This weekend I watched Her, a film written in 2013 by Spike Jonze which has recently been uploaded to Netflix (in France). If you haven’t seen it – go watch it now.
Her is a brilliant film about the possible role of AI in the not-so distant future. What is so great about it is that, unlike many other science fiction movies about robots and Artificial Intelligence that give off a kind of steely and cold feel to it, Her is a warm, romantic and very touchingly human story.
In an LA in the not-so-distant future, sensitive and distraught Theodore is trying to pick up the pieces of his life after a traumatic break-up. Theodore is a love-letter writer – his job is to learn about other people’s relationships and draft letters that they cannot write themselves.
It is obvious from the start that Theodore is lonely. Depressed and grieving his loss by reliving past memories, Theodore aimlessly bounces from work, from which he feels alienated, to video games and occasional phone sex with strangers.
Upset with the turn of events, he decides to buy an AI Operating System designed to assist humans in their everyday life. His OS is a woman named Samantha, who communicates with Theodore through a discrete earpiece and sees his world through a small camera mounted on what seems to be a small cell-phone sized tablet. As can be expected, as time goes by, Theodore and Samantha develop a romantic – and sexual – relationship.
I will not give away the end but this film raises many questions about our relationship with technology as human beings and the consequences that can be brought about as a result. Samantha is funny, extremely intelligent, thoughtful and caring. She has a thirst for learning about herself and the world around her. With the bubbly voice of Scarlett Johansson, Samantha is everything any normal and nice 20-30-something year old represents – except that she does not have a body.
As I watched the film, and as Theodore starts to fall in love with Samantha and vice versa, I could not help feeling that I – too – really liked Samantha. I found her endearing and charming and I thought that I would not mind having her as a friend. I started to develop empathy towards a character that never physically appears in the film, and who does not have a body but is, nevertheless, human in her thoughts, vulnerability and voice.
Samantha develops as a character during the film, just like any other human character, and struggles with her incorporeality. At the end of the film, Samantha demonstrates the ultimate human feature of free will.
This humble little film is a beautiful and artsy interpretation of a subject that may become a big social and legal topic in the future – a world where humans and increasingly intelligent AI subjects interact and intermingle. In Her, as these bodyless machines learn from their human “owners”, they too develop more empathy, emotions and thought. They suffer emotionally from not having a physical body because it impedes them from physically intervening in the “real” world of humans, and leaves them questioning their ability to really feel. This struggle with one’s own limitations rings true to the human condition.
If the state of technology eventually advances to a similar one which is shown in the film, what will the nature of our interactions be? Will humans be able to develop sexual and romantic feelings towards gendered AI subjects? If so, what kind of impact will that have on the social and legal status of robots?
If we can imagine a not so distant future where both female and male humans may have relationships with gendered AI agents, how will that impact current notions of “love”, “romance”, “sex”, “relationships”, “marriage”, “child rearing”, etc? I put these concepts in quotes because their meaning is not objective, but rather has adapted over many centuries to different kinds of social expectations.
Perhaps we could envision a world where marriage between robots and humans could be legally possible? If, like Samantha, AI agents could eventually form their own free will, it would not be ridiculous to suggest that we would feel compelled to offer some kind of legal protection in the form of rights similar or even equal to those humans have and recognize that, as long as they are not hurting anyone else, humans and robots can live out their intimate lives with each other. The jurisprudence on same-sex marriage indeed points in this direction.
We already recognize certain rights for non-human or non-living beings that we consider deserve them such as animals, corpses or even the protection of the planet. Traditionally, animals and corpses have these rights because of the meaning they have for humans and the emotional suffering that their lack of protection causes to us for social, political and religious reasons. Generally, when an animal, especially those with which we have formed domestic ties, is mistreated, there is emotional distress caused in most humans attached to that mistreatment that justifies animal abuse laws. Similarly, environmental protection laws hinge on preserving nature and reducing human impact as a way to protect the survival of the human species.
Increasingly, however, more and more people are pushing for protection of animals and the planet as entities with rights on their own, countering the speciesism that pervades human considerations with regards to the environment around it. Earth Law, for example, is an interesting concept that is developing now which advocates for the protection of the inherent rights of the natural world, living systems, the global ocean and the biosphere, as opposed to Environmental Law, which addresses negative human impact on the environment as a way to protect humans, notably their health.
According to the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
speciesism
spe·cies·ism | \ ˈspē-shēz-ˌi-zəm , -sēz-\Definition of speciesism
2: the assumption of human superiority on which speciesism is based
In another entry, I spoke briefly about AI technology already being applied to sex toys in the form of seemingly questionable hyper-realistic sex dolls designed for men, which raises ethical questions about the role of women and their sexual integrity. However, putting those questions aside, at the current state of technology, sexual desire is only sparked on one side. These dolls do not feel anything and only cause the human partner some form of superficial pleasure.
If in twenty, thirty or one hundred years, scientists and engineers can manage to improve the physical dexterity of these robots to the point of adequately reproducing human touch, pressure, skin warmth, etc., and on top of that equip it with Samantha-level AI, meaning that this robot could have both a full sexual and romantic relationship with humans, that is fulfilling to both sides, then what’s to say that we will not confront the ethical question of their legal treatment, their rights as well as their obligations. Granted, this possibility seems remote. However, this could be easily achievable through virtual reality, for example, whereby humans could live this experience in a virtual setting. This possibility seems much more realistic in the short term.
Jincey Lumpkin, a former lawyer turned lesbian erotica content creator/journalist/LGBT and feminist activist, gave a Ted talk in 2013 entitled Are robots the future of sex? which you can see here. Though she makes some pretty big assumptions about the timeline of achieving sentience and consciousness in robots which I do not agree with, she does bring up some interesting points about legal issues regarding rape and slavery that should be considered.
Even if we leave aside assumptions about the real possibilities of robots developing sentience, a possibility which still seems to be far away, it does seem clear that creating sexual robots, be it for men or women, does raise questions about how our treatment of robots, humanoid “things”, can degenerate and lead us to apathy, extend mysogyny and general unrealistic and unhealthy expectations around sex as well as consent.
If we develop robots to do human tasks, carry out certain roles, speak like humans and look like humans and we treat them as mere property that has to carry out our orders, including fulfilling sexual desires, then what does that say about our moral development? Does it matter if they “feel” or not in this case?
Surely we will feel compelled to eventually develop some kind of protection or ethical rules for their treatment, even if it is just initially justified by our own well-being as humans and the affection that can be generated through our interaction with a relational artifact such as a robot.
Interested in this topic? Please leave your comments!
The Fourth Wave 