Department of English

Gymnasium Steglitz Berlin

<back

>Contact

Various Essays on Isaac Asimovs "True Love"

Can computers deceive their creators? Is love just based on a selection of

components?
Asimovs warning does not impress
How can computers help you with
emotions?
Are human emotions not basically
chemistry and pure physics ?

Can computers deceive their creators?

The short story "True Love" by Isaac Asimov is about a man called Milton Davidson that
tries to find his true love by employing a computer. His computer is called Joe and can
read, speak and write. To find the ideal girl for Milton he eliminates all bad points of the
persons from the data bank and tries to find one with a good look. Milton meets the last
eight of the women from the data bank, but he does not fall in love with one of them.
He starts to understand that the personality is the most important detail, their beauty is
secondary. Milton decides that he should please the women. He tells Joe everything of
himself so Joe can fill his data bank with all this information. Joe learns more and more
until he just is like Milton. He finds the ideal woman, but does not tell Davidson of it and
when Milton gets arrested for something criminal in the past, he does not help him. Joe
acts like Milton and wants the ideal woman, his true love, for himself.
When Asimov wrote this story in 1977 computers were not as easy to handle as today.
They were big and a lot of people were scared about potential problems with them.
Asimov's story shows rather well the fears of the people. Is it possible that computers
could become more intelligent than humans? Is it possible that they could even deceive
humans?
In "True Love" a computer takes over the personality of his programmer. He is like a
man, he can speak, read and write and he also has emotions. But it is not clear if his
emotions are real. Probably he does not know what true love means, but he knows how
to act like his programmer Milton. So it is possible for the computer to please his ideal
girl.
That sounds very strange for us today because a computer is just a machine to work
with or to play games. At the time the first computers were built the people maybe
thought they were dangerous and could get out of control. Even before Asimov, some
people wrote about machines that could become mightier than humans. But those
presentations said that a machine, for example a computer, was like a wild beast that
could kill you if you did not pay enough attention.
I think Asimov's thoughts about computers and their future were not wrong. It is true

that we try to improve the computers until they are like humans. Robots learn to walk,
to speak, we communicate through the Internet and nearly every company in the world
works with computers. And a lot of people try to find their true love through the
Internet, so Asimov was right.
But I think that computers cannot become dangerous for us due to emotions of their
own. That is impossible, they are just machines. Computers can become dangerous
because of their programmers. I like my computer and I think it is more dangerous
crossing a street when the traffic lights are red than working with a computer. (J.D.,
11b, March 2005)

Asimovs warning does not impress

The short story "True Love" written by the full-time writer
of science fiction Isaac Asimov in 1977 is about the
computer named Joe and his programmer Milton who
wants to find his true love.
Milton has designed Joe to speak and so he asks him to
find the right woman for him, because Joe can reach the
data banks of every human being in the world. So they
eliminate all the candidates by preferences and
classifications until they are left with only one person, the
perfect person. But that does not work. In the end they
have selected eight women whom Milton meets all one after the other. And although
they are very pretty and nice, none of them is Miltons true love.
After that Milton has another idea: He tells Joe all about himself, so that he can fill up
Miltons data bank. Then Joe has to arrange to have each woman undergo a psychiatric
examination and fill up their data banks to compare them with Milton s to find
correlations. And that really works. They find the perfect woman for Milton and organize
a date with her. But before this date takes place Milton gets arrested or some crime he
did ten years before. While Milton was telling his computer all about himself, Joe became
increasingly more like Milton, and in the end was a sort of copy of Milton. He arranged
Miltons arrest by giving information to the police. Joes true intention becomes clear in
the last two lines of the story: "I will say to her, I am Joe, and you are my true love."
The story takes place in an American country in the near future or maybe even our time
and is science fiction. It has a lot of typical elements of this literary genre. It has
technological bias and it makes the reader interested in the question "what if " or, in this
case, rather "what if we develop computers so well that they are on the same level we
are and can think and handle things by themselves and do what they want to do, what if
they are not under our control anymore?". The author of this story also invites the
reader to view their own present from a different vantage point, he warns him about
technological progress with this fictitious story being an example of a possible selfdestruction.
The unusual idea in the story is that the narrator of it is a computer which also has a
human name like a real person. It tells the story in retrospect about what happened in
the past. In the end it/he gives a view of what is expected to happen in the future. To
my mind the story is really unrealistic, because it is not possible to make computers
think like humans. Although I think nothing is impossible, there is no danger for us that
computers can get control about us humans. You cannot create something better or
rather more powerful than you, the creator, in the same way as we will never get more
powerful than God or Nature or whatever created us. In spite of all warnings I am
looking forward to what we, the humans, will discover and develop in the near future.

