Essay On Love

Humans are Capable of Loving a Robot

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Humans are Capable of Loving a Robot

Love has always been a very important aspect of the life of human beings. They have tried to explore more and more about the inception and functioning, as well as the absence of love in their life. With progress and technological shift of the society, the point of view of the human beings towards love and its research has changed greatly. One of the most important aspects of exploring love in modern time is to study the ability of robots to love human beings. The science and technology has made so much progress that now the robots are able to replace human beings while performing in a much better way than them. Although the robots are able to do the things and perform actions like the human beings, to the extent of replacing them, their ability to love the human beings as their partner is still a matter of suspicion for the scientists. On the other hand, the philosophers have a much clear idea about it, as they believe that robots are not capable of living human beings, however, human beings are capable of loving the robots. Sven Nyholm, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at the Eindhoven University of Technology, hypothesized that love possesses three qualities: the ability to choose your soul mate, the ability to value the unique qualities of your partner, and the ability to have a choice to commit to your partner. Therefore, I hypothesized that since a robot does not possess these abilities, it is incapable of love, but a human who possesses these qualities may be able to love and empathize with a robot.

One of the most important qualities of love is the ability to choose your soul mate. Human beings have this ability which makes them able to love and empathizes with another individual or even with a robot. On the other hand, the robots do not possess this quality, which makes them unable to love any other being, with it is some human or other robots as well. Human beings have the ability to choose their soul mate because they do not see all the other people from the same perspective. They observe and analyze the person according to his/ her positive and negative aspects while keeping in view the attitude of the person, as well as their understanding and compatibility. They are able to understand if a person is behaving negatively in a certain situation, there must be some reason behind that. On the other hand, the robots are made in a certain specific manner and they work according to the algorithms and logic fed to them. They do have the ability to think in a logical manner, however, they are unable to reason like human beings on the basis of emotions. The robots cannot understand the emotions of human beings according to the situation and react only to the emotions which are stored in their functioning systems. The ability to choose the soul mate depends on reading the emotions of the other person as well as assessing if they would be able to reciprocate their feelings while providing happiness and comfort to each other. The robots cannot choose their soul mates, because they do not have the ability to understand the emotions and feelings of the human beings, apart from the general feeling of happiness, sadness, anger, etc., which are stored in their functioning system (Ess, 2017).

Another important quality of love is the ability to value the unique qualities of your partner. Human beings are able to make a comparison of their partner with other individuals of society. They are able to identify the unique qualities of their partners and appreciate them as well. For example, in the case of a husband and wife, the husband would be able to see the unique quality of respecting his family and background, when she has the ability to act otherwise. The husband would appreciate her quality of respecting his family due to him. On the other hand, the robots are developed according to the same functioning system and they are made to think in a logical manner. They do not give some edge or benefit of favor to any individual on the basis of his or her attitude, so they would not be able to know the unique qualities of their partners. They see, analyze and judge the human beings from the same perspective, due to which they would not be able to see and appreciate the unique qualities of their partners thinking that all the human beings would react in the same way. Even if they know that all the other human beings would not react in the same way, they would question the action of their partner human beings, instead of appreciating the uniqueness of their partner (Borenstein, & Arkin, 2019).

Another important quality of love is the ability to have a choice to commit to your partner, which is missing in the robots. Robots are not developed to think and act differently according to the situation. They do not have the ability of thinking and acting on their own instincts, but according to their already stored thinking system, which is the major drawback that they do not have the choice. One of the most important aspects in this regard is that the heart of human beings plays an important role in the love affairs, as well as their attitude, perception, and understanding towards their partners. They do not just react on a specific code but utilize their reasoning on the basis of their emotions and understanding, due to which they are finally able to commit to their partners. The robots do not have the ability to commit to their partners because they are unable to acknowledge their difference from all the other human beings. On the other hand, the human beings have the potential of developing feelings for the robots and loving them because they are able to find their unique qualities, appreciate them, as well as commit to them. Human beings can love and empathize with the robots, as well as other human beings due to these qualities of love, which are a part of their functionality. While the same functionality is missing from the personality of the robots, so they cannot love human beings or robots.

Human beings are capable of loving and empathizing fellow human beings, because of their possession of the qualities of love. On the other hand, the robots are not able to love or empathize with other robots or human beings because of the fact that they do not possess the qualities of love. They cannot choose their soul mate, appreciate the unique qualities of their partner, as well as commit to them, due to which they are unable to satisfy the love needs of their partner, rendering them unable to reciprocate their feelings. They do not have a heart and emotions like human beings which can enable them to differentiate the people on the basis of their emotions towards them, thus treating all of them in the same manner.

References

Borenstein, J., & Arkin, R. (2019). Robots, ethics, and intimacy: the need for scientific research. On the Cognitive, Ethical, and Scientific Dimensions of Artificial Intelligence (pp. 299-309). Springer, Cham.

Ess, C. M. (2017). What’s love got to do with it? Robots, sexuality, and the arts of being human. In Social Robots (pp. 57-79). Routledge.