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IMAGES BY ASHLEY ARMITAGE ASSEMBLED
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OVER THE PAST CENTURY HUMANS DEVELOPED NEW FORMS OF TECHNOLOGIES, THAT ARE AS SMART, OR EVEN SMARTER, AS HUMANS. WHILE DOING THIS WE CURATE WHAT WE VALUE GOOD AND BAD QUALITIES OF THE HUMAN MIND, AND WHAT WE FIND IMPORTANT TO RECREATE. These new systems, ranging from calculators to complicated self learning algorithms are growing and changing every day. Robots with communication skills, memory and the ability to mimic human like movements are slowly becoming part of our society. Yet by curating the human properties with what we label as important, we redefine what it means to be a human in the first place. Giving those properties to artificial intelligent systems, we simultaneously are redesigning what we see as the perfect human. The question that comes to mind is what the place of the non curated humans will be in the world. Besides, what will it mean to feel and love in this new society we are creating. How will human and ai define their relationships? “If it looks like a human, walks like a human and talks like a human, is it human?” So far the answer has been no. Robots can’t cry, bleed or feel like humans, and that’s part of what makes them different. On the tree of robotic life, humanlike robots play a particularly valuable role. It makes sense. We feel that the only other creatures we can have an intelligent emotional connection with are in fact humans. Humans are brilliant, beautiful, compassionate, loveable, and capable of love, so why shouldn’t we aspire to make robots humanlike in these ways? Don’t we want robots to have such marvellous capabilities as love, compassion, and genius? In designing human-inspired robotics, we hold our machines to the highest standards we know.
WE HUM MACHIN WE DE-
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IMAGE OF GIRL LESLIE ZHANG IMAGE OF MAN IN BALL ALEX KISILIVICH ASSEMBLED IMAGE 2
MANISE OUR NES BY WHICH -HUMANISE MAN
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BEAUTY IS NOT BY ITSELF WHAT THERE IS SOMETHING MUCH MOR MEANINGFUL AND EFFECTIVE THA PEOPLE TOGETHER
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ATTRACTS US. RE VIBRANT, AT BRINGS IMAGE OF GIRL GLAZEDNYC IMAGE OF BEDROOM DANIEL EVERETT ASSEMBLED
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IMAGE OF GIRL AND WINDOW HATCHET & TOM IMAGE OF GIRL AND PHONE 66 KOI ASSEMBLED
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Just like that humans are our guidelines of what it means to love and feel affection. Humans create emotional connections, with other beings and sometimes even objects. The decision who we feel attracted to is often made within fractions of a second. Much of this process occurs in the deepest, darkest and most primitive corridors of the subconscious mind. As much as we want to believe we are so advanced, it is for less than one percent of our evolution that we have been civilised—our brains have been evolving over 3.5 million years. And this process doesn’t care about the social, political or conventional wisdoms of the time you are born. Evolution only concerns itself with promotion of a more adapted species. Regardless of whether you believe in God or intelligent design, there is a reason that sugar is sweet, a growling beast is feared and that we all covet beauty. Beauty, perhaps the most elusive concept, is relevant and consistent throughout nature. It is a universal form of communication that boasts, “I am healthy and have good genes.” But beauty is not by itself what attracts us. There is something much more vibrant, meaningful and effective that brings people together whether it is for romantic, social or professional needs. Beauty and attraction are very distinct entities. While beauty is raw and constant, primitive attraction is dynamic and advanced. And beauty is just one parcel of what makes a person attractive. From hair to smell to posture, expression, voice and more— attractiveness is a composite that goes way beyond the surface. By fully understanding the vast and complex array of influences which are packed into those 100 milliseconds we have to make a first impression, we are able to master its outcome. The sexiest person in the room is not necessarily the one who is objectively the most symmetrical or physically perfect. It is the person who projects self-confidence and happiness. Which means that appearance would not matter as much as we assume. Another important element to keep in consideration is that the dynamics within a relationship changed. Nowadays, within most cultures the man will not go hunting and the wife will not necessary stay at home taking care of their household. Following to the fact that a household doesn’t have to consist out of a man and a woman, many variation are there to be found. The skills we value now are different from the skills we valued 200 years ago, physical stronger man are for example less useful in current society. And so it is to understand, with the fast growing technologies, that over the last 20 till 30 years something changed. We now seem to be able to develop, indeed, an emotional connection without the need of a human physical form we feel attracted to.
