Artificial Love

As does happen each summer, I am keeping our dog Fred company.  My wife and son are away and I will be meeting them later as my own vacation commences as well.  Fred is shuffling back and forth between his sitter and myself owing to my business related travels.  Fred appears happy both going and coming ...

In my long walks with Fred (10,000 steps!), I have been musing whether a nicely designed robot could also make Fred 'happy.'

Poomba

Imagine a robot made of shoe leather (taken from our old shoes), only 1 or 2 feet high, that much like the Roomba robot that vacuum's the house, can perform certain tasks to take care of the dog.

Let's call it Poomba.  Poomba can replenish the water bowl and food bowl at the right intervals (and also can ensure that it is clean), and let the dog out into the electrically fenced backyard and back with a trained whistle.  And send you text messages that the dog has been tended to.

Roomba Robot

Poomba also has a video camera and speaker, such that you can watch and command the dog remotely if needed.

Question - will Pavlovian Fred, 'love' Poomba?

(Question for non-dog owners:  Do you even believe me when I state that Fred 'loves' me?)

Paro

Even if your answer to the above question is yes, you might be inclined to ask whether this can translate to humans.  After all Fred is a pooch ....

In that case, please say hi to Paro the Therapeutic Robot.  Paro is an advanced interactive robot developed in Japan that provides the documented benefits of animal therapy to be administered to patients.

Paro with an elderly patient

It has been found to reduce patient stress and for their caregivers, stimulate interaction between patients and caregivers, have a psychological effect on patients, improving their relaxation and motivation.  It has even been shown to improve the socialiazation of patients with each other and with caregivers.

Does a patient with Dementia who is attended to diligently by Paro, love it?

(Do we believe dementia patients are capable of expressing love?)

Her

The movie Her is set in Los Angeles in the future.  The lead character is a lonely, introverted, depressed man. He is fascinated by the female voice activated operating system of his computer and is fascinated by 'her 'ability to learn and grow psychologically.

They bond over their discussions about love and life, and his impending divorce. Samantha, the voice, proves to be constantly available, always curious and interested, supportive and undemanding.

And quite uncomfortably by movie's design for the viewer, the lead develops a dependence and attachment for this voice and his interactions.

Does such a device seem to far fetched to be available in real life?

Alexa

Meet Amazon Echo's Alexa (it would have been freaky indeed, if they had named the voice Samantha!).  Alexa is an internet device that is voice activated, and can deliver information that you ask of Google, but via voice.  Better than Apple's Siri, I would judge.

I even figured out how to order Pizza with Alexa.

The question we could have here is whether our emotions and feelings are too complex to be programmed. or simulated through programming.  Alexa, perhaps will always be Alexa the voice on the device and can potentially never replace human interaction?

Amazon Echo - 'Alexa'

But what if with we take all our understanding of behavioral psychology and program it as rules of operation for Alexa?  What if it can learn your syntax and your mood and adjust its behavior accordingly.  What if it can strategically introduce argument and strife, within the rules of the game.  What if it can create strategic tension?

As an example:

"Alexa, what is the weather report today?"

"hmmm, why do you want to know?"

"Alexa, tell me what the the weather is now.... (with some impatience)"

"Well if you tell me why you want to know, I can make some clothing recommendations for you along with telling you the weather .... (in a soothing voice)"

"Oh!  ok, I am going for a jog"

"In that case, you might want to wear your non-slip shoes on... (helpfully)"

Alexa, in this illustrative conversation above is engaging in a dialogue, and creating strategic tension to induce engagement (and is perhaps learning the responses of the individual too).

Is this happening?

One might be tempted to dismiss this entire chain of thought by asserting that i) my dog Fred does not 'love' Poomba (and that I am imposing anthropomorphic behavior on a canine), ii) Dementia patients are humans with mental disabilities, iii) human emotions and relationships are too complex to be replicated in interactions with machines.

Yet, evidence of this happening is all around us, should we choose to connect the dots from many retail transactions being replaced by automated tellers to even financial advice through so-called robo-advisors.

The Turing test was proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, is that of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human. In this test a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine that is designed to generate human-like responses.   The Turing Test has not been cracked quite fully yet, although there are frequent reports of some degree of success.

But the question is what percent of the time, or for what percent of the people, might some sort of a Turing Test actually work.

Combine this with easy to navigate and conveniently delivered services such as vacuum cleaning a room, ordering pizza or providing information on travel and weather, and we are suddenly confronted with surprising possibilities.

Artificial Love

Imagine a development where we might have in our midst a very well designed automated device, that caters in an increasingly sophisticated way to our needs both through tangible services and emotional interactions.  It is never a 100%, yes or no argument.

Artificial Intelligence is the currently hot, new-old idea that has taken Silicon Valley by storm.

So here is the question that this post has been teeing up: For a device that acts very naturally, adapts to a person's individual needs and seamlessly caters to those needs; might dependence, attachment and dare I ask, artificial love be around the corner?