The Science of Human-Robot Love

An anonymous reader writes "By harnessing a new sphere of science called 'lovotics', Hooman Samani, an artificial intelligence researcher at the Social Robotics Lab at the National University of Singapore, believes it is possible to engineer love between humans and robots. Samani's robots have artificial psychological and biological systems that mimic the human brain and endocrine systems, and use movements, sounds, and lights to show their mood and level of affection for a human."

Comments

Movements and sounds of human/machine love?

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Bzzzzzzz.....

Love?

[WrongSizeGlass]

Um, that's not called love. You can call it eccentric, kinky, quirky ... even obsessive and crazy. But love? No, that's not love.

Re:Love?

[Eponymous Hero]

Neo: I just have never...
Rama-Kandra: ...heard a program speak of love?
Neo: It's a... human emotion.
Rama-Kandra: No, it is a word. What matters is the connection the word implies.

Re:Love?

[guybrush3pwood]

'Love' is a verb, by the way, unless you're referring to a concept that embodies the actions of 'love'. 'Love' is not an emotion.

"To love" is a verb. "Love" is a noun.

Re:Love?

[NortySpock]

Um, that's not called love. You can call it eccentric, kinky, quirky ... even obsessive and crazy. But love? No, that's not love.

Who are you to determine who or what someone else falls in love with? Sure, you may not be interested, but maybe you should leave determining what feelings are to the person who is experiencing them.

What will you claim next? That homosexuals are not really in love? That their love is eccentric, kinky, quirky ... even obsessive and crazy? No? Then, by the same token, I say leave the robosexuals alone.

Oh no

[jcoy42]

Don't tell me they're bringing back the furby..

Re:Oh no

[retroworks]

"Don't tell me they're bringing back the furby.." Actually, it's the Stepford Furby.

I AM DILDOTRON

[GameboyRMH]

I AM HERE FOR THE PLEASURE EXPERIMENT MADAM. Please ignore my cardboard body, I am merely a prototype.

Robosexuality is a sin!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't date robots! http://www.hulu.com/watch/4510/futurama-anti-robot-propaganda

It's all been done.

[Divide By Zero]

http://www.dieselsweeties.com/

Only a New Generation of Neo-Pet. A Neo-Neo-Pet.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this neuro-babble? They misspelled Serotonin in the video, they mention Endorphin in that list as if it's a single compound and not an entire class of neurotransmitters, and they think that specific mixes of these chemicals can elicit exact feelings and emotions. "Well Jim, this human has a 1:3:2.8:6 ratio of Oxytocin, Dopamine, Secrotonin [sic], and Endorphin, it must clearly be Tired." I really don't expect there to be even an outline of an algorithm for a current personality based on hormone level since there haven't been concrete neuronal correlates of applying hormones to specific parts of the brain (since they're transmitted through the bloodstream and therefore are whole-body modifiers, making that stupid brain scan animation moot). Why not just call this a Furbie with a different casing? Unless they can show me the underlying algorithm of how the robot decides its emotions, then I can't put it past a simple Tomagotchi program.

How long until we prefer a machine?

[scorp1us]

Al joking aside about "robot girlfriends", an untiring, on-demand machine will become ideal. You only need to fill it with lube occasionally. It'll never object, it'll never come home drunk. It'll never interrupt your xbox time. It'll never reject you because you got fat or wrinkly. It'll make hedonists of today look silly having to deal with another human being and their schedule.

And that will be the end... when we stay home because we prefer a machine. We'll give up on loving our own kind not because it is superior, but just because it is less "work".

Re:How long until we prefer a machine?

[TigerPlish]

And that will be the end... when we stay home because we prefer a machine. We'll give up on loving our own kind not because it is superior, but just because it is less "work".

That's part of the setup of CLAMP's "Chobits" comic and anime. There was this side-story of Chi finding this series of children's books -- dealing with exactly that -- people had stopped hanging out with people, preferring the PersoCom bots.. droids.. whatever Chi and her kind are.

Re:How long until we prefer a machine?

[RsG]

Eh, depends on the person. Maybe if we're really lucky, we'll filter the most selfish and superficial humans from the gene pool within a few short generations. Let the androids and gynoids fuck em so the rest of us can get on with life.

Of course, that does bring up the interesting question of what happens when they build a droid that's fully human, mentally speaking. At that point "sexbot" becomes a degradation, since instead of making an animatronic realdoll or dildo with legs you're instead making what is essentially an unwilling slave, with all the violation of basic rights that entails. In which case, if someone does build a "robot girlfriend" with the capacity to leave and be her own person (i.e. not a slave), does there still exist a difference between robot and human relationships?

Re:How long until we prefer a machine?

[DemonGenius]

I honestly think if something like this becomes mainstream for too long, we will have trained all the empathy out of ourselves. If our primary emotional interaction unconditionally obeys our every whim, it is inevitable that we will expect the same from our flesh and bone counterparts. Since it will be easier to love a machine than a human being, it is not absurd to assume that we may value human life less. The fact that we are exploring human-robot love is a symptom of a much larger problem in that human empathy is decreasing all around. We can see it everywhere nowadays, all we have to do is compare current society to the same 30 years ago, but from a more local POV.

I think more studies should be put into figuring out who we all are as individuals, what types of people exist from a psychological stand point (e.g. introverts vs extroverts, highly sensitive vs low empathetic persons, sane vs insane), how all these different types of people can interact in a more efficient manner, and how to best match people in different settings to reduce unrest. We also need to get rid of ridiculously fabricated categorizations of people (e.g. race, royalty, etc) since the prevalence of psychological traits have similar distribution in most of these situations.

The end result

[Bob the Super Hamste]

We all know what the end result of this will be:
Obligatory XKCD

Re:Cherry 2000

[black soap]

We don't want love robots, we want lust robots. Love is what we have time to work on, when our lust is sated.

My cat...

[fyngyrz]

...has been able to demonstrate engineering human -> non-human love since, oh lemme see, maybe the first 30 seconds I met her.

Of course humans will love robots that treat them accordingly while enhancing their quality of life. We've already seen outliers in love with their RealDolls; there, most of the interaction is being provided by the human, but mark my words, the net result will be the same.

When they finally manage to build a nominally acceptable sexbot, you'll see this all over -- because said sexbot will have to have those characteristics anyway.

It would probably take longer if people were nicer to one another and the whole population had access to a reasonable amount of affection and physical contact... because there'd be more competition for them; but you know what? People are really not very kind overall, and our laws, particularly WRT sex workers, are still pretty much in the dark ages.