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Together with the internet, new ways to communicate developed. Email, chat forums and social media platforms are crucial in nowadays, digital, society. We became able to have conversations with people who’s appearance would forever stay a mystery to us. You can find anything or anyone in the digital world, from business to intimacy, the internet has it all. Through these new communication formats, humans started to develop various relationships. Likeminded people can easily gather themselves, create subcultures and make friends. Asides from gathering new acquaintances, or keeping in touch with old ones, we find companionship. On a daily base thousands of people use dating platforms to search for romantic connections. It is easier to find someone you have a lot in common with over the internet then to meet them in a bar. Already a third of the gay marriages that happened in 2017, the couples met online. Falling in love with each other, merely through pixels on a screen is not anymore unimaginable. Yes, putting it like that I’m completely de-romanticising the idea of digital love. That is not my intention, I just want to explain what this means.
The ways we find love and express affection are changing. There is no need for a physcial presence in order to develop an emotional connection. In history, from the moment the common men could write, love letters were exchanged between lovers over distance. I do believe that most of the people writing each other met before in person. Therefor they developed both a physical as an emotion connection, and by writing each other they just kept this feeling intact. Perhaps the greater part of us switched from pen and paper to a more digital format, but that doesn’t mean that the words lost their power. The element that did change, is the fact that it is not necessarily to meet each other in person to exchange loving words. If a person is capable of feeling and developing a real emotional connection with someone else without the need of physical presence what does that say about the ways we can find love. Or maybe even better, the ways we want to be loved and express affection.
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IMAGE OF GIRLS BRIANNA CAPOZZI IMAGE OF BOY AND COMPUTER HU HANG ASSEMBLED
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IMAGE OF GIRL WITH PHONE LEO BERNE IMAGE OF GIRL LONG HAIR BEN BROWN ASSEMBLED
ANONYMITY AND ONLINE TWO WORDS OFTEN USED TOGETHER. ALL THE GREAT THINGS THE INTERNET SEEMS TO PROMISE ALSO COMES WITH A PRICE. THAT OUR BEHAVIOUR IS SCREENED AND OUR DATA IS STORED IS NOT NEW TO US. “Anonymity” and “online” are two words often used together. All the great things the internet seems to promise also comes with a price. That our behaviour is screened and our data is stored is not new to us. Our digital safety is considered, but we mainly fear someone will steal our money not our identity. Privacy becomes a concept with a dynamic meaning over time. We want our privacy to stay in tact, nevertheless we keep creating profiles where we add our personal information. From dating apps to social networks, we happily seem to put ourselves out there. In spite of our privacy, we are still hoping to find a person who likes us and who we will like back.
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You send an invite to a guy named John, on this dating platform you are using. John, who promises that his dog is his spirit animal, seems like a great fit. Wether or not John is a real person probably did not cross your mind. Before you know, you are chatting with your new found love in the middle of the night. Perhaps talking about his love for musicals and that you both like to visit Italy. It is possible that your feelings start to grow, since this John really seems to check all of your boxes. He takes the time to listen to you and you genuinely feel that your bond is becoming stronger. Three weeks into your digital love adventure and here you are insisting in meeting him, unfortunately he keeps refusing to meet in person. At that point you start to doubt what is wrong with John. You come to realise that in fact this John is not a real person. Assuming that this fake account is created by a person who might think it could be fun to catfish people. You probably get angry, write a message to the person behind the account, that it was heartless and inconsiderate of your feelings. After a few weeks you probably get over it and move on. It could have been that this affair went on way longer, months or maybe even a year. During which your feelings would continue growing. For all one knows you really fall in love. The moment you find out there might not be a John, or at least that the image you have in mind is not real, your heart presumably gets broken. In this scenario we assume that the fake John was created by a real living person, with a motive of why he or she kept this act going. Only what if John is a artificial intelligent computer system, designed for people to use as emotional support. This AI was listening to you and learning from you about who you are and what you need. Before you knew this, the feelings of intimacy and maybe even love were real. Would you reconsider the authenticity of these feelings. It is a scenario we might not be able to imagine. Nonetheless with the speed self-learning algorithms develop their communication systems it is a scenario quit possible. The question that comes to mind is, what you will do with this information. What would you do when you come to realise that you have been developing a relationship with an AI. Will you walk away from this system, even considering that talking to it gave you a lot of comfort. Or would you continue enjoying your digital companionship.