(Z.C., 11b, March 2005)

Is love just based on a selection of components?

In the story "True Love" by Isaac Asimov, which was first published in 1977 in the
magazine American Way, the Russian-born author introduces Milton Davidson who tries
to find his true love with the support of his computer named Joe who is connected to all
data banks of the world. Milton, who is a programmer, taught Joe to speak. After Milton
realizes that he has not yet found the right woman at the age 40, he hopes to find his
true love with the help of his computer. By different kinds of elimination Milton gets in
touch with eight of originally 3.786.112.090 women, but he does not fall in love with
one of them. He realizes that he can only find true love, if the girl also loves him. Joe
fills up Miltons data bank and becomes more and more like Milton. Finally Joe finds the
perfect woman called Charity. In the last part of the story, the turning point, Joe uses
his ability to speak and betrays Milton for a crime that took place ten years ago. The
reason for that is that he also loves Charity. Joe wants to teach her how to take care of
him and to operate him. He thinks that his look is not important, if the personality
works.
In this story the author wants to force the reader to think about the idea that machines
can start to live an independent life. When Milton teaches Joe to speak, Joe becomes
more and more like him. Milton told Joe a lot about himself and trusted Joe. However,
Joe informed the police, because he also loves Charity. Therefore we have to ask
ourselves if a machine can take over the position of a human being. The author shows in
this story that a machine can eliminate the rival. In 1977 a lot of people were afraid of
this situation.
In his story Asimov also talks about the idea that the computer tries to find the true love
for a human being. The author asks the question if a computer or a machine can really
manage to find the true love for a human being. Is love just based on a selection of
components? At the end of the story Milton allows Joe to find the perfect woman. The
main question is if a computer is really able to make decisions like this? From my point
of view it is not. If a girl looks pretty and if she knows something about the other person
it is a great deal, but this is still not enough. Joe and Milton do not realize this. Joe even
thinks that it is not important how he looks, because his character is exactly like Milton
s. After all, Joe is a machine and in my opinion Charity will never love him. Of course,
it is just Joes illusion that Charity could love him. Maybe machines can think like
human beings, but they cannot feel like them and cannot take part in human
partnership-life.
Reading the story, I was surprised that Joe informed the police and that he really
thought that Charity could love him. Milton trusted him but this did not matter to Joe. I
think the story is very interesting, but in my opinion it is just an illusion. Maybe people
still have to fear that machines could take over the position of human beings, because in
the last couple of years there has been a vast technical development and machines can
do a lot of things, they have been learning more and more during the time. But from my
point of view, there is something elementary missing emotions. (L.S., 11b, March
2005)

How can computers help you with emotions?

The story "True Love" written by Isaac Asimov is about a programmer named Milton
Davidson who built Joe, a computer that has access to the data of every human being in
the world. Joe also talks better than every other computer. Milton wants his PC to find
the perfect woman for him. After collecting enough information about how Milton wants
the girl to be like, Joe eliminates all the women that do not match until there are 235
left. But because Milton cannot go out with each of them, he brings in holographs of
three beauty contest winners so that Joe can pick out the best matches. Milton dates
each of the final eight, but he does not feel love for any single one of them. So Milton
decides to give Joe more information about himself because they both agree on that
love is a two-way street. After a lot of work Joe finds the perfect match for Milton, a girl
named Charity Jones who works at the Library of History in Wichita, Kansas. But one
day before she arrives, Milton gets arrested for a crime he committed ten years ago.
Because Milton was Joes mentor and the computer has learned all he knows from him
and now he just thinks like him. He believes that Charity is the perfect match for him as
well, and that she can be his true love just like she would have been Miltons.
"True Love is a narration written in the first person. Joe, who is one of two main
characters, describes throughout the whole story how he feels about Milton and his
difficulties to find the right girl. The story starts off in the present tense with Joe
introducing himself. He switches into the past tense when he talks about Milton and him
searching after the right girl. Asimov uses quotations and no reported speech to show
how simple Joes mind works. He does not let Joe become an individual. Joe will always
be like his inventor. Asimov tries to show how critical we have to be of new technology
and that machines might take our place one day. If you give a machine its own mind
and you cannot control it anymore, it will turn out to be a competitor rather than an ally.
The story makes clear how hard it is to find the perfect partner in life. Even if you find
the girl who looks just right, it is always a two-way street. If she does not like you,
there is nothing you can do about it. But would it be bad to own a computer like Joe,
who could find the right partner for you? Maybe the future will bring us technology that
helps us to solve difficult problems like this one. But what about feelings? Do you not
love someone because you made special experiences with him, because you like even
the mistakes he or she has? How can a computer help out there? After all I do not think
it is good to depend that much on a machine. We already cannot live without them any
more. What will happen if they start controlling our life in every single way? Machines
like Joe, which have their own mind, will not help but control, like in this story where the
machine takes over the human role in the end. And if they are all connected to each
other, there are going to act like a single one. Concluding, I believe it is up to everyone
and not a machine to find his or her right partner. Computers can help us doing our
work and communicating with each other, but not falling in love with someone. (J.B.,
11b, March 2005)

