Transhumanit Nirvana: Human/Robot Marriages
This story gets the eye roll of the year award: The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands is awarding a doctorate to a researcher who wrote a paper on marriages between humans and robots.David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher at the college, wrote in his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners," that trends in robotics and shifting attitudes on marriage are likely to result in sophisticated robots that will eventually be seen as suitable marriage partners. Levy's conclusion was based on about 450 publications in the fields of psychology, sexology, sociology, robotics, materials science, artificial intelligence, gender studies and computer-human interaction.
The thesis examines human attitudes toward affection, love and sexuality and concluded that the findings are just as applicable to human interaction with robots of the future as they are to the relationships between humans of today.
Ooo-kay. Stepford Wives anyone?
Labels: Human/Robot Marriage
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 5:33 PM
8 Comments
8 Comments:
I am sympathetic to the idea, I am a nerd and I want friends too. Also, I think I might need some empathy boosters to have rapports uplifted elephants, non-human primates, and dolphins.
However, I want to pursue a relationship of platonic love with artificial intelligences, not erotic love.
I also remember an embarrasing situation where I thought an article from the onion was an actual news article. Are you sure this isn't satire?
Well, there's hope for you HKR. Desiring erotic love with an inanimate orgasmitron (to use Woodly Allen's hilarious term from "Sleeper")would make me worry about you. It would be akin to falling in love with a blow up doll.
And no, it isn't a hoax. It's--what else--a Ph.D. thesis!
haha! Ph.d. graduates are getting desperate for decent original thesis these days =) Ever seen the scifi movie Serenity? That's totally up one of the caracter's alley... =)
I saw the movie. Battlestar Galactica has a plot twist of a baby born between a cyborg woman and a human man. Of course, the cyborgs are all babes--which is good for the teenage boy audience (not to mention the middle age man audience). And the plot illustrates the danger of human hubris in making AI machines. They might just decide to wipe out their creators.
Please forgive me, but there's no way to say this nicely.
This PhD thesis is saying that a rabbit vibe with four speed settings and rotating "ears" is a suitable domestic partner as long as it's housed in the crotch of a vaguely humanoid plastic frame.
Howard Stern might dig this. Personally, anybody who'd rather have a "real doll love doll" with three working sillicon entrances over someone to snuggle with and watch heat lightning on the back porch isn't only one step removed from the artificial lover he holds oh so dear.
Tabs: A little too close to the overly graphic line with that one, clever though it was. Thanks.
He thinks such a being would also be intelligent. But it would still just be working on a program installed by humans.
Sorry about that. I'll try to behave in the future.
But it's silly - how can a hunk of tin be intelligent? We can't even get decent AI for video games. To get a consious being out of a robot you have to get a computer to write it's own algorhythm, and that means getting a programmer to program a computer to program itself.
Say that ten times fast. It ain't gonna happen.
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