Functionalism Exposed In The Movie 'Her'

The movie Her takes place in a futuristic Los Angeles utopia. During that time, technology has advanced immensely and people have lost their way to be socially active with other human beings. People during that time are more involved with computerized devises like never been before. It has gotten to a point where the natural state of physical conversations has become taboo for the human race. In the movie Her, we have a character that goes by the name Theodore. He is a perfect example of how people have become socially awkward over time. In Theodore’s case, he recently had a really tough split with his childhood sweetheart and has delayed to file the divorce papers since he does not want to move on with his life. After not having any conversations

with anyone else other than his two friends, he decides to buy an artificial intelligence Operating System. When he first turns on his OS, he begins by asking if the OS had a name, it turns out that the OS had decided to name herself Samantha, simply because it sounds nice. After a few weeks Theodore and Samantha have grown an intimate relationship with each other. The way Samantha works is not like any other computer. Samantha evolves every single second that passes by, due to having the limitless capability of reading as many books as she desires and by learning through the responses that Theodore makes with each question Samantha makes. She is discovering what the world is and how it functions. Samantha builds up on her character syntactically, whenever Theodore says or asks her something, she learns on how to respond by how Theodore has previously expressed and responded to specific questions. This is a very different and advanced technology. The way that OS’s are capable of formulating a response to a human’s question by how they express themselves and their reaction to the OS’s response, has never been seen before.
Samantha can be depicted as a new race, a new breed of computers.

Although she still has the same capabilities as a regular computerized system, because she a specific output for an input, she knows what she is. Samantha understands that she is a computer and does not attempt to deny it. This character relates back to functionalism learned in Chapter 4. Due to Samantha’s capability to carry out computations similar like the way a human can, shows how Samantha follows strict rules programed by her creators. What makes Samantha unique is the great magnitude of possible responses she has to one single human statement. This form of technology can be found today. Many smart phones have AI technology. The operating system on our phones is highly developed, but not as developed as Samantha. The operating system on smart phones are meant to register what we say or ask, formulate a proper response, and respond to the most similar way a human would respond to a human. For example, if you were to ask your smart phone to call your best friend, it would immediately go into your contact list, find the contact that goes by the name “best friend,” and begins to call that person. What makes a program like Samantha unique is the fact that Samantha believes she is conscious. Consciousness is only particularly found in biological organisms. Thus, the fact that Samantha has a conscious is merely impossible since consciousness cannot be programed anywhere due to being something we cannot detect

ourselves.
I found the movie to be very interesting when you look at it in a philosophical way, stirring up many questions all throughout the movie. What I found fascinating about the movie was that time and place setting. The movie undoubtedly depicts how the future might be like. The movie also did a great job in making almost all of the character’s situations throughout the movie very realistic and even relatable. I believe that Samantha could not possibly be able to be created in the near future due to not having found any possible way to transfer a consciousness to a computer system. Though, I do believe in the possibility of creating an operating system such as Samantha but not any time soon. This is due to the speed of technology advancing every year that goes by. We cannot stop the progress and evolution of technology; this is why I believe in the possibility of an operating system such as Samantha’s to be created eventually but not in the near future.