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.