Freewill and Love
I do discuss the concept of AI's love and loss in my term paper and when I was reading the 'Cooltown' paper, a line resonated with what I am currently thinking : "it is possible that children raised with such interactive machines might be socialized to be able to have emotional relationships with them". It is also related to the example of Bob wherein he is very happy that a printer has called him his favorite human. I have an objection that story. I do understand that small children when growing up with these human-mimicking robots or almost-AI constructs will place them at the same level as of human consciousness but I doubt whether grown-ups will attach the same value to their interaction with AI. I mean, kids even project their vague concept of life-blood entities to teddy bears, they talk to them, love them and care for them. And teddy bears do not even possible the remotest characteristics which future AI would possess, so the experience of small kids should be taken out of the equation.
Talking about grown-ups, I think that humans would never attach any real emotional meaning to what AI or machines say unless they believe that the AI has free-will. Now if a door-knob tells bob that he has been voted the MVE that quarter, he has a reason to be happy as the AI is just regurgitating a real-world fact which has real significance for Bob. However, when a printer says that he is that printer's favorite human, then that is not significant. What is the significance of love without basis and free-will ? Love without reason is meaningless and love without free-will is fraud. Unless future AI develops free-will, I do not think that a robot's sultry voice saying "I like you" would have any significance for any human, rather it saying that 'Statistically, you are a better driver than 95% of other humans" will definitely bring out a smile.