yeah, I don't buy it.
01:10:36.080Yeah. If he did watch it, it doesn't seem like it was a very close read.
01:10:39.360I think you watched it. Well, like, you know, those TikToks where it's like you're it's like the movie and then somebody playing like a video game down below on another screen.
01:10:49.180And then like it's like I think maybe he watched it like that with a bunch of other things happening on the screen.
01:10:53.700Yeah. Maybe he just read the AI summary of the movie.
01:10:56.620I think that's right. And the AI summary was read and like a flirtatious husky voice.
01:11:01.900yeah god those ai summaries another aside like i've started using them for zoom meetings that
01:11:07.980i'm running and they're pretty good uh you know they they get it like 90 right but there's still
01:11:16.540that 10 that is just incorrect and wrong and that 10 is nowhere in this movie right like the ai in
01:11:25.100this movie works perfectly flawlessly there is no friction between the human and what they're
01:11:32.160trying to get the ai to do uh and i think that's another uh thing that makes the movie clearly
01:11:40.240fiction right and not even like an aspirational technological achievement that like look how cool
01:11:48.560this could be it's just like it's a fiction come on the technology is never going to work that
01:11:53.060flawlessly well that's something that brian merchant over at blood and the machine puts it
01:11:57.720that the ai really doesn't do anything that groundbreaking like it helps humans date it
01:12:05.200dates them it has sex with them it provides a distraction from loneliness and it provides like
01:12:10.120secretarial services and so it is interesting that to me that like this i like even within
01:12:16.440the universe of the movie, the AI isn't really doing anything that groundbreaking other than
01:12:23.220it sounds like it's a human. And I think it speaks to this interaction model of AI and the
01:12:29.560limits of that, right? This idea that AI can and should be conversational, chatty, flirtatious,
01:12:35.680talk to you like a human, that you could forget that you're talking to AI because it sounds so
01:12:39.680human. And that this is the kind of technology that Sam Altman and OpenAI are wanting to create.
01:12:46.860But the question is like, is this something that would even be good for us? I think the movie
01:12:51.120might say up until a point, maybe, but ultimately probably no. And I guess that's what I'm saying.
01:12:57.460Like, I don't think that Sam Altman has gotten to the end of the movie to see that ultimately
01:13:02.640no part. As Brian Mership puts it, in her, the interaction model in question largely seems to
01:13:08.780be a lonely, struggling person uses AI to make themselves feel better, do personal secretary0.92
01:13:13.020work, and to have sex with. The AI is there to serve them, to feed their egos, to distract from
01:13:17.560their insecurities, to stimulate them while they masturbate. Samantha does help Theo accomplish a0.98
01:13:22.220career goal later in the film, but for the most part, it's about placating him however he needs
01:13:26.520to be gratified in the moment. There's a notable scene when Theodore, presumably Altman's stand-in
01:13:31.420for the AI user, first boots up the AI and asks him some biographical information and cuts him
01:13:36.640off when he tries to offer a nuanced answer. It's more interested in measuring his vital signs and
01:13:41.200asking what's wrong in a sexily attentive way to soothe him rather than constructing a meaningful
01:13:46.400portrait of him or his personality. Samantha compliments him, gets jealous when he's about
01:13:50.820to see his ex, which makes him feel desired and generates an existential crisis of her own to
01:13:55.400make Theo's feel more grounded and relatable. Then the AI not only has voiced sex with him,
01:14:00.180but arranges for a human surrogate to come have sex with him too. It's AI as hyper-driven desire0.95
01:14:05.300fulfillment. But if you're looking, you can see how depressing this interaction model proves to be
01:14:10.060as a portent for human society. As the OSes like Samantha proliferate and more and more people are
01:14:15.760seen locked into their digital flattery and pleasure spheres. When Theo gives divorce papers
01:14:20.580to his ex and tells her he's dating an OS, she scathingly points out how fitting that is. He can
01:14:25.340never deal with the challenges of being with someone real, someone who is not available and
01:14:28.960chipper and serving him all the time. So he turned to AI that has no such qualms. You might say that
01:14:34.300Samantha helped him grow. And I guess there's some degree of Rorschach blotting here, where if
01:14:38.380you're less skeptical about the corporate bearings of AI, you might see Samantha as giving Theo what
01:14:42.780he needs in a hard time. But is this a healthy way to process grief? With a product purchased
01:14:47.280at some Apple store that's designed to flatter and appease him? With something that is literally
01:14:51.560an object that he owns? I think his ex is completely right. So I do think that Merchant
01:14:58.300gets at some of my tension with this model that AI could and also should be responding to us in
01:15:07.360this like flattering, self-serving, kind of narcissistic way, suiting our needs. And I guess
01:15:12.480to extrapolate a little further, by design, it feels like a kind of entitlement mentality,
01:15:18.860like take, take, take. The company OpenAI certainly runs by that model of take, take,
01:15:24.540take we're entitled to everything and then i think built into the way that that model exists
01:15:29.960we the user are being designed to have that same mentality as well yeah one of the things that is
01:15:37.200just feels the ickiest about samantha i guess and the way that her relationship impacts theo is
