Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.