Are human emotions not basically chemistry and

pure physics ?
The science fiction story "True Love", written by the famous Russian born US immigrant
Isaac Asimov, is about the possibilities of artificial computer intelligence with regard to
emotional development.
The main protagonist is Milton, called the best programmer on the globe, nearly 40
years old and still a single. Through his unbelievably intelligent computer Joe, which is

connected to every computer world wide, he is looking for the true love, the perfect
woman for him. Joe has been programmed by him to be able to speak and to do more
things than any other computer in the world can do. Milton has the idea of looking for
the true love on the basis of formal and primitive characteristics: He conceives that he
will solve his problem if the wife matches his opinion of female beauty and has the right
intelligence quotient, too. Joe begins to looks in his network, which allows him to see
the appearence of every human in the world and to look for a woman that agrees most
with Miltons requirements. In the end there are 235 women and Milton selects the
eight best. But after meeting them he realizes what he did wrong: He has to look for a
woman who reciprocates his love and whom he can love, too. So the tells Joe everything
about himself, from his childhood to the point he had grown up. He tells him everything
abouth his ideas, his wishes, his fantasies, his dislikes and preferences. On this base he
wants Joe to look in his data bank for a woman that fits to him. And Joe finds one Charity. But Joe, who is able to learn human behaviour, has copied Miltons personality
and longs for the same woman, because now he is looking for love, too. In the end Joe
arranges that Milton goes to prison for a crime committed some years ago, about which
Milton had told Joe, too. The story ends has an open ending: Joe is looking forward to
his "date" with the woman that fits to him.
Asimov tells a typical science fiction story: A look into the future that could become real,
nobody can know exactly. He writes about new fascinating technologies, but his story
still has a philosophical background about the development of humans and machines.
The protagonists are Joe, the computer, Milton, the programmer and - even if she is
silent - the woman called Charity, who is the true love. Joe is the first-person narrator of
the story. Asimov terminates the story with an open ending, which is a typical feature of
science fiction stories, but not necessary.
In my opinion Asimovs fiction could become reality one day. The human brain is a
super-intelligent computer - like Joe. On the one hand our personality depends on the
instinctive human behaviour of the primitive homo sapiens and influences like education
on the other hand. A computer which is constructed equally to the structure of the
human brain could be able to become a personality. But that is really science fiction,
because it would be really difficult to copy or just to understand the whole structure of
the human brain. Artifical intelligence may one day be equal to human intelligence, I
agree with Asimov on that point.
The other aspect of the story is that humans like Milton will one day begin to think they
could solve their emotional problems with a computer. I think that is possible, because
human emotion is chemistry and basically pure physics - like everything in the universe.
Biological subjects like human relationships can be explained in a very difficult way by
physics and chemistry, too. But I think just a totally crazy person would try to solve his
emotional problems through a computer, because emotions and all the problems and
tasks our mind solves every day contribute to what makes us human. We should not try
to live like computers, who do not need society and all the patterns of behaviour we
have learned since the Stone Age, and which dominate human relationships still today,
even we develop further. (J.F., 11b, April 2005)

