#853 The Love Machine- Julia Elliott
The story is told by a robot inside a college laboratory. It is a project on Artificial Intelligence and we see the process from inside the head of the one being experimented on, or built, or evolving depending on how you look at it. It has been programmed to “feel” love, or something closer to infatuation. First, it “loved” a lab assistant but when that got violent, it was reprogramed to “love” a toy dog.
As it is being taught more about the world and the human condition, its ability to grasp what love is, and its reaction to it gets more intricate. Like humans, at first the feelings are basic, and their manners mimic those it learns from others. Later it gets more individual, and instead of seeing the programming, it feels more like self-determination. But as it gets more complicated, it boils down one basic idea:
“Nevertheless, I wanted to fuse with her in some meaningful way.”
Love among robots seems pointless, and teaching a robot to learn to love like a human does seems cruelly unfair, since the anatomy isn’t there to ever completely sate those “desires.” But, it begs the question: Isn’t human love itself pointless and unfair even to humans?
Notable Passage: “What are the relationships among love, knowledge, language, and consciousness?”
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