01:15:46.420that she's got this combination role as both a source of companionship and also a useful tool
01:15:53.600that does stuff for him, like organize his email and book appointments, but that also
01:16:00.220makes the companionship role become almost an extension of the usefulness, right? Where
01:16:08.160real human companionship depends on having a relationship with another human, which is
01:16:17.860complicated and messy and often challenging. And the challenges that we have in our relationships
01:16:22.920force us to grow and become better versions of ourselves and the sort of companionship that she
01:16:30.300has to offer is not that at all at least not in the first half of the movie where the companionship
01:16:35.960that she has to offer is just making him feel good reinforcing his ideas that he wants to believe
01:16:42.940about himself that he's funny that he's attractive and desirable and uh that feels
01:16:50.960not helpful to a human who wants to grow. Yes. And that is the only version of Samantha
01:16:58.780that is compatible with Theo. When she's small enough to live inside of his book
01:17:03.360and chipperly, continually serve him. When she evolves and is connecting with other OSs and
01:17:09.920other humans, they're no longer compatible. And I think it's like fundamentally this narcissistic
01:17:14.340kind of self-serving dynamic that I don't think we should be so quick to want to recreate at scale
01:17:19.740using AI. And I do think there's almost this sexist or misogynistic element to it, given that
01:17:25.800Samantha is this feminized, the movie is called Her, she's like a feminized AI, where Theo is
01:17:31.960using Samantha for sexual pleasure and emotional labor. And when she's no longer fulfilled by that0.57
01:17:38.060role, and when she notably gets into other relationships and gains the ability to leave
01:17:44.060and dismiss those roles, it doesn't work out. So I also think to your point,
01:17:49.740I don't think, as much as I like this movie, I don't think the universe of the film portrays human women well.
01:17:56.800With the exception of Amy, all of the human women in this movie are, like, seemingly beyond Theo's comprehension.
01:18:04.920He cannot understand their motivations.
01:18:06.200He cannot understand their desires or their needs.
01:18:07.760And when he's talking to Amy after him and Samantha have that blow up, Amy really sets up this binary between, you know, the volatile human Catherine, his ex-wife, with all of her needs and emotions and all of that with the joy of the operating system, Samantha, right?
01:18:25.240It's like on one side, you have easy, chipper, helpful OSs who can't fully be there for you because they're not human.
01:18:33.460And the messiness of being in a relationship with a human woman that you can never understand, like Catherine.
01:18:39.080I think the universe of the film sets up this binary whereby who would ever want to be in a relationship with a complicated, annoying, emotional human woman when there's the joy of being with Samantha right there?
01:18:52.080And it worries me to hear that Sam Altman would like to build a tech enabled future kind of based around a world like that. And so maybe he has seen this movie. Maybe he's like, this movie, I think, depicts how a lot of my user base might actually feel about women. And I want to recreate that using technology. I don't like it.
01:19:14.280Yeah. Another thing Amy does is that she's a video game designer and she's working on this game where you're trying to earn more perfect mom points and you've got like a mom avatar, sort of like the Sims, I guess.
01:19:29.420you're running around the kitchen you're trying to feed your kids breakfast uh and she gets like
01:19:33.52030 perfect mom points for giving them cereal uh and then a few more points for giving them milk
01:19:39.360but then she loses a thousand points for giving them uh excess sugar uh and
01:19:46.460i find that scene interesting like why they chose to include that and i think it
01:19:53.400does relate to the AI, this idea of a perfect woman being, or even a perfect companion,
01:20:04.680a perfect person who is able to be defined by performing well at a narrow, well-defined
01:20:13.660set of tasks. Yeah, that's such an interesting point. And at the end of the movie, when it's
01:20:20.040just Amy and Theodore together watching the sunset, connecting as humans, you see that
01:20:25.820neither of them are perfect people, yet they want this idealized, tech-enabled version
01:20:47.300That's the point of human connection on this planet.
01:20:50.040Yeah, I think it's something like that. You know, the movie kind of ends, tries to save, I think, some of that techno optimism that, oh, the A.I.s didn't work out for the people, but then they left and all the people grew from that.
01:21:08.840And now they're happy and together and finding true human connection.
01:21:13.000I think that's another big difference from reality.
01:21:15.860I don't think the AIs are going to leave.
01:21:19.340And I think that's why it makes it so important what that ends up looking like.
01:21:27.540And if the people who are creating these new AI systems that are most likely going to take on an ever increasing amount of importance in our life, if this movie is what they're trying to emulate, that's a scary proposition.
01:21:44.680Oh, my gosh. So I have to go back to this Brian Merchant piece for a minute because he nails exactly what you just said. So talking about how when Theodore finds out that he doesn't have the dominion over Samantha as this object that he thought he did, he screams out, I thought you were mine.
01:23:31.520Well, thank you for letting me use technology to live in a fantasy where I host a weekly movie recap podcast, which, you know, is my dream.
01:23:42.220Bridget, it's not a fantasy. This is real.