The one bright spot in February is Valentine’s Day, just five days away. In a world full of mutual loathing and mistrust, it makes a nice change to have a celebration dedicated to love. But love is not easy to find on this or any other date.
The uncertainties of romance have always been a favorite theme of literature. Shakespeare reminded us, as if we didn’t know, that the course of true love never does run smooth. Jane Austen, who was more brisk than most, kept Elizabeth and Darcy apart for weeks in Pride and Prejudice, before they even got to hold hands. Those of us who have reached a certain age can relate to these old stories. We can remember writing love letters, buying flowers, holding hands, and generally tiptoeing up to love.
Nobody has time for that now. But help is on the way. Indeed, help has arrived. Computer dating has been with us for years. We spend a quarter of a billion dollars a year on meeting and dating sites, and the technology of love gets more sophisticated all the time. Matchmakers are using algorithms, the same cunning mathematical models that allow search engines to work. They can sort through a huge amount of information to find the ideal, compatible partner for anybody in an instant. This saves those in search of romance from hundreds of hours of hanging out in bars, and it will eventually eliminate the long, tedious process of dating entirely.
Lonely hearts can review dozens or hundreds of prospective partners in a very short time and use online messages to decide who may be compatible or not. It’s what mothers did in Jane Austen’s time, organizing dinners and dances for their eligible girls and giving the thumbs up or thumbs down to any suitors who came forward. Now the computer does it all for you. You can even buy a love detector that measures your beloved’s sincerity by the sound of his or her voice. This explains why half of all adult American women and men are single.
The next step is inevitable. If a computer is clever enough to choose your ideal partner, surely it can be your ideal partner. The logical development of computer dating is to get rid of the unreliable human element entirely. Users of artificial intelligence programs have already discovered that they can use chatbots for companionship, and even for therapy. Meanwhile, lifelike robots and computer-generated images have been developed that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing, except that you don’t have to take them out to restaurants.
An intelligent robotic companion would be just about perfect. Human lovers are fallible, whereas computers, we are told, are not. So, romance with a computer should be ideal. She, he or it could write the most beautiful love letters, drawing on a database of hundreds of years of romantic correspondence, find just the right words to say on a Valentine’s card, offer the most tasteful arrangements of artificial flowers, and take you on romantic drives in an autonomous vehicle through lovely computer- generated scenery. Your AI Valentine will shower you with compliments and never utter a word of criticism.
As long as you remember to recharge the batteries, nothing can possibly go wrong.
