FUTURISTIC APPROACHES IN ‘HER’ MOTION PICTURE. CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE CONCEPT OF POST-HUMANISM
FUTURISTIC APPROACHES IN ‘HER’ MOTION PICTURE. CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE CONCEPT OF POST-HUMANISM

Summary/Abstract: The paper seeks to explore the futuristic concepts present in the motion picture ‘her’, written and directed by Spike Jonze, released in 2013 – trans-humanism, post-humanism and the concept of consciousness in relation to Artificial Intelligence. In the first part, I will explore the movie’s premise, the director’s motivation and inspiration in creating this work; I am going to identify the film’s setting and understand why this particular setting plays such an important role for the philosophy of the movie. In the second part, I will explore the concept of consciousness and try to answer the question whether an operating system truly can possess conscience or not; I will take into account Stanislaw Lem’s writings about conscience applying them to both humans and artificial intelligence, and draw a conclusion based on the famous Turing test and the Chinese Room example. Some of the differences between humanity and post-humanity are representing the reason for the major turning point in the end of the movie, so I will emphasize these differences in the end of the second part and continue with this topic in the third part. I will explore how post-humanism and the technological singularity are notions powerfully hinted towards in the film, and will also discuss the integration of Alan Watts as a character and the reason behind this choice. In the third part I will also introduce the notion of cyborgism in order to demonstrate the evolutionary path on which humanity finds itself right now and give some real-life examples. Finally, I will take a moment to wonder about the future of humanity, while emphasizing on the importance of accepting change as a necessary step in our evolution.

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