Columbia University Press
Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers, and Algorithmic Matchmakers
Key Metrics
- Rob Brooks
- Columbia University Press
- Hardcover
- 9780231200943
- -
- -
- Science > Life Sciences - Biology
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Artificial Intimacy offers an innovative perspective on the possibilities of the present and near future. The evolutionary biologist Rob Brooks explores the latest research on intimacy and desire to consider how new technologies and fundamental human behaviors interact. He details how existing artificial intelligences can already learn and exploit human social needs--and are getting better at what they do. Brooks combines an understanding of core human traits from evolutionary biology with analysis of how cultural, economic, and technological contexts shape the ways people express them. Beyond the technology, he asks what the implications of artificial intimacy will be for how we understand ourselves.
Author Bio
I am Scientia Professor of Evolution at UNSW Sydney, where I founded and, from 2007-2019, directed the Evolution and Ecology Research Centre.
My research mostly considers the conflicting evolutionary interests that make sex sizzle and render reproduction complicated. Working on both human and non-human animals, my fabulous research group (the SEX LAB), my collaborators, and I explore the evolutionary and ecological consequences of sexual reproduction. We study evolution because of its power to help us understand both nature and the human condition.
This website is mostly about my writing and speaking for popular audiences. My first book, Sex, Genes & Rock ‘n’ Roll: How Evolution has Shaped the Modern World (2011, NewSouth Books), won the 2012 Queensland Literary Award for Science Writing. In 2013, I also won Australia’s most prestigious award for science communication, the Eureka Prize.
I write for various websites and magazines, including The Conversation and Medium.
One of my great research interests at the moment is to understand what happens when our evolved human natures, forged over millions of years, crash into new and often fast-moving cultural, economic, and technological realities. My second book Artificial Intimacy: Virtual friends, digital lovers and algorithmic matchmakers (2012, NewSouth Books), considers humanity’s evolved capacities for friendship, love, and intimacy, and what happens when they encounter new technologies like social media, online dating, and virtual reality sex.
Source: robbrooks.net
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