An uncanny journey to the frontier of human-computer interaction, exploring what happens to our relationships with each other as artificial intelligence enters our personal lives.
Existentially chilling ... Muldoon warns of the dangers of 'the synthetic social', but also even-handedly suggests that the most awkward or wounded among us could benefit from the bots. I think not. The future that Love Machines sketches is a dehumanised hell. I advocate hitting control-alt-delete on the whole business.
With chatbots expected to play greater roles in our emotional lives, and their psychological effects not yet fully understood, Muldoon is right to ask whether we are sufficiently alarmed about their creeping influence.
Harrowing ... Muldoon’s discussion around romantic relationships deals well with the hook dangled by these platforms to reel in these willing human participants and how it negatively impacts them, but it falls short in its discussion of how women are disproportionately affected ... t’s a topic that is scary once you start to scratch beneath the surface, but Muldoon excels at finding the corners of the internet where people are both at most risk, and are set to profit the most from this new age of tech.
