Human-Robot Love and Marriage

An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC has an article on the impending robo-human coupling: 'My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots,' artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience."

Comments

look, flying cars, in the sky, right now!

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's one field that's progressed fairly craply since the '70s, it's AI (and we were predicting this sort of stuff then - by the start of the 21st century). Yes, we have working algorithms to solve specific problems, and a metric tonne of unconnected papers on the nature of intelligence from every discipline, but the general question of producing something capable of developing human intelligence has not been tackled successfully.

An academic in a technical field - or, indeed, the average "expert", to be differentiated from a visionary or "big thinker" - himself acts like a very advanced robot in his field; he has got where he is because he has a great memory for previous results, and a great ability to pattern match to apply to similar problems. If this individual is in AI, he creates models in his own image, which are then doomed to be highly specific.

Humans are more general than this, simply because we're not singularly goal-directed as all these models assume. Put another way: imprison a baby in a bubble and tell him that his only task in life is to compose beautiful music, and he will not - just as non-ethological experiments on primates usually fail to witness intelligent behaviour, because there is no incentive to be intelligent in a cage.

AI needs the sherpherding of visionaries, not necessarily scientists. Certainly not single-minded-goal-directed scientists.

Re:Mass

[tinrobot]

I've often observed that the people most freaked out by homosexuality are repressing it within themselves.

Nah homoseuality isn't natural .. but

[OzPeter]

Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity
Bruce Bagemihl
St Martins Press, 1999
ISBN 0-312-19239-8 (hc)
ISBN 0-312-25377-X (pbk)

750 pages of documented animal same sex behaviour from around the world covering pretty well covering every area of fauna speaks for itself.

Which always makes me ask questions when I hear people say that homeosexuality is a choice.

If it is free choice, and animals perform homosexual acts, does that mean that animals have free will and the ability to make such a choice?

Re:Nah homoseuality isn't natural .. but

[OzPeter]

Well it is a specious argument .. its about other species!!

But I would argue that it is not a specious argument. Conservatives argue that homesexuality is a choice. A choice implies the ability to make a decision. But the conservative opinion also seems to be that only humans have the ability to make a free choice. So after documenting that animals partake in homosexual behaviour either you have to accept that homesexuality is not a choice, but a part of nature, or you have to concede that animals are capable of making choices in the same manner that humans are. You can't have it both ways.

Re:Nah homoseuality isn't natural .. but

[s4m7]

The question was not about whether homosexuality was "right or wrong," but whether it was natural or not. Perfectly natural, but so is murder, and so are eating and crapping. The "Naturality" of something has nothing to do with its moral rectitude.

No. And not for "conservative" reasons.

[pla]

My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots

Using an artificial device for sexual purposes does not equal marriage, people.

Marriage exists for one reason, and one reason only - Succession of property rights. Allowing humans and robots to marry would mean allowing robots to own land. No more, no less.

You can talk about medical power of attorney (would that even apply to a robot?); a stable environment for raising children (definitely wouldn't apply); a religious institution to make sex okay to your friend in the sky (yeah, like the fundies wouldn't just love this one); but all those come secondary to the state sanctioning a legal contract between two humans.

Much bigger issue than that of marriage

[It doesn't come easy]

Marriage is a contract. It implies enforcible rights for all parties which are part of the contract. One can already have sex with a machine without requiring marriage. Marriage is much more than just sex. Were human society to allow "marriage" to a machine, it would also have to have accepted many other rights that go hand in hand with the concept of a "person". And even 40 years from now I would bet that human society will have a fundamentally difficult time giving a machine the same rights as a human. For example, imagine your 12 year old daughter being given a death sentence for deliberately turning an AI program off improperly and "killing" the program. Would you be willing to say the life of the AI program is equal to your daughter's life? Unlikely. People may call it marriage but it won't be, any more than wrecking an AI driven car will be involuntary AI-slaughter.

Obscure Blade Runner Reference:

[grumling]

Deckard: She's a replicant, isn't she?
Tyrell: I'm impressed. How many questions does it usually take to spot them?
Deckard: I don't get it Tyrell.
Tyrell: How many questions?
Deckard: Twenty, thirty, cross-referenced.
Tyrell: It took more than a hundred for Rachael, didn't it?
Deckard: She doesn't know.
Tyrell: She's beginning to suspect, I think.
Deckard: Suspect? How can it not know what it is?

Tyrell: "More human than human" is our motto.

Re:DON'T DATE ROBOTS

[Bluesman]

Gotta disagree with this one. And you can never, ever, ever program a robot to act like a woman. There's a simple reason -- women do not operate according to any logical thought process, nor have they been given the gift of free will.

If you've been married more than five years, you've had this conversation, especially if you've had a child:

Wife: "Booohooohooohooo!"
Husband: "What's wrong?"
Wife: "Nothing. *sniff*"
Husbad: "Really?"
Wife: "*sniff* Yeah, I'm fine."
Husband: "Then why are you crying?"
Wife: "I don't know!"

There's just no way you can anticipate or train things like this. I think the closest you can get with a robot is to train it, then take a baseball bat to some of the circuitry.

But this is a good thing. You seriously don't want your robot to go out to a "party" with other robots and come home having spent $160 on five boutique candles because they came with a free gift in a pink bag.