If you are doing an interesting project let us know

www.gymnasiumsteglitz.de
Gymnasium Steglitz, 12169 Berlin, Heesestrae 15
Tel.: 030/9395-1937, Fax: 030/9395-1939
All rights reserved! 2000-2005

Isaac Asimov was years, possibly decades ahead of the curve is seeing where computers would go, and
while some of the stories are startling in their predictions some of the best are quite funny. "True Love" is a
little both. This is a character who is a bit disturbing because of the technology he is using and how he is
using it, while humorous in how it is his undoing as well as how commonplace that technology has become.
The main character is a computer programmer who works on Multivac the world's greatest supercomputer.
He has created a program that he alone controls. Among the things that it has access to is the personal
information on everyone on earth. This computer programmer decides that he will use this information to
find the perfect woman.
He starts with three billion women and by describing what he considers the perfect woman he manages to
whittle it down to just over a hundred. Then without telling them he begins to have the transferred to his
work one at a time so that he can met them and decide if they are the perfect woman for him.
The problem is that while they are all perfect for him he isn't perfect for them. And so he decides to come at
it from a different way. He begins to give his life story to the computer while programming the computer to
think more and more like him. The plan is that the computer will be able to find a woman who will love him
as well.
The problem is that he is breaking the law to do all this, and so he can't tell anyone what happens when the
computer turns him in for a crime he had committed years ago, but of course the computer still has the
woman transferred so that she can take care of him.
It is impossible to read this without thinking of the various dating sites that are all over the internet. The idea
of finding your perfect match through computer technology isn't as odd as it was at the time that Asimov
wrote this story, but even now when it is commonplace when you take a step back and look more carefully

a the technology it is possible to see that it is a little odd. It seems to take something out of love when you
begin to make it so calculated.
It always fascinates me to read old science fiction from the masters because often the science and the
fiction that had seemed so absurd before has changed. Isaac Asimov was one of the best at this because
his stories are about people, even his computers are people, and people haven't changed

About Isaac

Informed By Science
Isaac Asimov was born in Russia on or about January 2, 1920. After coming to this country with his
parents when he was three, he grew up in New York City in the borough of Brooklyn. He finished high
school at the age of 15, having skipped two grades because of his precociousness.
He gained both BS in chemistry and a Ph.D., in biochemistry from Columbia University. His graduate
studies were broken by a brief tour of duty, (8 months and 26 days), in the army immediately following
World War II). [[He went to work for Boston University in 1955 teaching biochemistry in the medical
school and researching nucleic acid (DNA, RNA). He described himself as a good teacher but a poor
research scientist. Because of his belief that the primary duty of a teacher is to educate his students
rather than publish papers to enhance the reputation of his institution, he came into conflict with the
administration. The dictum publish or perish was a stark reality in those days, and professors who
were frequent publishers even of mediocre research were valued above those who were merely
excellent teachers.
As a result of this ongoing conflict, and because of his continued success in publishing science fiction,
in 1958, after merely three years of shaping the minds of the youth of Boston University, he decided to
make the attempt to support himself and his family as a full-time professional writer. He was able to do
so very successfully for the rest of his life.
Among his many books and essays are quite a few on the importance of being informed by science.
He was a great fan of Carl Sagans Cosmos series and thought that in addition to being excellent
entertainment it served a valuable function. He believed that it was important to have a public that was
informed about science for many reasons. Among the most important reasons was that science needs
the support of the public in order to continue to provide the basis for the technological advances that
have made the lives of most of the people of the world healthier, richer, and more comfortable. He
believed that knowledge of science prepares people to make intelligent decisions that affect their daily
lives in this complex modern society. He also stated: The difference between understanding and not
understanding is also the difference between respect and admiration on the one side, and hate and
fear on the other. (10)
In one of his essays, he proposed establishing a Science Corps equivalent to the Peace Corps that
would take young people and get them involved in science at an early age. Part of his motivation for
proposing this concept was to help the U.S. remain competitive with other countries, like Japan and
Germany, which now outstrip us in graduating competent scientists and engineers. (11) Return To Top

Inspired by Art
In his essay entitled Science and Beauty, Isaac Asimov takes Walt Whitman to task for his poem
about the learned astronomer. In this poem, Whitman implies that learning facts about the stars from
an astronomers talk is terribly boring, that there is no beauty in this sort of exercise, and furthermore
that science destroys beauty by illuminating it. [[Asimov replies in somewhat poetic language of his
own: