2 MIN READ
You have reached the point of asking artificial intelligence even how to write an email. The reminder comes from Jenna Ortega, guest of the Rome Film Festival with Klara and the Sun, directed by Taika Waititi and based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro.
In the film, Josie is a sick girl. To keep her company, Klara is purchased, an android able to observe human behavior and learn from the people she meets. It is striking to think how much we are willing to invest to build machines capable of listening to us, while finding someone who truly has the time to do so becomes harder and harder.
In Rome, Ortega also spoke about a discomfort her generation knows well. Anxiety in personal relationships, the ease with which people take refuge in digital communication, the difficulty of sustaining an encounter without the protection of a screen. She is 24 and knows from the inside a world in which public image passes continuously through social media.
There is a cinematic precedent worth remembering: Her, directed by Spike Jonze in 2013. Joaquin Phoenix plays a man who falls in love with Samantha, the voice of an operating system. At the time the idea seemed rather distant. Today there are applications that simulate friendships and romantic relationships. The comparison with that film has become inevitable.
Personally, I consider artificial intelligence a good assistant. It can be valuable in searching for documents, consulting archives, organizing work and managing communications. But I would never entrust to it, without precise direction and careful control, the construction of an article, a contract or a creative project. These systems can make mistakes, invent information and present it with a confidence that is often misleading. Responsibility and choices must remain with those who use them.
It is precisely this distinction that I find, in another form, in the concerns expressed by Jenna Ortega. The risk arises when convenience takes the place of personal initiative and we begin to entrust to technology even the way we communicate our feelings.
I do not believe machines can replace the complexity of human relationships. But I fear that someone, growing used to an always-available, predictable and seemingly understanding companion, may end up preferring it to the effort of dealing with a real person.
