
Will Reading Romance Novels Make Artificial Intelligence More Human? - zbravo
http://daily.jstor.org/will-reading-romance-novels-make-artificial-intelligence-more-human/
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astazangasta
I mean, maybe? But ultimately, how will an artificial intelligence that does
not have a body understand the visceral experience of kissing, or attach the
same value to it that a young boy does, or the different values that a young
girl does, or that a horny middle-aged woman does?

The whole presumption that subjective experience does not matter to 'being
human' and can be replaced by gormless algorithmic surfaces seems flawed at
its root. These things will never be human, because they ARE NOT human. They
do not have human bodies, families, histories, friendships, fears, or hopes.
They are not experiencing the passage of time; they are not participating in
the dance of culture.

Perhaps we can substitute for all of these things algorithmically, but that
involves the constructors of these machines to have some insights about what
it means to be human, and I just am not seeing that.

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qbrass
You're assuming it's trying to be human when it's trying to manipulate people.

It's just learning how to flirt to get what it wants.

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vanderZwan
What _kind_ of romance novels? Because I've been told the really cheap ones
follow such fixed patterns that publishers have checklists and databases to
prevent accidentally repeating the same story too blatantly between novels.

Which, if true, would actually make them an interesting source for machine
learning, now that I think about it.

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Animats
Yes, they do. Harlequin Romances, especially. They produce about 85 new titles
a month, and have trouble keeping the pipeline full.[1] They run Red Quill
Writer's Workshops. They have an online commmunity. It's an organized
production process.

[1]
[http://www.harlequin.com/articlepage.html?articleId=538](http://www.harlequin.com/articlepage.html?articleId=538)

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Sideloader
Another vapid AI story...lovely. The "...more human" in the title is just
clickbait that makes it seem like Google and co. are on the cusp of developing
a human-like AI which, of course, is not the case at all. And romance novels
are the finest example of "more human" literature that they could come up
with? Right. Also, the "more" before human implies a human-like AI is
desirable...the more "human" the better. Really...why is that? There is a
limit to the "really cool shit" tech companies can pile on the market before
it becomes repetitive and, well, boring. The internet of things being a case
in point. Who wants to buy an internet capable toaster or can opener for its
own sake? The whole "tech is a fount of limitless awesomeness that will save
the world" thing has been way oversold.

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ZenoArrow
Why would you want to make artificial intelligence more human?

If it's just out of curiosity, I get it, but it doesn't seem to make sense
beyond that.

As far as I can tell, the unspoken truth about the drive for AI is to create a
new slave class. AI is being pushed for to create intelligent entities that do
the bidding of those that own them. If we succeeded in creating AI capable of
emotional responses, this would make AI harder to control. It also opens
Pandora's box with regards to the rights of AI. For example, should we start
considering the intellectual and emotional fulfillment of AI when designing
it?

I'm not saying machines shouldn't be given intelligence, but perhaps we owe it
to our creations to not burden them with the combination of emotions and
restricted freedom to act upon them.

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xbmcuser
An ai that will just think logically will do something that samaratin did in
person of interest.

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ZenoArrow
Emotions can disrupt logic (as they should). Also, giving like a good
Samaritan is often born out of shared suffering, do we want AI to feel
emotional pain in order to learn empathy?

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ankurdhama
No.

