AI researcher predicts Massachusetts will approve robot marriages around 2050 |
I’ll be 82 years old in 2050 and, good health willing, able to see if artificial intelligence researcher David Levy’s prediction about robot marriages comes true or putters to the earth like my Simpsons movie prediction.
Levy argues that psychologists have identified roughly a dozen basic reasons why people fall in love, “and almost all of them could apply to human-robot relationships. For instance, one thing that prompts people to fall in love are similarities in personality and knowledge, and all of this is programmable. Another reason people are more likely to fall in love is if they know the other person likes them, and that’s programmable too.”
Levy’s prediction isn’t nearly as juicy as Henrik Christensen, founder of European Robotics Research Network who says people will be having sex with robots by 2011. If by now you’re not saying Bicentennial Man aloud you lose sci-fi geek points.
Indeed the movie with Robin Williams playing a robot who’s 200 year journey to become a human belongs in this story. While we think about what humans want to do with robots, when will robots want to become humans? I’m not expecting that question to be answered in my lifetime, but it’s conceivable happening in one or two generations of my survivors. With the massive amount of storage space continuing to come down in price, it won’t be too long before we can carry around enough storage to record our entire life.
As for robots becoming more human-like in not only appearance but desire? It’s not a question of “could” to me but when? And if they become more like us as in the movie with Robin Williams, will they also want to face our mortality? On its face the robot sex and robot marriage thing seems a bit weird, but it’s the underlying social questions that are more intriguing.
Would you want to live forever if you could? It’s a fascinating subject whether or not we might want to be immortal I covered a bit back in June 2006.
Robot sex or robot marriage seem weird? Nah, those topics aren’t that futuristic, let’s talk about robot sentience. AI still has a long, long way to go.
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Thats funny. I was reading somewhere that in Malaysia or something they allow divorce via text message.
Comment by ^Lestat — December 21, 2007 @ 8:45 am PST
When most science fiction writers fifty years ago envisioned the earth fifty years in the future, they pictured a place completely unlike the earth in 1957, so radically ‘evolved’ as to be unrecognizable.
The reality of now is quite different from what they imagined– except for the proliferation of sky scrapers in big cities like Shanghai– most places look pretty much the same as they did then.
I expect that fifty years from now it will be the same with robots– they’ll be more human like, and people may even be having sex with them, but I doubt the sexual landscape will change that much.
I really don’t think there’s any danger of robots evolving ‘desire’, or any other emotion, and even the fanciest, most human-like sexbots would most likely be little more than technologically sophisticated blow up dolls.
Comment by Vince Williams — December 21, 2007 @ 9:37 am PST
There are two problems with robots, Vince: memory and AI. The first problem will be gone much sooner than 40+ years. The second, artificial intelligence, I agree with you, is going to take much longer. Won’t be in my lifetime, but I could conceive in my children’s or their children’s lifetimes.
AI has been an extremely tough nut to crack, but it is improving.
Comment by TDavid — December 21, 2007 @ 9:51 am PST
I think robot sex will seem more weird the more sentient they become — the more they become like us, the less we’ll feel entitled to require their services whether they like it or not. When we finally make the shift to considering them equals, then we’ll also have to flirt with them first, buy them dinner, and wait to be asked to come in.
Comment by Sterling Camden — December 24, 2007 @ 3:25 pm PST
Wait until they start shouting for equal rights…
Comment by ^Lestat — December 26, 2007 @ 6:45 am PST
There are so many sensory variables in the sexual experience beyond simple mechanics.
Some, like auditory cues, would be programmable, but what about smells, tastes, and tactile sensations?
How would you replicate those important parts of the sexual experience?
I would think it’d be very difficult to create a reasonable robot facsimile of kissing, for example.
Even something as mundane as saliva has its role to play.
I’m thinking, gross as it may sound, that it would probably be technologically easier to re-animate human bodies à la Frankenstein’s monster than to create a satisfactorily pleasurable robot surrogate.
Resurrecting brain activity might not even be necessary, since nerve impulses could be stimulated artificially, and would be programmable, I suppose.
That would open up a whole new Pandora’s box of medical and ethical considerations.
Comment by Vince Williams — December 26, 2007 @ 9:21 am PST
I don’t think there is any part of the human body that will not be fully simulated at some point in the future, right down to the spit. OTOH, the psycho-social cues may be much more difficult to program for.
Later, when they get the vote and hold public offices, they might start programming themselves for their own sexual preferences and leave us begging.
Comment by Sterling Camden — December 26, 2007 @ 10:53 am PST
i’ve been hearing about robotic sex since my college years. it’s not a new concept at all. as for some decent level of AI, well that is going to take a long time. It will be interesting to see what the next 20 years brings. technology is moving so fast and yet, we can’t conquer things like cancer.
Comment by paul — January 2, 2008 @ 11:03 am PST