“The world of the film Her is not as far away as you think.”
Flirting with a computer and even falling in love will be possible within just 15 years, a futurist has predicted.
The world depicted in the film Her, where a man develops a relationship with an intelligent computer operating system, is closer than we think, according to Google’s engineering director, Ray Kurzweil.
Speaking at the Exponential Finance conference in New York last week, he claimed technology will be capable of emotional interaction.
“My timeline is that computers will be at human level, such that you can have a relationship with them in 15 years from now – 2029,” he said.
“When I say about human levels, I'm talking about emotional intelligence. The ability to tell a joke, to be funny, to be romantic, to be loving, to be sexy, that is the cutting edge of human intelligence, that is not a sideshow.”
Mr Kurzweil claimed Her was a very realistic depiction of what can be achieved.
It may not be a comforting thought to people who have seen Joaquin Phoenix’s character’s soul-crushing attempt to escape his loneliness with Siri-like program voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
Credited with inventing the world’s first flat-bed scanners and text-to-speech synthesisers, Mr Kurzweil is perhaps most famous for his theory of “the singularity” – a point in the future where humans and machines will converge.
Read MoreScreenshots from the Movie "Her"
Set in the Los Angeles of the slight future, "Her" follows Theodore Twombly, a complex, soulful man who makes his living writing touching, personal letters for other people.
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Her
£7.99
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Scarlett Johansson
Her [DVD]
£5.56