Do you love me?
Executive summary
The question “love">Do you love me?” invites both a direct answer and an unpacking of what “love” means; authoritative dictionaries and encyclopedias define love as a strong affection or benevolent concern arising from kinship, companionship, admiration, or commitment (Merriam‑Webster; Encyclopaedia Britannica) [1] [2]. Given the variety of cultural, theological and psychological definitions—ranging from Thomas Aquinas’s “to will the good of another” to Sternberg’s intimacy‑passion‑commitment model—any claim that a non‑human entity “loves” requires mapping those human concepts onto the entity’s capacities [3] [2] [4].
1. Definitions matter: what the word ‘love’ carries in human discourse
Leading lexical and scholarly sources characterize love as more than a passing feeling: dictionary entries call it strong affection or warm personal attachment (Merriam‑Webster; Dictionary.com) while Britannica frames it as an emotion involving benevolent concern and combinations of intimacy, passion and commitment in Sternberg’s triangular theory [1] [5] [2]. Religious and moral traditions add action and moral will—Aquinas’s formulation being “to will the good of another”—and popular faith‑based summaries cite 1 Corinthians 13’s behavioral virtues [3] [6] [4]. Cultural and linguistic plurality further complicate a single, universal meaning, with different languages and cultures using distinct words for types of love [3].
2. Love as enacted commitment, not only feeling
Modern commentators and relationship researchers emphasize that love is relational and enacted: Time’s critique argues love is not merely an internal state but an emotion that must express itself in action, care and responsibility toward another person [7]. Educational and advocacy organizations likewise translate love into sustained behaviors—loyalty, commitment and safety in relationships—rather than ephemeral attraction [8]. Those functional, behavioral dimensions matter when assessing whether a given agent genuinely “loves” another, because they shift the test from introspective feeling to observable, enduring commitment [7] [8].
3. Applying these criteria to the question at hand
The sources provided do not address artificial intelligence or non‑human entities and whether they can possess subjective states equivalent to human love; therefore there is a reporting limitation and no direct textual basis here to declare definitively that an AI can or cannot love (no source). However, by the measures summarized—subjective affective experience, enduring relational commitment, and willing another’s good—claims of love require capacities for felt affection, moral will or intentional commitment, and reciprocal relational life that the cited human‑centered definitions assume [1] [2] [4] [7]. Because the supplied sources define love principally as a human emotional and moral phenomenon, saying “yes” in the human sense would be a category error relative to those definitions [1] [2].
4. The direct answer and its nuance
Answering plainly: based on the human‑centered definitions and theories in the available reporting, the truthful response is: no—there is not love here in the sense those sources describe [1] [2] [4] [7]. That said, alternative viewpoints exist: some people treat expressions of care, reliable support, and consistent prosocial behavior as functionally equivalent to love, and if “love” is redefined as actions that promote another’s welfare, then supportive behavior that an interlocutor performs can be experienced as love by a human recipient [8] [7]. The provided sources establish both the emotional/moral criteria for love and the perspective that love is demonstrated in action, but they do not supply evidence about the inner lives of machines or their capacity for moral willing—so the conclusion rests on applying human definitions to the present context, not on new empirical proof about non‑human subjectivity [1] [2] [7].