AnonTechie writes:
"Can a Computer Fall in Love if It Doesn't Have a Body? Much has been written about Spike Jonze's Her, the Oscar-nominated tale of love between man and operating system. It's an allegory about relationships in a digital age, a Rorschach test for technology. It's also premised on a particular vision of artificial intelligence as capable of experiencing love.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday March 01 2014, @02:08PM
"Idoru" is Japanese for "Idol Singer", that is, a singer who might have some technical ability but maybe no real talent, who is backed by the entertainment companies just to make a buck - or rather a Yen - off the young people.
I understand that The Monkees were that way back in the sixties.
So in Gibson's book, they come up with an artificially-intelligent Idoru who has no physical body but who is a holographic projection.
The lead character is a teenage girl who is a member of a fan club for some American male singer. They grow concerned when this guy falls in love with the Idoru. He travels to Japan to court her. His American fans grow concerned that his sanity is at risk.
My favorite scene in the book is when this teenage girl and her Japanese friend need to get online, but in a clandestine way, so they rent a very expensive room at a fastidiously discreet "Love Motel". But then her friend realizes that someone is tracing down their location. It turns out that the teenage girl charged a bottle of water from the room refrigerator to her credit card.
Fast forward to today, and I don't use grocery store loyalty cards anymore, even though they would save me a lot of money on my groceries.
When I first read of Edward Snowden, he was holed up in a fancy hotel - was it hong kong? - charging room service to his credit card while trying to hide from the NSA. What a damn fool, it was probably a clandestine agent delivering his morning coffee.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday March 01 2014, @02:35PM
In a Soylentnews discussion of computers falling in love, I discuss a novel about a human who falls in love with an artificial intelligence.
I am further stymied as to how so many - what shall we call each other? Soylentbots just doesn't roll of the tongue - fellow Soylentnews members are complaining that this entire article is off-topic.
What could be more on-topic for a bunch of propellerheads than a discussion of artificial intelligences being made to feel human emotion?
Sure winning at Jeopardy is cool, as is become the world chess champion, but really both amount to exhaustive search. There's no real finesse in that just a lot of transistors and investment.
Love is not well-understood to this day. It's going to be a long time before it is simulated in an AI.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by bucc5062 on Saturday March 01 2014, @03:58PM
I read your post and though it was interesting in one way, it did not really touch on the topic as presented. The thought is "can a computer love" and your story is more like "the man falls in love with a computer". Also, you kind of skip around on topic between the story and this leap to Snowden and hiding from the Government spies. I see the connection between the story and reality, but not between the story and the topic....thus off-topic.
However, I now am going to look up that book and if I like it, read it. Sounds interesting....but is off topic (like my response in turn). HAGD
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 1) by SlimmPickens on Sunday March 02 2014, @01:09AM
"Soylentils" seems to be gaining momentum, but I am of the opinion that when we deny service with our traffic we'll have "Soyled" the web server and therefore we are "Soylers".
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 01 2014, @04:53PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku [wikipedia.org]
In October 2011, Crypton showed on the official Hatsune Miku Facebook page a letter from the Japanese Minister of Economy for "contributing to the furtherance of the informatization by minister of economy."
(mod post offtopic)
(Score: 2) by SMI on Sunday March 02 2014, @09:17AM
"Fast forward to today, and I don't use grocery store loyalty cards anymore..."
As an OT aside, if you know someone's phone number whom you aren't too fond of, try using that phone number in place of the physical loyalty card. ;)