Can This Love Be Real?

This is finally something I can wrap my head around, technology and love. In the 2001 film Artificial Intelligence the people of that society and time explore the idea of a synthetic being that can not only respond to external stimuli such as pain but that can also comprehend and feel emotions like love. To us in 2012, this seems like a foreign concept, a completely outlandish notion. “A machine that can love, not possible.” But that is only because we do not view the entire spectrum of what machines already do for us in today’s society. If one is really to think about it machines do just about everything for us; machines wash our clothes, brew our coffee, and even brush our teeth. There is still one very important piece of technology that allows for even a wider range of functions to be carried out, the cell phone. A cell phone allows anyone to do just about anything from talk to someone face to face using face time, to order your dinner so you can just pick it up, or send a text to a family or friend expressing how much you care for them. In the film they succeed in creating their synthetic being, a child who can love, but as predicted the problem then becomes the human, us, being able to love a robot. I have no doubts or reserves about us one day being able to create a robot who can understand and express the human emotions we take for granted but then the problem I see, just as in the film is us the creators being able to love our creation in return.