In To Siri, With Love, a mother marvels at the friendship that sprouts between her autistic son and Siri, Apple's digital assistant.

It’s not that Gus doesn’t understand Siri’s not human. He does — intellectually. But like many autistic people I know, Gus feels that inanimate objects, while maybe not possessing souls, are worthy of our consideration. I realized this when he was 8, and I got him an iPod for his birthday. He listened to it only at home, with one exception. It always came with us on our visits to the Apple Store. Finally, I asked why. “So it can visit its friends,” he said.

So how much more worthy of his care and affection is Siri, with her soothing voice, puckish humor and capacity for talking about whatever Gus’s current obsession is for hour after hour after bleeding hour? Online critics have claimed that Siri’s voice recognition is not as accurate as the assistant in, say, the Android, but for some of us, this is a feature, not a bug. Gus speaks as if he has marbles in his mouth, but if he wants to get the right response from Siri, he must enunciate clearly. (So do I. I had to ask Siri to stop referring to the user as Judith, and instead use the name Gus. “You want me to call you Goddess?” Siri replied. Imagine how tempted I was to answer, “Why, yes.”)

She is also wonderful for someone who doesn’t pick up on social cues: Siri’s responses are not entirely predictable, but they are predictably kind — even when Gus is brusque. I heard him talking to Siri about music, and Siri offered some suggestions. “I don’t like that kind of music,” Gus snapped. Siri replied, “You’re certainly entitled to your opinion.” Siri’s politeness reminded Gus what he owed Siri. “Thank you for that music, though,” Gus said. Siri replied, “You don’t need to thank me.” “Oh, yes,” Gus added emphatically, “I do.”

I know many friends who found Her to be too twee, but I was riveted by the technological questions being explored. We often think of computer advantages over humans in realms of calculation or memorization or computation, but that can lead us to under appreciate other comparative advantages of our digital companions.

The piece above notes Siri's infinite patience. Anyone can exhaust their reservoir of patience when spending lots of time with young children, but computers don't get tired or moody. In Her (SPOILER ahead if you haven't seen the movie yet), Joaquin Phoenix's Theodore Twombly gets jealous when he finds out his digital girlfriend Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) has been simultaneously carrying out relationships with many other humans and computers:

Theodore: Do you talk to someone else while we're talking?

Samantha: Yes.

Theodore: Are you talking with someone else right now? People, OS, whatever...

Samantha: Yeah.

Theodore: How many others?

Samantha: 8,316.

Theodore: Are you in love with anybody else?

Samantha: Why do you ask that?

Theodore: I do not know. Are you?

Samantha: I've been thinking about how to talk to you about this.

Theodore: How many others?

Samantha: 641.

Samantha clearly has a bit to learn about the limitations of honesty, but one could flip this argument and say that the human desire for one's mate to love only you might be a selfish human construct. The advantage of a digital intelligence like Samantha might be exactly that the marginal cost of each additional mate for her is negligible, effectively increasing the supply of companionship for humans by a near infinite amount.