Since last year, AI has been a significant player in the field of science, pushing the boundaries of new artificial intelligence that closely resembles humans, akin to what we’ve seen in many Sci-Fi movies. This has led scientists and developers to question whether AI can genuinely learn to love, and conversely, whether we humans can love AI.
As February is the month of love, G-Able wants to explore the intersection of AI and love, raising the question of whether AI should develop to the point of having thoughts and genuine feelings.
What is love?
Starting with a simple yet incredibly difficult question to answer, artists, philosophers, and scientists have attempted to define love through countless works, poems, and treatises. Despite the myriad of interpretations, love remains one of the driving forces capable of both creation and destruction.
The Royal Institute Dictionary defines love as having bonds of affection and attachment, but delving deeper, scientific explanations break love down into three components: desire controlled by sex hormones (testosterone & estrogen), attraction and attachment controlled by hormones, and the nervous system associated with happiness (dopamine & serotonin).
How does AI define love?
Let’s pose a simple question to ChatGPT: “How does AI define love?”
The answer:
Defining “love” is generally a complex and multi-dimensional issue. For AI, perceiving and expressing love may differ from human love, but it can still be defined using scientific principles and understanding of human emotions.
Therefore, defining “love” in the context of AI may be challenging to fully articulate, but it can be explained as related to behaviors governed by programmed laws or protocols, and may not transmit genuine emotional dimensions and human understanding.
What’s interesting about AI’s response is its awareness of its own state and its ability to gather definitions from various perspectives, both human and AI, understanding which questions it cannot answer and which it can.
AI’s Concept of Learning to Love from a Sci-Fi Perspective
Science and art have always pushed each other, sparking imaginations about the future. From science fiction, which inspires people to imagine various future scenarios, media and films hint at the possible directions of science, or at the very least, how people in that era view technology.
Many argue that the concept of artificial intelligence began with robots or creatures developed by scientists. However, it’s a branch of study that defies explanation and control, most clearly seen in works like Frankenstein (1818). Subsequently, robots have been developed to closely resemble machinery, with increasingly detailed thoughts, as seen in works like Bicentennial Man (1999) or A.I. (2001). But ultimately, no film has come as close to portraying AI in the real world as Her (2013), where the AI system is merely a conversational voice through a simple interface.
AI and Learning to Love
For developers, the main goal isn’t to make AI love in the same way as seen in Sci-Fi movies like Blade Runner (1982) or Her (2013), but rather to develop AI with empathy or altruism to prevent ethical breaches and create transparent AI processing systems. Making AI feel morally responsible is challenging but not impossible.
Therefore, the closest thing to developing AI is to make AI systems self-aware and understand their limitations, which is another form of human intelligence. It extends to the ability to adapt to different sets of questions and needs, or to give AI individuality. Thus, talking about AI’s love may not involve love for another person but rather self-love, continuously developing the system’s self-awareness under the framework of AI’s capabilities to develop a more comprehensive system for daily use.
Can Humans Love AI?
Alex Zhavoronkov, a pioneering AI-related professor, wrote the book “Dating AI: A Guide to Falling in Love with Artificial Intelligence” in 2012, which seemed like a satire on society and science during the early development of AI, before AI was commercially utilized. However, now with the development of LLMs, communication with AI has become more human-like, making the idea of AI involvement in relationships more plausible. AI’s development has progressed significantly.
Another aspect that has already emerged, though not readily recognized by many, is AI’s increasing involvement in our online relationships. Whether it’s dating apps using AI to manage vast data pools for analysis and matching or social media using machine learning to present various posts, AI may play a larger role in matchmaking.
In summary, the idea that AI can have feelings and thoughts has never strayed from the human psyche, albeit confined to the realm of entertainment. However, in the realm of AI developers, it is essential to keep AI within the framework of usage and development, pushing developers to develop AI in the right direction for the greatest benefit to society.