Dating AI is one of those marvelous and weird books written that can only be written by a kind of dilettante. The author, who works as the head of bioinformatics and medical IT at a research clinic in Moscow, has written a dating manual for human-machine love affairs. Zhavoronkoff writes from the perspective of the mid-21st century, when artificial intelligence has become ubiquitous, and his work is largely structured after self-help relationship books of our era, including lengthy quotes from both humans and AIs that are often hilarious. This framework gives Zhavoronkoff an opportunity to comment on the human condition, on science fiction clichés, on philosophical issues raised by philosophy of mind and the AI program, as well as oblique references to odd human idiosyncrasies. It is, to my mind at least, a lot more fun than reading Hubert Dreyfus! Zhavoronkoff’s inspiration for writing the book is the well-known phenomenon of people entering into romantic “virtual relationships” in online gaming settings such as World of Warcraft. Zhavornkoff points out that this is hardly the only common type of relationship between human and non-human. “We can form deep attachments to many things other than people. An example is the relationship many have with God. Such a relationship, often framed in terms of love, is a matter of faith. That is what most religions teach us. A similar belief in a valuable relationship with various forms of AI, representatives of a global artificial intelligence, is already forming. Many people worldwide understand the inevitability of AI and have started preparing for it. I am one of them.” — review by Theophrastus researchpubs/shop/dating-ai-by-dr-alex-z-2/
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 07:45:11 +0000
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