Intimacy of the virtual kind

Algorithmic matchmaking and digital lovers are close to mimicking human thoughts, emotions, and sensations

The pandemic made artificial intimacy a reality as people in isolation leaned more heavily on the digital tools to work, socialise, and play. Though machines may lack intimacy of real humans, virus-induced human seclusion has unleashed changes so extensive that artificial intelligence and virtual reality have come to proxy human needs for touching, feeling, and connections like never before. Threat from artificial intelligence to human future notwithstanding, algorithmic matchmaking and digital lovers are close to mimicking human thoughts, emotions, and sensations. People have long pushed buttons for machines to perform tasks, it is now for machines to return the favor - by pushing our buttons.

Literally, that is where the future seems headed. With Apps able to sense when users are falling in love, when they are fighting, and when they are likely to break up,  the machines are getting better and faster at gaining human intimacy. They titillate our senses, stimulate our preference, play to our biases, meet many of our wants, and sometimes even satisfy some of our needs. They not only respond to our voices, even talk back with voices of their own. The machines are already building intimacy with us, and us with them. One need look no further than today’s social media ecosystem to see how indeed are artificial intimacies flourishing in our lives.

For University of New South Wales evolutionary biologist Rob Brooks, the question isn’t if machines will outwit humans but whether the implications of artificial intimacy (ArtInt) will short circuit evolutionary pathways to help us understand ourselves better? While positive fallout of artificial intimacy by way of enhancing personal therapy, supporting mental health, and improving peoples lives are easy to embrace, its downside impact on reductions in marriage rates, shorter-lived relationships, and a more complex social order remains trickier to comprehend. The future is likely to get more complicated though.  

A reading of the dominant trend from screeds of data indicates that digital innovation is up against  human nature, cultural institutions, and social norms. Having studied how sex and reproduction shape the lives of humans, Brooks contends that new technologies could unleash extensive changes in the sexual revolution of the late twentieth century. The pandemic has only propelled digital technologies to interact with, simulate, and even exploit human yearning for belonging, thirst for intimacy, capacity for love, and desire for sex. Not without reason at an annual growth rate of 9 per cent, the sex toy market has been worth US$ 31 billion in 2020.

If current pace of digital revolution is any indication, there is little denying that plenty of good and plenty of bad will come from artificial intimacies in future. One thing is clear that the bonds that users feel towards artificial intimacies will grow stronger and more profound, making it difficult to distinguish their love for some ArtInt from the love they feel for other humans. Haven’t we demonstrated our growing intimacy with social media and video games to that effect? Brooks draws positives from such change in attitude, counting its impact on openness to a variety of sexualities, gender identities, and reproductive freedom.   

Artificial Intimacy weaves an engrossing story on the future that awaits us, without predicting whether or not it will be promising or dystopian. Much will depend on who owns the data, as artificial intimacy applications will be powered by data. Proper regulation for data protection is critical for ArtInt to deliver positive results. It ought to establish user safety and protection in the first place alongside valuing privacy while bridging digital gap and inequity. Whether or not the emerging world of artificial intimacy becomes virtuous will depend on how mature is its acceptance by the public and the policy makers. Viewed from an evolutionary lens, Brooks’ optimism stretches into a brave new world of artificial intimacy which holds potential to make friendship, intimacy, and sex become safer, more equitable, and personally rewarding. There are no options but to prepare ourselves for a new future of human relationships. 

Artificial Intimacy  
by Rob Brooks
Columbia University Press, New York 
Extent: 293, Price: Rs. 2,254.

First published in the Hindu BusinessLine on Jan 7, 2022. 

Is it getting beyond us?

The boundary between humans and machines is getting blurred as AI adds a nonhuman concept of the world into scientific inquiry, discovery and understanding.

Human intelligence is literally at stake, as Artificial Intelligence (AI) with its ever increasing capacity to learn, evolve and surprise is becoming a ubiquitous enabler. From online shopping to medical research, and from unmanned aeroplanes to autonomous weapons, machines performing human-level intelligence have rapidly become a reality. And, these are not done yet. Using new algorithms and inexpensive computing power, the machines have become capable of producing insights and innovations that are often  beyond humans. With AI assuming a majority of social roles, it is challenging our understanding of reality and our role within it. 

AI is indeed helping the human mind in accessing new vistas, bringing previously unattainable goals within sight. Who would have imagined chess game AlphaZero to outsmart grandmasters by deploying unorthodox tactics. Antibiotic Halicin discovery by an efficient and inexpensive technique remains beyond human conception. On the destructive side, AI-enabled weapons have the potential to launch digital attacks with exceptional speed and make conflicts more difficult to limit. Illustrative as these examples may be, the trouble with AI is that it accesses reality differently from the way humans access it, and therefore generates outcomes which are not only unpredictable but often inconsistent. When intangible software acquires logical capabilities, it is bound to pose challenges to human perception and cognition.   

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and MIT computer scientist Daniel Huttenlocher assess the challenges AI-powered technology poses. They rest their primary discernment on Rene Dascartes’ enlightening promulgation ‘I think, therefore I am’ which reverberates today as a compelling question:‘If AI thinks, then who we are?’. By devising solutions beyond the scope of human imagination, AI will assert the supremacy of nonhuman learning and application. It already does by altering the role our minds have traditionally played in shaping, ordering, and assessing our choices and actions. The authors weigh the future by asking whether or not the humanization of AI-powered devices are creating confusion on what it means to be human, what is intelligence, and what is consciousness?

The boundary between humans and machines is getting blurred as AI adds a nonhuman concept of the world into scientific inquiry, discovery and understanding.  However, the advent of AI obliges us to confront whether we are comfortable with what we know through human reasoning or are prepared to engage with algorithm generated logic.The Age of AI is a reflective primer on a subject that is fast becoming a reality of modern life. It helps raise thought-provoking questions on the impact of AI on our relationships with knowledge, politics, and society. Whether an individual can find space for careful thinking in this emerging future is one matter. 

The authors are convinced that AI is a grand undertaking with profound potential benefits, as it unleashes new scientific breakthroughs, new economic efficiencies, new forms of security, and new dimensions of social monitoring. However, they are also clear that AI is equally capable of distorting and presenting information that may misguide consumers capacities for independent reasoning. ‘The dilemmas AI raises for societies are profound,’ say the authors. With much of our social and political life dependent on network platforms, securing space for debate and discourse that form public opinion is discerning to uphold democratic principles.

The Age of AI paints a broad brush on AI and its potential to alter the trajectories of societies and the course of history. The game changing features of AI are all but known, and the book doesn’t cut a new ground on that. What it does, however, is to seek ways to make AI auditable – making its processes and conclusions both checkable and correctable. To that effect, Henry Kissinger lends his diplomatic weight to the need for international accords on the use of AI, as the machines are already showing the promise of outstripping some of our mental processes, that will allow us to ‘make peace with them and, in so doing, change the world.’

At an individual level, the book does ring a bell. It lets the reader know that human reasoning and autonomy is at stake, and it is upto us to limit how much of it we intend to bargain for. Should we take AI proclamations by faith, like the proverbial Greek Oracle, from clear evidence that they are superior or should we pick and choose the relevant? In a world where plurality is being marginalised, should we rely on a single voice that delimits our choices. The Age of AI calls upon political leaders, philosophers and theologians to probe AI’s deeper implications in making human life fulfilling. The time to define our partnership with artificial intelligence is squarely upon us. 

The Age of AI 
by Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Daniel Huttenlocher
John Murray/Hachette, New Delhi 
Extent: 256, Price: Rs. 799.

First published in Deccan Herald on January 02, 2022