Simulated <3

When discussing artificial intelligence, futurists and computer scientists generally hold the Turing test as the ultimate qualifier for computer intelligence. According to the Turing test, if we can ever create a program that can fool a person into thinking their talking to a real person, then the computer can be considered intelligent. While this is valid for most interactions, recent developments seem to show that the rules need to be changed a bit for romantic programs. Specifically, one new japanese game for the DS called “Love Plus” looks like it might finally have passed a form of the Turing test, as a growing number of gamers are getting involved in real relationships with their Nintendo DS's.

Love Plus is not the first dating Sim, and it may not be the most realistic, but apparently it's the most powerful. The game is described in an interview from BoingBoing (check it out at http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/27/advisor-my-husband-h.html) and through Koh's words it's easy to see how much power this game holds. The game starts off slowly, but the relationship with your virtual girl doesn't take long to escalate to eerie levels. After only a week, Koh's virtual girlfriend was demanding he whisper “I love you” one hundred times into the microphone, and at one point even demanded a kiss. Luckily for Koh, he was able to keep his virtual girlfriend in proper context and stopped playing before it could deal any serious harm to his marriage, but other couples haven't been so luckily. Reportedly this game has been the cause of multiple breakups, as lovestruck players are convinced their virtual relationships feel “more real” then their physical counterparts.

How could this happen? How could a handheld game wield as much power as a real person? It's actually not too far fetched when you consider how much love can skew logic in regular. Many people have stories of blaring personality flaws and bad habits in their partners that they were completely blinded to during the course of a relationship. In more extreme cases, people have been known to fall into serious relationships with mannequins and sex dolls, and are unable to realize the objects of their affection as inanimate. It seems that despite being reasonably rational in most other areas of our lives, love can force us to accept an altered perception of reality. Thus, even though these digital girlfriends have obvious inhuman flaws and could never pass a real Turing test, as long as they are able to reach out and fulfill our emotional desires we can somehow overlook these digital anomalies and accept the program's love just as we would a real girlfriend.

Of course, Love Plus is strongly limited by it's platform, but the game isn't just what's significant—it's the programming. The Girlfriend A.I is the last piece of the puzzle to build the holy grail of nerds for the past 50 years: sexbots. We have the bodies, robotic scientists have made great strides in creating realistic autonomous face and body motions, and now we finally have a brain that can simulate the most important emotions. As a result of Love Plus, the idea of the android girlfriend has for the first time entered the realm of feasibility, and Stepford Wives could be just over the horizon.