'Many of the capabilities of Samantha, the intelligent OS in the movie, are already here'

The Academy Awards are Sunday night, and Best Picture nominee Her has some people wondering if the movie is more science fiction or reality. The story centres on a man who falls in love with an intelligent computer operating system (OS) with a female voice and personality.

While this may seem like science fiction and a long way off, the day when your computer will know you better than any human is not as far off as you may think.

Many of the capabilities of Samantha, the intelligent OS in the movie, are already here, including speech and natural language recognition, and some conversational abilities.

Much of the recent progress is due to advances in machine learning, whereby the system doesnt have to be pre-programmed for every eventuality, but learns from experience.

There are already virtual personalities such as Cleverbot that learn from their discussions with humans, with impressive results as shown by this YouTube video of two Cleverbots conversing:

Once the computer can get smarter from new information, theres nothing to stop it becoming as good as, and eventually better than, a person doing the same task.

Weve already seen it in tasks as uniquely human as grading student essays and figuring out which wine will age the best. Every day theres a new example of a task that we would have thought only a human could do, except now a machine can do it better.

So whats to stop an OS from becoming a better companion than most humans? The more it interacts with you, the more it learns about what pleases you and what doesnt, until it knows you better than you know yourself.

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The realities of artificial intelligence: Could Her actually happen?