Why fall in love with an imperfect human when you can customise a perfect partner for yourself? Much like Pygmalion, you too can breathe life into your sculpture and smoothly breeze through romantic life, without the surprises or shocks that come with dating a human being. Modern day version of this - program for yourself a Robot!
This is well illustrated in a recent Bollywood movie titled ‘Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya’ that depicts a romantic relationship between a robot and a human. The human hero unknowingly falls in love with the robot because she is so lifelike (or maybe because she says ‘okay’ to everything he says, makes the perfect black coffee, and organises his wardrobe perfectly). Later, he is unable to get over her despite knowing that she is a robot, and programs her to impress his family so that they can get married (almost). It wouldn’t be a stretch to read the male character as one that sought so much perfection, that he found it only in Sifra (Super Intelligent Female Robot Automation).
While several discussions have already taken place around the film, what is interesting about it is the treatment of the movie. If one were to watch this movie as a socio-political commentary on pressures on women to look, act and speak ‘perfectly’, their experience would be quite different from watching it as a light comedy. For instance, Sifra looks like a “barbie doll”, can cook all kinds of cuisines, will do exactly as is told - until she malfunctions, turns dangerous, and then must be broken by the same man who ‘loved’ her. Social beliefs and Bollywood movies have both upheld unrealistic standards of beauty for a long time. The difference this time is that a robot gets employed to do the work of a ‘perfect woman’, leaving everyone aghast at her disobedience when she malfunctions.
Alternate intimacy partners are not just a thing of the present, but have existed even historically. From imagining dead young women as romantic partners, followed by people marrying the Eiffel Tower, and the Berlin Wall, and being sexually attracted to cars, there is a wide range of objects that have entered the realm of human fantasy. The historical anecdotes about the beginning of alternate intimacy partners being the dolls used by sailors on ships are now being contested. One wonders what has created this desire for inanimate objects, instead of connections with other humans.
Seeking companionship
As cities grow exponentially, so does loneliness. Studies show that one out of four people today are lonely, and researchers have established that it is essential for the well-being of human beings to form social relationships, and stay connected to loved ones. It has also been recognized that doing so requires opening up a part of ourselves that is vulnerable to disapproval or rejection. What better way to avoid disappointment than to not interact with a human at all? This thought has given way to humans involving themselves in relationships with dolls, computer games, robots, and AI. Not very long ago, we were using technology to keep intimate relationships alive. Today, we are in an intimate relationship with technology.
Although the companionship of robots was aimed at eliminating loneliness, entering a romantic relationship with a robot can cause more loneliness by reducing the frequency of human-to-human contact. It was reported, as early as a decade ago, that in Japan, some men preferred to be in relationships with virtual girlfriends (who were actually computer games), rather than a real person, as they found it easier to do so.
Seeking perfection
Elyakim Kislev, a senior lecturer from Hebrew University terms this phenomenon as Relationships 5.0, where a new reality begins to emerge with the integration of technology into our personal relationships. Many thoughts emerge when we think of the reality of a human-robot relationship, one of which is perhaps the excess perfectionism that we seek as human beings, not just in others but also in ourselves. Recent research illustrates that in the past three decades, the drive for perfectionism has grown significantly. Although most people do not see perfectionism as a problem, it can be potentially dangerous and is also linked to chronic stress and depression among other illnesses.
One of the reasons that the hero of the movie could not get over the robot was also perhaps because she seemed to ‘guarantee’ a level of satisfaction. In a scene in the second half of the film, she chooses an inappropriate time to hug him, annoyed by which he switches her off - something that you definitely cannot do with a human. Some people who have chosen to choose non-human intimacy partners, have confessed that they did so because they wanted a companion that would not judge them, did not want any surprises, and yet, they faced disappointments or heartbreaks when the software updates or the laws affected the AI chatbots’ sexual conversations.
It seems that robots, artificial intelligence and deep integration of technology into our personal lives has become increasingly inevitable. While technology can definitely benefit mankind by bringing people closer together, it is we who must be careful not to get sucked into the tech vortex. The hero of the movie exclaimed towards the end, that he would prefer an imperfect human being to a perfect robot, having perhaps learnt his lesson. The point is, have we learnt ours?
Rashmi Mehta
