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

DON'T DATE ROBOTS

[katterjohn]

This message brought to you by the Space Pope

Re:DON'T DATE ROBOTS

[Maxo-Texas]

Actually, you can reprogram just about any living thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

In fact, most couples are constantly training each other. The problem is that in order to train someone, you need to decide what the desired behavior is, then decide on how to reward them, and finally to avoid being trained yourself. Random rewards work best.

I think that operant conditioning is why a lot of couples do not have sex. (NOT the only reason)

Each time they are rejected, it is a punishment. There has to be an optimum odds of approval (over 90% but below 100% I think.) Finally, the behavior extinguishes. It's odd because even 1 in 6 food pellets can keep a rat going but humans and sex seems to require higher reinforcement to keep a high rate going. Our "discouraged" rate seems to be once every three to five weeks.

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.

Don't Date Robots!

[orkysoft]

My god, he hasn't seen the video!

Re:Don't Date Robots!

[lostsatellite82]

Good this they only have Lucy Liu so far. The day they start making Natalie Portman, the world stops producing babies.

Re:Don't Date Robots!

[orkysoft]

No, it would just prevent the Slashdot trolls from producing babies, which isn't much of a change at all.

Re:This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I worked with one fellow who had his penis injured by a computer.

Some of IBM's mid-range systems from the late 1980s (actually quite large, physically, by today's standards...) had a circular opening about 2 inches in diameter. This opening was near some circuitry or device that would heat up rather quickly. So with the help of some duct tape and foam, this hardware admin fashioned himself a warm vagina of sorts, right on the side of our IBM system.

We're not sure how long he had a "relationship" with the system, but it came to an end one day when during lunch he ran over to a group of us, with his hands covered in blood. Apparently the foam vagina tore, and a piece of metal got him on the penis shaft. He went to the hospital, and was okay in the end. But he didn't really last long with the company after that...

This was a triumph

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS!

Remember, your companion cube will never stab you.

Re:stupid

[sharkey]

Why not marry your lawnmower?

YOU try sticking your dick in the lawnmower, THEN you'll know.

Obligatory Lucy LiuBot...

[Whatsmynickname]

Liubot: Oh, Fry, I love you more than the moon and the stars and the - poetic image number 37 not found

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

[HiThere]

One thing to remember is that when it comes to AI, computers are still underpowered. Things are just now getting to the point where small groups with moderate funding can start serious experimentation. Up until this decade there's been what.. 5 people in the world? ..who had adequate computer power to test their theories on anything except toy problems. This decade that number's going to explode!

N.B.: Even this decade the computers will be underpowered for anything serious...but high end user-space systems will be able to tackle more than toy problems. At this point we start getting cars that can drive themselves. (DARPA contest to the contrary, we aren't quite there yet.) We might also start getting useful conversations in a clipped form of basic English. (The problem there is that the programs don't have enough real world knowledge to operate outside of specialist domains...so they're quite brittle.)

But today's interactive systems probably have less computing power on the average than does a mosquito. So it's not too surprising that no real AI has materialized. The question is what's the minimal capacity for understanding natural language...unfortunately, this seems to be equivalent to "how much knowledge of the world do you need to have in order to operate resiliently?" A depressingly large number. But a lot of English can't even be parsed without understanding what's being talked about. So people makes guesses until one of them turns a bunch of phonemes into something sensible. [Note that you can't even get word boundaries without knowing "sort of" what's being said.])

Now many techniques that were originally created for artificial intelligence ARE being used regularly and all over the programming space...but those aren't AI.

Also consider that some important pieces, e.g. expert systems, aren't useful outside of the proper context, but are very powerful within it. But these are *COMPONENTS*. It's like complaining because your car's transmission isn't a good vehicle. (OTOH, this isn't entirely a neutral statement. Many of these pieces were oversold by early promulgators who believed that they'd found the last needed piece. It's not a situation of "No blame.".)

My current projections put extensively useful AI around 2020, and human level AI around 2030. There may be one or two early arrivals, but computer power necessary to embody them won't be cheap enough.

