Humanity must embrace the positives that can be offered from connections with machines, a leading scientist is urging. Despite movies such as 2013’s ‘Her’ – which showed the perils faced by Joaquin Phoenix’s character from falling in love with an AI female companion – Professor Tony Prescott from the University of Sheffield argues the tech can play a crucial role in combating human loneliness. He says in his new book ‘The Psychology of Artificial Intelligence’: “In an age when many people describe their lives as lonely, there may be value in having AI companionship as a form of reciprocal soci…