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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.
I'd rather have my Companion Cube!
=Smidge=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu0TXl15PgU
I count 2, and they're on the front of the chestal area.
of why humans fall in love with humans.
Because they are not robots.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Can't wait to get my own Lucy Liu bot!
Sounds pretty meaningless and shalow to me. Sex is a _lot_ more than just 'getting off'.
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
Who hasn't had a crush on a fictional character? As you are largely geeks reading this, I submit that many of you find at least some Anime girls hot - even though you know full well that they are not real: the human heart can vast in its ability to accept.
I had a huge crush on Ryoko from the Tenchi Muyo animes. This crush didn't even require the physical contact that would be present with a robotic hottie. There is little room for doubt that our emotionally sticky limbic system can latch onto unusual objects of affection - I believe it's not unusual to be loved by anyone...or to love anything.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
People already fall in love with a car, a boat, a Playstation, a video game character, a crack addicted ex... We can love anything. No news here.
I love lamp!
Hey Baby, Wanna kill all humans?
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?
I'd much rather have a holodeck, the possibilities are endless!
(That and I already have the sign made to hang over the door that reads:
Scott's Holodeck of Whores: Enter At Own Risque)
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.
I think that "love" is too much of a word for it. Infatuated or having "a crush" would be more appropriate. It's going to be something carnal and not with meaning. It would take a long time for us humans to develop enough intelligence in robots for us to have a "meaningful relationship" with them.
Vi havas e-poston.
ilovegeorgebush
well, that's got to be the stupidest question I've ever read. OF COURSE WE DO.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
Only on slashdot would someone consider having sex with a robot as a relationship.
America, Home of the Brave.
I can only assume that anyone who imagines being "in love" with a machine is severely emotionally stunted. What is love without the need, and willingness to sacrifice? What is love without emotional exposure? What is love without the risk of loss?
It is totally okay with me if this guy wants to fuck animatronics, but he doesn't do himself a service by confusing that with love.
-Peter
Just a random thought here but thinking along the lines of the Futurama reasoning for "Don't date Robots!!!" and mixing in Idiocracy evolution logic two wrongs might make a right. If you give all the stupid people robots to have sex with they can't make more stupid people. Hell for the real stupid people we can just recycle the robots.
A robot must never harm a human, unless "kinky mode" is enabled.
Blank until
Well, that's a twist!
"Advice to all future male scientists: be sure you understand the opposite sex, especially if you intend being a computer expert. Otherwise, you may find yourself, like poor Elwood, defeated by a jealous machine, a most dangerous sort of female, whose victims are forever banished--to...
the Twilight Zone."
http://www.tv.com/the-twilight-zone/from-agnes---with-love/episode/12725/summary.html
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It is easy to love someone or something.
It is harder to feel loved.
And harder still to feel loved by something you know does not think or feel.
For that reason, humans will continue to feel loved (or not loved) by other humans more easily than they can connect with inanimate objects.
And Asimov wrote about this in at least two stories... one about a housewife who falls for a male humaniform robot that her husband brings home from work (name escaping me at the moment) and I think "The Bicentennial Man" also included some robot lust (there my memory of the story is failing me [probably due to having seen the awful Robin Williams movie]).
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Hence the large number of pets people have.
But loving of pets is illegal in most places, no matter what you see on those websites.
Toss a Teddy Ruxpin speaker into a Real-Doll and I'm good to go!
"...Oh I forgot to warn you. His Arse is a pencil sharpner!"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Seriously, I'm not going to have sex with a robot. Get over it!
Uh, yeah, slashdot and all these articles and books and research are all aimed at YOU specifically. Thanks for telling us you're not interested, now everybody focusing on this can give it up and go do something else. Right, come on, get real - whether you will use them or not, it's pretty obvious that sex robots are going to be huge someday, millions of people will be using them, and robot technologies probably won't be going backward as time progresses. People already use realdoll and various other toys, and I'm sure that sex robots will be a lot more fun than Mr Right Hand at least for casual entertainment (which itself will become increasingly important as technology replaces humans in almost every role in the economy, freeing us from having to work so much).
I suppose if robots can be programmed to fall in love with humans, they'd also fall in love with one another? Whatever that means.
I guess letting yourself fall for a robot might be a bit like letting yourself fall for an emotionally unavailable human; people do it all the time, but there is surely some level of dysfunction involved in doing so.
The housewife/robot tale was originally titled "Flesh and Metal", but was published(in Amazing, I think) under the more amusing title "Satisfaction Guaranteed".
So British AI researcher David Levy somehow got involved in the field of robotics without ever reading/viewing any of the hundreds of pieces of sci-fi on this exact topic (ie. he thinks this is an original idea of his)? Or perhaps he is aware of the sci-fi, but is egotistical enough to think that a researcher talking nebulously about the far future is somehow different than sci-fi.
Do you swap it in for better one? From iLoverGiga to iLoverTouch? Replace it with last good memory?
What if you get into fights? Go to 'hospital' and improve personality?
Granted, it will be cheaper(?) and/or easier to 'improve' and 'repair' the lover, once you bring back the dead lover one too many times, the illusion will break, I think.
There is a reason why toys can't replace pets. For every person who will never adopt one, I am certain there is another who can't live without them for their love and personality.
"Hi, I'm Teddy Ruxpin. Can you and I be friends with benefits?"
eww.
Sweet informative mod.
I for one welcome our sex deprived robot overlords...
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?!?
It is not possible to waste time drawing a Venn diagram. The action is a reward in and of itself.
The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
And Bolts!
(P.S. a couple of my favorite Internet authors, Elf Sternberg and DB_Story, have been writing about these types of relationships for years now.)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Except stupidity is seldom a genetic problem, it's a teaching and training problem.
People aren't taught how to think.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As for love... Given how many people cannot tell the difference between a human and a dog,
Look I was drunk, alright?! And the dog came on to me first!
The enemies of Democracy are
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 think you're a bit confused. Al Gore and John Kerry were robots (although Gore seems to have become a Real Boy recently.) Bush is a badly trained chimpanzee.
Do Androids dream of electric sheep?
Great. New images stuck in my head.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Star Trek: TOS, Episode 74: Requiem for Methuselah Just watched it last night actually. Kirk falls hard for an android (but he doesn't know it she is one), and goes rather mad in my opinion. I thought he was about to sexually assault her at one point, really. Good thing M4 was around... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_for_Methuselah_(TOS_episode)
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
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.
I hate to introduce a serious note, but there's people out there who could benefit from a little bot-love. People who are disabled, deformed and badly disfigured have traditionally had a lot of trouble finding partners.
Masturbation and prostitutes are often their only access to sex. Love is something for other people. A mechanical counterfeit might be more acceptable than the alternative.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
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.
Wow, I think you came up with a replacement for the Three Laws. With those 10 rules, no man will ever be harmed again.
So you had a crush on the 2 of 7 of 9?