IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016 - 50

commentary

commentary

Isabel Pedersen

he desire to create
a sentient Artificial
Intelligence (AI) as
complex as a human
intelligence, or one
that even surpasses it, a superintelligence, is raging. The Economist
recently reported "Firms such as
Google, Facebook, Amazon and
Baidu have got into an AI arms race,
poaching researchers, setting up laboratories and buying start-ups" [1]. On
one level, this race reacts to the need
for highly sophisticated personal digital assistants to help people navigate
the tsunami of information produced
by the Internet, spawned from the
profit-generating drive of these very
same companies [4]. On another
level, the race involves getting computer algorithms, and AI technology
itself, to understand human emotions and to respond emotionally [7].
Recognition of emotions, feelings,
and sentiments has become the gold
standard, eclipsing the older view of
AI as aspiring to be a rational and
conscious intelligent entity, a smart
machine. IBM's Watson, a cognitive
assistant who won Jeopardy in 2011,
aspires to function with "accuracy,
confidence and speed" for its naturallanguage processing feats. Watson
was to be smart. Now, we want our
devices to adapt to us and be personal companions rather than geniuses.
However, if we imbue our AI with
the skill of emotional manipulation
will we become emotionally vulner-

T

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2016.2618680
Date of publication: 12 December 2016

50

Home Is Where
the AI Heart Is
fessional men by highly sophisticated,
feminized, and ambivalent superintelligences that are evolving through a
process of deep learning and adaptation during the relationship. Both AIs
(one an operating system "Samantha"
of Her, the other embedded in "Ava" a
robot in Ex Machina) want to become
immortal and resist termination.
While Ava and Samantha play the role
of love interest, they also develop as
emotional helpmates and companions for humans. The setting is home
and not a computer lab.

Her

Figure 1. Asuna android on display
at Miraikan (The National Museum of
Emerging Science and Innovation)
in Tokyo.

The opening scene of Her illustrates
near-future digital life and it subtly
questions the erosion of our reverence for human emotion. We stare
directly at the face of Theodore, the
main character, as he composes a
love letter for an elderly woman "Loretta" who is wishing her husband of 50
years a happy anniversary. Theodore
works for Beautifulhandwrittenletters.
com, a futuristic Hallmark company.
His computer prints out the letter on
blue stationery in pen ink mimicking
the handwriting of his client, Loretta.
Beautifulhandwrittenletters.com has

able? Can we use speculative commentary made in fiction to address
our fears in this regard?
Two recent sci-fi films, Her (2013)
[5] and Ex Machina (2015) [3] grapple
with AI companionship in fictional
near future, urban, American settings.
Both involve AIs built by corporations
resembling Google's colossal Search
Empire. Both involve the emotional
manipulation of lonely, sensitive, proIEEE Technology and Society Magazine

∕

DECEmber 2016
http://www.Beautifulhandwrittenletters.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016
