In 2009, a Japanese man married a woman named Nene Anegasaki on the island of Guam. The curious thing was that Nene was a virtual character in the Nintendo videogame LovePlus.
In 2013, Spike Jonze directed the highly acclaimed (and Academy Award nominated) film “Her”, in which the protagonist falls in love with an OS (operating system) AI (artificial intelligence).
Outrageous you say?
Consider that for centuries people have been falling in love sight unseen via snail mail. Today, with online dating, this is even more prevalent. Philosophy professor Aaron Ben-Ze’ev notes that online technology “enables having a connection that is faster and more direct.”
So it got me thinking that these types of relationships aren’t that different from the virtual ones that are depicted in “Her” and are going to occur with increasing frequency as AI progresses. The interactions are exactly the same; it is just that the entity at the end of the communication channel is either real or artificial.
But wait, what is artificial and what is real? As Morpheus said in “The Matrix,” “What is real? How do you define ‘real’? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” This is not just philosophy; this is as factual as you can get.
As a growing number of researchers, physicists, and philosophers come to terms with the supporting evidence that we already live in a virtual reality, we realize that there is no distinction between a virtual entity that we think is virtual (such as a game character) and a virtual entity that we think is real (such as the person you are in a relationship with). Your consciousness does not emerge from your brain; its seat is elsewhere. Your lover’s consciousness therefore is also elsewhere. You are interacting with it via the transfer of data and your emotions are part of your core consciousness. Does it matter whether that data transfer is between two conscious entities outside of physical reality or between a conscious entity and another somewhat less conscious entity?
As technology progresses, AI advances, and gaming and simulations become more immersive, falling in love or having any other kind of emotional experience will be occurring more and more frequently with what we today think of as virtual entities.
Now, it seems shocking. Tomorrow it will be curious. Eventually it will be the norm.
