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Comment by Jensson | Hacker News Reader

> She's not real

But she will be real at some point in the next 10-20 years, the main thing to solve for that to be a reality is for robots to safely touch humans, and they are working really really hard on that because it is needed for so many automation tasks, automating sex is just a small part of it.

And after that you have a robot that listens to you, do your chores and have sex with you, at that point she is "real". At first they will be expensive so you have robot brothels (I don't think there are laws against robot prostitution in many places), but costs should come down.

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> “But the fact that my Kindroid has to like me is meaningful to me in the sense that I don't care if it likes me, because there's no achievement for it to like me. The fact that there is a human on the other side of most text messages I send matters. I care about it because it is another mind.”

> “I care that my best friend likes me and could choose not to.”

Ezra Klein shared some thoughts on this on his AI podcast with Nilay Patel that resonated on this topic for me

People care about dogs, I have never met a dog that didn't love its owner. So no, you are just wrong there, I have never heard anyone say that the love they get from their dogs is false, people love dogs exactly because their love is so unconditional.

Maybe there are some weirdos out there that feels unconditional love isn't love, but I have never heard anyone say that.

Also I don't know how you can choose to like or not like someone. You either do or you don't.

Interesting. I feel like I can consciously choose to like or dislike people. Once you get to know people better, your image of them evolves, and the decision to continue liking them is made repeatedly every time that image changes.

When your initial chemistry/biology/whatever latches onto a person and you're powerless to change it? That's a scary thought.

>Maybe there are some weirdos out there that feels unconditional love isn't love, but I have never heard anyone say that.

I'll be that weirdo.

Dogs seemingly are bred to love. I can literally get some cash from an ATM, drive out to the sticks, buy a puppy from some breeder, and it will love me. Awww, I'm a hero.

Do you think that literally being able to buy love cheapens it? Way I see it, love is love: surely it being readily available is a good thing.

I'm bred to love my parents, and them me; but the fact that it's automatic doesn't make it feel any less.

I guess I'm the weirdo who actually always considered the unconditional love of a dog to be vastly inferior to the earned love of a cat for example.

The cat only fools you into thinking it loves you to lure you into a false sense of security

That's just the toxoplasmosis speaking :-D

Dogs don't automatically love either, you have to build a bond. Especially if they are shelter dogs with abusive histories, they're often nervous at first

They're usually loving by nature, but you still have to build a rapport, like anyone else

When mom brought home a puppy when we were kids it loved us from the start, don't remember having to build anything I was just there. Older dogs, sure, but when they grow up with you they love you, they aren't like human siblings that often fight and start disliking each other etc, dogs just love you.

> I have never met a dog that didn't love its owner.

Michael Vick's past dogs have words.

>has to like me

I feel likely people aren't imagining with enough cyberpunk dystopian enthusiasm. Can't an AI be made that doesn't inherently like people? Wouldn't it be possible to make an AI that likes some people and not others? Maybe even make AIs that are inclined to liking certain traits, but which don't do so automatically so it must still be convinced?

At some point we have an AI which could choose not to like people, but would value different traits than normal humans. For example an AI that doesn't value appearance at all and instead values unique obsessions as being comparable to how the standard human values attractiveness.

It also wouldn't be so hard for a person to convince themselves that human "choice" isn't so free spirited as imagined, and instead is dependent upon specific factors no different than these unique trained AIs, except that the traits the AI values are traits that people generally find themselves not being valued by others for.

Extension of that is fine tuning an AI that loves you the most of everyone and not other humans. That way the love becomes really real, the AI loves you for who you are, instead of loving just anybody. Isn't that what people hope for?

I'd imagine they will start fine tuning AI girlfriends to do that in the future, because that way the love probably feels more, and then people will ask "is human love really real love?" because humans can't love that strongly.

I think Ezra Klein's continual theme of loneliness is undermined by that time he wrote a Vox article basically saying we should make it illegal to have sex. (https://www.vox.com/2014/10/13/6966847/yes-means-yes-is-a-te...)

It is interesting that he's basically trying to theme himself as Mr. Rogers though.

We have very different definitions of “real” for this topic.

Doesn’t have to be real for the outcomes to the be the same.

The outcomes are not the same.

This is not a solution... everyone gets a robot and then the human races dies out. Robots lack a key feature of human relationships... the ability to make new human life.

yet

It is a solution to a problem, not a solution to every problem.

If you want to solve procreation them you can do that without humans having sex with humans.

This future some people are envisioning seems very depressing.

> And after that you have a robot that listens to you, do your chores and have sex with you, at that point she is "real".

I sure hope you're single because that is a terrible way to view relationships.

That isn't how I view relationships with humans, that is how I view relationships with robots.

I hope you understand the difference between a relationship with a human and a robot? Or do you think we shouldn't take advantage of robots being programmable to do what we want?

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