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The Future of Love and Sex - Robots
nem75 writes "The New York Times has a review of British AI researcher David Levy's book 'Love and Sex with Robots'. He claims that within a span of about 50 years the day will come when people could actually fall in love with life-like robots. While this may seem far fetched at first, he has some pretty interesting views. 'He begins with what scientists know about why humans fall in love with other humans. There are 10 factors, he writes, including mystery, reciprocal liking, and readiness to enter a relationship. Why can't these factors apply to robots, too?' The case he builds goes much further though, and certainly provides food for thought." Update: 12/14 16:16 GMT by Z : This article is very similar to a discussion we had recently.
of why humans fall in love with humans.
Because they are not robots.
"I only speak the truth"
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A more interesting and likely scenario is tech improvements to sex toys. Imagine what something like Real Doll will be in 10 or 15 years time, and it's not much of a stretch to say you could have a sizeable portion of the population abandoning the dating scene. We already see that in small numbers due to webcams, and it seems reasonable to extrapolate the trend accelerating with accelerated improvements to the tech.
Rod Serling covered this in "The Lonely": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lonely_(The_Twilight_Zone)
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Thats fine until the robots figure out how to reproduce.
Anyone remember "Deamon Seed" or the more recent Battle Star Galatica.
Can you rape a robot?
Can a robot rape you?
Here's a criteria I'd use for a healthy love relationship that current machines cannot meet: It has to be capable of returning love. Do not love or hate anything that cannot love or hate you in return. Simple rule. Easy to forget.
...it makes fun of me. Or not.
Love = sacrifice? Love = emotional exposure? Love = risk of loss?
We can definitely satisfy those three criteria with a machine.
Sacrifice: I had to wait in line to get my Nintendo WII.
Emotional exposure: I tell my Nintendo WII that I love it and
Risk of loss: You can call it risk, but losing a loving relationship is 100% certain. All marriages end. 2/3rds in divorce, 1/3rd in death. And my Nintendo WII is going to breakdown and die.
No, those three criteria don't work to disqualify robots from love relationships.
No need to wait. Millions of people are having sex with robots today. The problem with people seeing this is that they they forget that robot is not synonymous with android, and they miss the fact that it is women that are the primary customers in the robot sex industry.
A vibrator IS a robot. It may be a simple one, but a robot none the less. The trick will be to see if they can get men to buy into robot sex as much as women have already embraced it.
As for love... Given how many people cannot tell the difference between a human and a dog, I have no doubt that getting people confused between an even semi-realistic looking android and a human would be easy and common.
Scott Adams said something about 'as soon as robot sex or virtual reality becomes cheaper than dating, humanity has ~1 generation left'.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Oh god I thought only Penny Arcade could ruin my childhood memories of Teddy Ruxpin. Now Slashdot too?!?
I could see young people being particularly attracted to the idea of Robotic Sex. Anecdotally I know that many youth get their "first crush" on television personalities, and I'd imagine a smaller subset, but a significant one on animated women, even more so in today's age with the increased popularity anime (as the illistrations tend to be more human-equivalent than most american animation) and extremely realistic video games. (Think Dead or Alive 3 Extreme Beach Volleyball or whatever it was).
I think if a culture develops where this is possible, or even accepted, young people whom demonstrate sexual attractiveness to non-real (or unattainable, such as teenie-bopper crushes on boy-bands) the line would be blurry enough that it might not replace the desire for sex with humans, but would be explored and maybe even embraced due to availability, diminished risk of disease/pregnancy/ass-kickings from angry dads/brothers, and the social cost of finding a partner in rejection and unavailability.
I don't think it will change relationships as a whole, but I think emotionally impressionable youth or lonley adults, might first experiment and embrace this kind of thing. In anything you've always got early adopters, and if it sticks, there might be a place for this.
