{"id":43480,"date":"2016-02-10T07:00:16","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uncommongoods.pro\/?p=43480"},"modified":"2016-02-01T17:29:59","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T22:29:59","slug":"uncommon-knowledge-can-machines-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/2016\/uncommon-knowledge-can-machines-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncommon Knowledge: Can Machines Love?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/product\/lil-mib-message-in-a-box?source=blog_uk021016\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-43488 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/uk_26109.jpg\" alt=\"Lil' Mib (Message in a Box) | UncommonGoods\" width=\"620\" height=\"620\" \/><\/a>The question of whether robots and computers can love is at least as complex as defining love itself; poets and greeting card writers have been grappling with that one for ages. The question of digital love hinges on the effectiveness of artificial intelligence (A.I.) and the ability of A.I. to give rise to emotions. In the course of predicting true A.I. in the early 1950s, computer scientist Alan Turing developed the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.turing.org.uk\/scrapbook\/test.html\"><span class=\"s2\">Turing Test,<\/span><\/a> a tool to assess whether a machine\u2019s intelligence is indistinguishable from a human being\u2019s. A.I.s have come a long way since, making Turing\u2019s test a blunt instrument, but not settling issues of whether they can <em>feel.<\/em> But if Hollywood is any indication, we can be sure of this at least: humans can love machines\u2014sometimes tragically. In the Sci-Fi classic <a href=\"http:\/\/www.warnerbros.com\/blade-runner\"><span class=\"s2\"><em>Blade Runner<\/em><\/span><\/a>, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) falls for the Replicant <em>femme fatale<\/em> Rachel (Sean Young), challenging his sworn duty to \u201cretire\u201d Replicants who try to pass for human. More recently, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.herthemovie.com\/#\/home\"><span class=\"s2\"><em>Her<\/em> <\/span><\/a> has Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) becoming enamored of his sophisticated new OS, Samantha (seductively voiced by Scarlett Johanssen). Their affair is all the more surreal for the fact that \u201cSamantha\u201d is a disembodied A.I. with no physical form. Hollywood continues to be infatuated with the question of A.I. love, offering dark cautionary tales like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.herthemovie.com\/#\/home\"><span class=\"s2\"><em>Ex Machina<\/em> <\/span><\/a>(2015). We may be fated to fall in love with the computers that we interact with every day, but can they love us back? I tried this simple experiment: I asked Siri on my iPhone \u201cdo you love me?\u201d With analytic coolness and a dash of irony, she replied, \u201cyou\u2019re looking for love in all the wrong places.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><a title=\"Lil' Mib (Message in a Box) | UncommonGoods\" href=\"http:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/product\/lil-mib-message-in-a-box?source=blog_uk021016\" target=\"_blank\">Lil&#8217; Mib (Message in a Box)<\/a> | $66<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe money can&#8217;t buy you love, but it could buy you an intelligent supercomputer, which may learn to love you&#8230;but then again you could just get a dog. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":43491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1208],"tags":[1326,205,813],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43480"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43480"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43629,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43480\/revisions\/43629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}