Designing the future based on a feeling: To develop the film’s AI entity, Jonze says that he and his team strove less for “scientific” authenticity and focused instead on what worked for the film’s relationship and for what they would want to see in the technology.

The process did start with research. Jonze mentions reading some of the leading thinkers on the evolution of computer consciousness — Kurzweil among them — and watching things like TED talks on brain mapping and engineering. […]