A lonely man living in Los Angeles is getting divorced from his wife. He downloads an AI assistant with a woman's voice to keep him company. Though it is just a computer, he names his assistant Samantha and begins to fall in love with her.

This was the plot of the 2013 science fiction film Her. Samantha was played by the American actress Scarlett Johansson. Just over a decade later, a similar chatbot has been created by OpenAI, and the voice is very familiar...

Nine months ago, Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, contacted Johansson and asked to sample her voice for his new chatbot. The film star turned down his request, but the company still launched their AI assistant. One of the speech options was called Sky, with a voice that sounded just like Johansson.

In response, the actress wrote a letter saying that she was "shocked, angered and in disbelief". Once this letter was released, OpenAI deactivated Sky.¹

The company claims it was an innocent mistake. However, this came soon after two senior employees left OpenAI with serious safety concerns. They warned that Sam Altman was more interested in profit than the negative impact his technology might have on society.²

For supporters of AI, these fears are misplaced. They believe that the technology will make more things possible than ever before. Humans will be more productive, more creative and have more free time.

According to one study, AI can increase productivity by making workers better at their jobs. Cliff Jurkiewicz, a senior employee at a recruitment company, claims that generative AI "enables humans to do things faster and often better".³

However, critics argue that AI is already replacing jobs and industries, and will soon replace basic human tasks. For instance, Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of the popular dating app Bumble, recently claimed that AI could date people, or AI versions of people, on your behalf.⁴

In this vision of the future, our most fundamental activities - romance, friendship, socialising - will take place via computers. But, rather than gaining more freedom, we might end up becoming trapped by the technology. As the American writer Tyler Austin Harper warns: these technologies "don't expand our mind's capacity to think, but outsource it."⁵

Whether people like it or not, AI is here to stay. Already, 70% of Generation Z use this technology in their daily lives. What's more, 58% of men and 80% of women work in fields deemed to be vulnerable to AI. Many people predict that 90% of online content will be generated by AI come the end of the year.⁶

However, as the Scarlett Johansson story suggests, AI companies are more concerned with making money than protecting our privacy. And, because the technology is so new, it is not clear that the legal system will keep people safe.

The film Her has a message. Making connections with other humans is harder than interacting with a computer, but it is also more meaningful. Hopefully we can learn this message before it is too late.

Is technology making us less human?

Yes: Once AI is more intelligent than the general population, people will begin relying on it for everyday tasks. Work, social life, romance - soon everything that makes us human will happen via a computer.

No: AI is meant to assist human activity, not replace it completely. Although this might cause disruption at first, the technology will soon allow people to live busier, happier and fuller lives.

Or... Even if using technology can make our lives easier, we might lose more than we gain by relying on computers. After all, the hardest things in life can also be the most rewarding.