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Can a Computer Fall in Love ?

posted by LaminatorX on Saturday March 01 2014, @08:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the Call-me-once-you've-quantified-'love' dept.

AnonTechie writes:

"Can a Computer Fall in Love if It Doesn't Have a Body? Much has been written about Spike Jonze's Her, the Oscar-nominated tale of love between man and operating system. It's an allegory about relationships in a digital age, a Rorschach test for technology. It's also premised on a particular vision of artificial intelligence as capable of experiencing love.

Poetic license aside, is that really possible ?"

 
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  • (Score: 1) by mechanicjay on Saturday March 01 2014, @10:22AM

    by mechanicjay (7) <{jason} {at} {smbfc.net}> on Saturday March 01 2014, @10:22AM (#9115) Homepage Journal
    I suppose with a sophisticated enough ai, anything is possible. That aside, its interesting to me how the same machine will react differently to the same inputs from different people. Sometimes we call these machines temperamental, or having character. After some time in the world, the ly develop a distinct personality, even though it was one of an identical production run. I have a car, inherited from my grandpa, which I've put something like 50k trouble free miles on. I can't let my dad use it because *every* time he drives it, it'll leave him stranded. I take cross county road trips in the thing, but it won't even carry him to the grocery store. If a purely mechanical beast can have a personal likes and dislikes, I think that a complex layer of software should be able to enhance this. Of course, is this love like a person, or loyalty like dog? Perhaps that's the real question as the former is a much more complex thing.
    --
    My VMS box beat up your Windows box.

  • (Score: 2) by SMI on Sunday March 02 2014, @05:31AM

    by SMI (333) on Sunday March 02 2014, @05:31AM (#9480)

    "Of course, is this love like a person, or loyalty like dog? Perhaps that's the real question as the former is a much more complex thing."

    I found your comment very interesting, but I have to take umbrage with those last two sentences. I think your question is far more subjective than you may realize. Don't get me wrong, while I may not agree with your opinion of dogs, I strongly believe in the individualized ability to choose for oneself, and I do agree that love is a more complex concept than loyalty. I simply refuse to take it as a fact that dogs aren't capable of love (only loyalty) and that people are somehow inherently better than other animals.

  • (Score: 1) by blackest_k on Sunday March 02 2014, @07:17AM

    by blackest_k (2045) on Sunday March 02 2014, @07:17AM (#9515)

    That can be mechanical sympathy, if your tuned into a particular vehicle you know when your pushing it hard when it sounds off. How to operate it smoothly how to brake how to change gear smoothly. Your dad probably isn't in tune with that car and doesn't know how to treat it right with his past experience there is probably going to be negativity right from opening the door.

    With computers you generally have an idea of how hard it's working you don't push so much work on to it so its running out of ram you probably killed all those extra processes that got pushed onto the system when you installed some software.

    The same spec system with someone who can barely use it will have a much worse time of it.
    It's like my internet connection very poor at handling more than one or two jobs at a time. If I was to say open 3 or 4 tabs at the same time chances are all four would fail to load if on the other hand I allow a tab to complete then load another then there isn't a problem. sometimes I need to reboot the router if I've been working it too hard.

    It might be described as personality, after all in my interactions I know the quirks and how to get the best out of a system. I guess it's a bit like driving a strange car first time you drive it, you don't know how it responds brakes are normally quite different between cars some require a long and hard push others you barely touch them and they try to face plant you on the windscreen. First time you'll be bad with a new (to you) car after a couple of drives you will have a feel for it.