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IMAGE OF GIRL TIJNKE VAN GELDER IMAGE OF COMPUTER APPLE STOCK IMAGES ASSEMBLED
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REPRESENTATION In this situation our John probably had a picture or two, so you had an idea of how he looks like. A representation of who you are online, often done with pictures and a short description, is a quick way to offer someone a first impression. Simply put we need an image, to make the discion if you and this person could match. Being aware that most people only show the best of themselves online, we take everything with a bit of salt. With filters, photoshop and other editing tools we are able to create the ideal image, as a result we have issues trusting anything we see. Still we rely on our image culture, especially while dating online. However does this first impression have to come from a real photograph. If it is about the essence of who you are, could that effect also emerge from something different? Like a well thought out description or even an avatar. Visual representations of human beings are everywhere these days. From mainstream examples, like the photos or other images Gmail users use to represent themselves, to extravagant armorclad monsters in role-playing games, it’s becoming increasingly common for people to go through the process of deciding how they want to be represented in an online space.
TO A CERTAIN EXTENT PEOPLE SEEM TO REACT TO ENCOUNTERING A NEW AVATAR ONLINE IN SIMILAR WAYS TO HOW THEY REACT TO ENCOUNTERING A NEW PERSON IN REAL LIFE. For example, that “Tattooed avatars are perceived as being sensation-seeking and risk-taking,” and these sorts of judgements “extend to the credibility of the avatar’s user.” These findings, and past research suggesting that people have a natural tendency to make their online avatars reflect who they are as a person, led the researchers to ask a simple question: “Do these cues accurately reflect and communicate an individual’s real-world traits?”
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What they found was that the avatars provided accurate information about “extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism but not conscientiousness or openness.” In other words, those cues we use to give people hints as to who we are in real life — various subtle decisions pertaining to clothes and hair, for example — seem to translate to the online world, at least when it comes to communicating certain information. In a way this shows how limited we use the space of digital freedom. It would be nice if these environments really took us out of ourselves, if they expanded our horizons, perhaps making us more open to new experiences and more empathetic toward others as a result. But they don’t necessarily do that — a lot of the time, all they do is replicate and reinforce existing offline social dynamics and prejudices. Even when in unfamiliar online settings, we have a tendency to seek out the familiar and the comforting. A lot of this comes down to context, of course. In some online situations, it might actually be in our interest to give a sense of who we are in real life. For example if we would use avatars in on a dating platform. The fact that we seem to catch on to these subtile cues we put in our avatars, we would be able to tell a lot about ourselves without revealing our real identity. Something that could be considered is the position AI’s would get if these visuals will be accepted on the more common medias too. How will we separate human from AI if all we have is digital contact. To reassess a previous made statement: If it looks like a human, walks like a human and talks like a human, is it human? So far the answer has been no. Robots can’t cry, bleed or feel like humans, and that’s part of what makes them different. It would not matter in a digital world if a robot can not bleed or cry, and artificial emotional intelligence is hypothetically possible. Then what would make us different, while communicating through a screen, from robots. What kind of human and machine relationships could transpire from digital interactions?
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IMAGE OF LEGS ELFIE SEMOTAN IMAGE PLUG HATCHET & TOM ASSEMBLED
If it looks like a human, walks like a human and talks like a human, is it human? So far the answer has been no. Robots can’t cry, bleed or feel like humans, and that’s part of what makes them different.
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PERHAPS WE ALREADY PAS OF CODEPEND The idea of a human like AI is played with in many scenario’s. Already in 1950 Alan Turing created his famous test in where a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine designed to generate human like responses.