Though, if I were investing, I think virtual reality sex has more potential for economic prosperity in the end if it could "trick" the brain into thinking that the VR image, which could be taken from a real-human source, is *real* and the sensory IO is *real.* I would think if it could overcome the mind, that it would be more fulfilling and people would gravitate to it more mostly because, I don't personally see robots ever being so-human (like the Replicants in Blade Runner, even in the next 100 years, or maybe ever for a normal person) that you can't tell from a distance, and even more that you can't tell doing something as multi-sensory as sex.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Every mechanical device fail eventually. The only variables are when and how painful...
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
I mean, if they can come up with a realistic robot, that looks like the ideal chick to any guy, will never age or get old looking (nothing sags), won't give you AIDS or any other STD, will NEVER say no, and give you the custom 'ride of your life' every time you 'mount up'........
No man in the world would ever give the time of day to a real woman ever again.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I am not talking about people having sex with dogs. They usually get them confused with human children. These trends of referring to dog owners as 'parents' and buying a dog as 'adopting' are not euphemisms for most people that use the terms. They are just an expression of their insanity.
Well, there are people that are having sex with inanimate dolls (real dolls plug here), It would not be far fetched that someone would be amenable to the idea and even build a business out of having sex with robots. There are more advantages than using the regular purveyors. It's more sanitary, there are more control on the looks of the service provider and you only have to perform maintenance every so often.
The thing is, that we already have the technology to make sex robots happen... I bet a machine given the proper instruments and reservoirs would give a great hummer... the simple fact is that 1) Most guys probably aren't going to put their Little Guy into a machine with moving parts 2) Most Guys probably aren't going to put their Little Guy into a machine that has serviced other Little Guys, even if the machines are sanitized between uses and even if using an actual female is far more dangerous.
There would have to be a huge change in sentiment before this type of thing (intimate relationships & sex w/ robots) became acceptable and not a taboo that is hidden away--How many people do you know that actually admit to owning and using one of those Real Dolls?
Though I do see people falling in "love" with robots, much in the same way that people fall in love with a car, a favorite chair, an appliance. I "love" my car right now, it keeps me safe, keeps me warm, takes me places... sure any make or model car could do those same things, even another one of the same model I have, but mine has the seat adjusted just right, I know where all the nicks and scratches are, and I know all the weird littles noises it makes, just like I do with my girlfriend... where was I going with this?
This is one of those odd areas where men are the ones who are behind, as far as social acceptability of a sexual practice goes.
Vibrators are talked about and alluded to in a largely positive light in TV and movies all the time. Generally, at least for a couple generations now, the idea of a woman with a vibrator has been a turn on, or at least not a turn off. Women have Mary Kay-esque sex toy parties.
How many references to sex toys/masturbation aids for men are there in popular culture, compared with those for women? Far, far fewer, I would bet. What percentage are positive? Barely more than 0%, I'm sure. Being a guy and having any items of that sort is seen as something to be embarrassed about. Hell, I'm a guy, and I'm aware of the double-standard, and the idea still kind of weirds me out.
Socialization is a powerful thing.
You've obviously never read anything about evolutionary psychology. A good place to start is The Moral Animal by Robert Right and The Third Chimpanzee and Why Sex Is Fun by Jared Diamond. Men and women have entirely different reproductive strategies for entirely biological reasons, and this is born out in their different sexual behaviors and desires. It's you, I'm afraid, who is suffering from 'social conditioning'.
A-Bomb
You're obviously unaware that evolutionary psychology is pseudoscientific bullshit. For it to be a successful science, it would have to be able to make correct predictions about things the answers to which were not already known. Until then, it's right up there with Freudianism in the hierarchy of psychological BS.
Maybe men and women have different reproductive strategies for entirely biological reasons -- though, given the increase in female promiscuity since the invention of birth control, the "entirely" part of that is pretty suspect -- and maybe it's all social conditioning. We don't know, and speculation from your pet pseudoscience doesn't really help.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.