Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly smarter and useful but is it capable of replicating the complex feeling of love?
Art by Amara Ramdhanny
The pandemic has generated some of the loneliest times people will ever experience. How social gatherings, maintaining friendships, and dating operate have been altered to curb the spread of COVID-19. The intimacy once felt with friends or even being in the presence of strangers is abated now by shelter-ins, quarantines, and developing health guidelines as we face an ongoing health crisis. As a result, Americans with access to devices are spending more time glued to screens for work, school, entertainment, and developing relationships. At the beginning of the pandemic, there was an 18% rise in device and data usage in the U.S. and as more aspects of our lives become digitized, the rate is steadily increasing. What does this imply for the maintenance of our relationships and social life?
Two days before Valentine’s Day, Buzzfeed tweeted their latest quiz “Create Your Perfect Boyfriend (or Girlfriend) Using AI Technology”, a recluse for those who are “sick of dating annoying, needy humans.” The quiz prompts users to answer a few questions about one’s sexuality and the boundaries of the relationship they wish to pursue. A few minutes later, the user receives a specially generated partner, accompanied by a mash-up of ubiquitous faces and a randomized name, age, and location. The profile of the digital match is based on cliches sourced from data collected from dating apps and websites, as well as social media.
Source/Buzzfeed
Though simply for entertainment, the quiz demonstrates the growing possibility for AI to simulate romance. But, are people turning to online substitutes and AI replacements for intimacy and love? The connection between technology and growing interconnectedness is not new. With innovation, people have become increasingly reliant on dating and social media apps for building connections, romantic or platonic. Additionally, AI has increasing prominence in the lives of those who have access to such technologies. At times, devices can be extensions of human beings, and AI, which powers them, is becoming more capable of predicting our behaviors through training and analyzing patterns. Software tools such as Alexa and Siri, which function as assistants, are examples of AI integration. The functions of voice recognition and language processing help this software replicate various interactions experienced by humans: asking and answering questions, calculating problems.
However, the pursuit of making the AI in our lives have something similar to consciousness, and the ability to replicate feeling is expanding and controversially so. Research projects such as Loving AI are working towards creating a digital consciousness based on principles in neuroscience and cognition. Originally the project was led by Lia Inc., Hanson AI, the AI developer company behind the creation of Sophia the Robot, “a human-like social robot” and SingularityNet, an AI marketplace. In an interview for Integral Life, a digital media publication and community, Julia Mossbridge, M.A., Ph.D., team lead for the Loving AI Project explained “Building an artificial general AI is more like trying to create a whole human, someone that can learn how to do a new task”, like understanding and reciprocating emotion.
It is difficult for AI to reciprocate the complexity of love. It is also hard to dissect reciprocity of love from actual consciousness, instead of pre-programmed responses to affection. On the technological side, there is a distance between general AI and what is referred to as neuro-AI, which uses aspects of neuroscience to develop artificial systems. The Loving Project has used Hanson AI’s Sophia the Robot to communicate emotional dialogue, demonstrating the progress of AI studies and its possible incorporation into neuro AI used in systems such as self driving cars and fraud detection. Not all human specialization and characteristics can be reproduced by AGI.
Despite this progress, we are not at the point where social humanoid robots will take over human social interactions. Social interaction between humans is essential for physical and emotional health, and we have found ways to preserve the sense of community despite the pandemic.
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Jillian is an Arts and Culture writer for Pinnacle Magazine from New York. Apart from writing for her college newspaper, she is passionate about reading, the arts and music.
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