The evaluator would be aware that one of the two attendees in the conversation is a machine. The conversation would be limited to a text-only channel, such as a keyboard and a screen so the result would not depend on the machines ability to render words as speech. If the evaluator cannot reliably tell the machine apart from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. The Turing test does not directly test whether the computer behaves intelligently. It tests only whether the computer behaves like a human being. In the last 70 years our artificial intelligent systems grow immensely. The first robot gained citizenship in Saudi Arabia, the same robot now also wishes to become a mother. The smarter the machines become the more likely the will pass the Turing test. Self learning algorithms are to outgrow their creator, but pulling the plug out is not always the solution. If intelligent robots start to create other intelligent robots, what would be the function of a human creator. What would be the role of an emotional, weak and vulnerable being in a fully automatised world.
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ARE ST THE AGE DENCY IMAGE OF GIRL A NEW NOTHING IMAGE OF MAN AND PICTURE NOBU YOSHI ASSEMBLED
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Considering a time where the human is unnecessary, seems insane. Yet we surround ourselves with so much technology our society and the individual being depends on it. A phone, a computer and our heating systems, we girdle ourselves in technology. Perhaps we are not there yet to call it an emotional dependency, but we do know it is a mental and in some cases a physical dependency. Perhaps we are already past the age of codependency? Despite, the biggest cause of depression is not that we are scared that we are going to be useless because of robots. The number one cause of depression is loneliness, not to be confused with being alone. Because of our growing health system people outlive their relatives and friends, and end up alone. As a result of the way we work nowadays, personal contact in a lot of work environments are unnecessary, which leads to a lack of social contact. I could go on with giving examples how people end up being lonely, just as well that I could give a lot of examples in how technology both is the cause as the solution to this issue. Emotional support is needed for humans to feel included, every being wants to be heard. While living in a period where there are billions of human on the earth, you would imagine that for everyone there is a friend available. Unfortunately social isolation happens quickly, and even in the digital world it can be difficult to keep up. Imagine what an AI could mean to people that have no clue how to get a hold onto their social life. Support, advice and comfort are a few of the many things social intelligent systems could offer. Perchance the system needs to take on the image of it being human-like in order to provide emotional support. AS IT MAY BE WE ARE ALREADY REDEFINING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN, SO JUST AS WELL LET US REDEFINE OUR ORIGINS OF WHERE WE GET OUR LOVE.
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AS IT MAY BE WE ARE ALREADY REDEFINING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN, SO JUST AS WELL LET US REDEFINE OUR ORIGINS OF WHERE WE GET OUR LOVE.
IMAGE OF GIRL ALEXA DEMIE IMAGE OF BLACKBERRIES AARON WYNIA ASSEMBLED
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IMAGE OF GIRL ON SOFA LUKASZ WIERZBOWSKI IMAGE OF GIRL AND LAPTOP AIRDESK STOCK ASSEMBLED
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IMAGE OF GIRL DECON IMAGE OF LOVERS HATCHET ASSEMBLED
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ALL IMAGES ARE PART OF THE RESEARCH “DO WE SEE AN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION BETWEEN MACHINE AND HUMAN.” BY COMPARING THE MACHINES IN SITUATIONS WITH THE HUMAN, A DIFFERENT VISUAL LANGUAGE ARISES. THE ORIGINAL STORY OF THE NON MACHINE IMAGES WILL CHANGE, WHEN BOTH IMAGES ARE ASSEMBLED TOGETHER. IMAGE 1 - WE SAY GOODBYE IMAGE 2 - SOCIAL LIFE IMAGE 3 - BE WITHOUT IMAGE 4 - TO TELL THE WORLD IMAGE 5 - BOREDOM & WISDOM IMAGE 6 - BLUE WITH AND WITHOUT IMAGE 7 - WHO IS THE SCREEN IMAGE 8 - FOREVER DANCING IMAGE 9 - ME, MYSELF AND I IMAGE 10 - IF ONLY IMAGE 11 - WISH I HADN’T SAID THAT IMAGE 12 - I LOVE YOU TOO
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