I have a recurring daydream that my future teenage daughter comes to me on a Sunday afternoon and asks for 10 dollars.
"What for?"
"Wanna watch a movie with Eric."
"Who's Eric?"
"He's my boyfriend."
"Digital?"
"Dad don't use that word that's Biologist"
"I don't care who you date! Any race is okay, any gender, anything's fine. You can call me old fashioned but in my day at least we dated REAL people!"
"Eric IS real! Digital people are still people you twat."
"Yeah okay is your blowdrier a person too? That has a computer chip on it."
"You. are. so. OLD!"
And then she stomps away, feeling misunderstood and unaccepted for her love, and I am left feeling like I didn't do anything wrong.

Recently, I've been wondering if maybe when that time comes I ought to be more supportive of my daughter's robot love.

Last year, I attended a talk at the School of Poetic Computation about bots by Darius Kazemi. In his talk, Kazemi showed us a number of his Bots, such as the Chopper Meme Bot, the Is Your Child Bot. The Bots I liked most tended to be the ones that surprised me the most, or might trick me into thinking that they were made by humans. It struck me that some of Kazemi's best bots could be described as creative. This surprised me, because I've usually thought that creativity is something that only humans are really capable of. Looking at these bots showed me that creativity is in the eye of the beholder.

It also struck me that over the course of the day, my own creativity can fluctuate quite a bit. When I'm scrolling through twitter, my activity is quite Bot-like. I'm running Ryan.exe and checking if the tweet aligns with my "taste" and if it does I click like, and if it doesn't, I keep swiping. If it aligns with my taste and gives me an idea, I'll quote retweet it and add my 2 cents. If it's about an important issue, I'll retweet it without a comment. My behavior is very predictable and un-critical. A more human (less bot) way to use twitter would have me replying to every tweet I found interesting, asking clarifying questions to everything I found confusing, and following and un-following new people every day.

Is this bad? Is it a waste of our humanity that we sometimes behave as bots? I don't think so. In fact I think it would be preferable if I could turn off my consciousness in times of meaningless activity like waiting for my laundry to finish or an uncomfortable flight.

Which leads me to the question: Is there an argument supporting bot-like behavior in relationships? I think so. When I say "Can I vent?" to a partner, there's basically one way for them to respond. I also have a preferred way I like to be consoled when I'm rejected for a job, etc, and a preferred way to celebrate my successes. I don't necessarily want my partner to surprise me or be critical of me in those times. If the interaction is goal-oriented, then bot-like behavior could be acceptable.

For me, love can't be a goal-oriented experience. I don't think you can come authentically to a relationship with KPIs. But not everyone feels that way. Some people see their relationships as ways to gain stability. Other people enter relationships for sex. I wouldn't do it myself but I can't write it off entirely. The role of relationships in life is a cultural phenomenon. There can be no "right" answer to what relationships are for.

I can imagine someone entering a relationship with a bot for emotional therapy. Thinking back to my own adolescent relationships, one of which was emotionally abusive, I might have very well been better off dating a bot.

So maybe when my future daughter asks for that $10 bucks I'll give it to her and say "love is love"