Seduced By A Robot

08/05/17 • 31 min

OK Computer, seduce me. What happens when Japanese scientists try to programme an AI to give love advice? Are we going to be able to talk to robots in our lifetimes and have them say anything that makes an earthly lick of sense? Should you stop dating and learn how to programme instead? On this episode of physical attraction, we'll dive into the world of chatterbots and ask the question: can you be seduced by a robot?

Previous Episode

Unusually Hot: The Radiation Episode

What is radiation, and why won't it give you superpowers? How can we shield future generations from nuclear waste? What's the Oh-My-God particle? And, most crucially of all, how many bananas does it take to crush a person to death?

Physical Attraction takes a brief dive into the world of the electromagnetic spectrum and other forms of radiation. This week's chat-up line: Are you emitting light in the visible spectrum, because you're... unusually hot

Next Episode

Bonus: AI Shakespeare vs. AI Trump, call for Listener Questions

Bonus midweek edition, coming to you as close to LIVE as is humanly possible... Inspired by last week's episode, Seduced By A Robot, I downloaded a neural network and started to play around with it. See what happens when I feed it:

The works of Shakespeare
My Facebook conversation history
A biography of Stalin
and, of course, the twitter feed of President Trump

The neural network I used was the tensorflow char-rnn - an open-source framework by Chen Liang - and I got the idea from Janelle Shane, who you can find at www.lewisandquark.tumblr.com. Also: an appeal for listener questions! I want to do a listener questions episode, but to do that, I need... listener questions. Tweet us @physicspod, email us at [email protected]. Any question will be considered, no matter how outlandish, and the ones that work out will be featured on a future episode. Here are some ideas:

Something you wanted to know about physics
Something you wanted to know about seduction (which I achieve masterfully in 100% of cases)
Something that's been bothering you in your personal life or in the world at large
Hateful abuse phrased as a question

Send them in! And see you Saturday for a regular episode.