OTOH, the early arrivals are very important. AIs may be programs, but they also need to learn about the world. This takes YEARS. A decade is pushing it, especially for a new entity who doesn't have a well-defined position in the social matrix. But once it is created, it's a program, and can easily be copied to multiple machines. So if a company creates and raises an AI around '17 (when the equipment for doing so is still too expensive for anything outside a research lab), by '23 (when the const is considerably more reasonable) the entity can be emplaced into, say, a certain kind of new car that can drive itself and park itself, and come for you when you call for it, and protect itself against being stolen...and link itself back to the company for information and upgrades. The next model year they also come out with a wheelchair for quadriplegics that and care for them, assistant surgeons, and agricultural field workers. Experience about the world has been accumulating at a tremendous rate, so the next year they come out with a robot nanny (lots of miniaturization has been going on these last two years!). By the time we get to 2030, we have robot units that are as useful as people in *many* situations, and sessile units that are much more intelligent, but which also understand the world.

Things won't necessarily happen this way, but they could. If so, society will be coerced into an extremely rapid change. This change could take many different forms, from the extremely dystopian to the extremely utopian.

O, yes. And if any particular country should decide to not

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.

a sex robot with us already, disguised as a horse

[ofcourseyouare]

The article dwells on marriage with robots, which I can't see happening anytime soon; but robots as a replacement for human prostitutes? Absolutely.

The oldest profession is driven by one of humanity's most basic problems (there just aren't enough sexy people to go round) but has lots of downsides (disease, wasted lives, etc). Sex robots seem like a great solution -- provided they are realistic enough to keep the customer satisfied.

So, naturally, we need a X-prize for this problem: a competition for a sex robot that can pass a sexual Turing test. The original Turing Test was for a machine able to hold a conversation indistinguishable from human conversation. We clearly need a sexual Turing test, for a machine able to generate a sexual experience indistinguishable from sex with a human.

I suggest we need two categories:
1) one for "fully autonomous" sex robots, driven by their own AI
2) the other category for "puppet robots" controlled remotely by human operators who would move the robot's limbs, speak through its mouth, etc.

Obviously to start with, robots in the puppet category could be much more realistic than those in the autonomous category. The job of being an operator would be very similar to the job of working on a sex chat line.

But even robots in the autonomous category might be reasonably convincing, even using current technology as used in Aibo or toys such as the "Fur Real Friends Butterscotch Pony".http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000F475PY/reamonsit-21/

Butterscotch is a soft pony toy costing $299 which responds if you stroke it etc. It's not a huge leap from this sort of reaction to the sort of response one would need for a sex robot. Just read the blurb for Butterscotch and replace in your mind the word "pony" with "girl" or "boy"...

With realistic animation, movement and sounds, this incredibly lifelike pony is a very special, once-in-a-lifetime friend. This adorable pony ...really 'comes alive' as she moves and responds to your loving care! Touch or talk to your pony and her head moves! As you continue to interact with her, watch her ears wiggle and her eyes blink! Be sure to take extra-special care of your pony. Feed her the carrot and groom her with her brush. Watch her swish her tail back and forth! She even whinnies and snorts, and will sniff your hand! Sit on your pony for a pretend ride...!

The sex robot is with us already; just currently disguised as a horse...

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.

Re:stupid

[adisakp]

I don't think mechanical love will hurt human marriage. In fact, mechanical love has been making human marriages work better since at least the 1880's and possibly as early as 1653. And just a point in fact, the early ancestors of loving robots have been more common than toasters since 1917.

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.

Re:This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER...

[Man of E]

Do you take this robot to be your lawfully welded husband? I do

Fixed the typo for you.

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:a sex robot with us already, disguised as a hor

[dosius]

Shall we start an "XXX-Prize" then?

*runs*

-uso.

Re:No. And not for "conservative" reasons.

[Nf1nk]

We have personhood for corporations, why couldn't a machine qualify for personhood? Why couldn't a machine own something? If for some reason someone built a machine with interests outside of a primary function why couldn't a machine persue those interests?

Medical power of attorney? If I was a lonely old person having a robot caretaker that understood my wishes and could express them to medical personnel would be valuable.
A stable environment for children? Why not? Many children are raised horribly by TV, I see no reason that a child raised by a suitably programed robot could not be very well adjusted. This would have to be intricately programed, along more emotional lines than logical lines, but it could provide more consistent results than many people.
As for legal contracts between Man and machine, isn't that the next step in the EULA?

Re:stupid

[CynicalTyler]

Why not marry your lawnmower?

YOU try sticking your dick in the lawnmower, THEN you'll know. Better a lawnmower than my ex-girlfriend.

Never Again...

[Looshi]

...do I want to read a comment on Slashdot that starts with "I worked with one fellow who had his penis injured by a computer.".