I saw a few articles discussing an upcoming convergence between robot and human culture based on research by Netherlands student David Levy, who completed his PhD on the subject of human-robot relationships. Using the Artificial Intelligence ( A.I. if you are new to, well, everything ) curve laid out by Levy, humans and robots would be inter-marrying by 2050. Inter-marrying means sex and, of course, I am a specialist in the science of sex.
Before we get to the marrying stage, a few issues would have to be addressed. You think Japanese girls have a tough time explaining an American man to their parents? Wait until she brings home a robot. That’s right, sex is easy but relationships, even with women of other cultures, are more like Voodoo than science so robot relationship management must be a higher order of Voodoo, right?

Maybe. Maybe not. Psychologists state there are about a dozen reasons people fall in love - and there is no reason those same reasons couldn’t apply to robots. in some cases, like actual marriage, it will open up a legal can of worms but someone will be willing to give it a try - most likely in Massachusetts, according to Levy.
“Massachusetts is more liberal than most other jurisdictions in the United States and has been at the forefront of same-sex marriage,” Levy said. Great job, Massachusetts. You actually made Christian conservatives look prescient about the slippery slope of gay marriage and that really takes some doing. Now even Dutch college students think it’s a you-can-even-marry-your-toaster-free-for-all.
Yet I am not here to talk about sexual politics. If Massachusetts wants to be the place where you can marry your cat, that’s their business. I am here to talk about the important things, like how can relationships with a robot be better than dealing with women?
You may be thinking it is obvious; a robot can be programmed. It’s never so simple, even with robot women. As soon as A.I. gets to a point where you can fall in love with them, they will have enough independence to not program so easily. The goal, then, should be to limit the programming just enough that your robot girlfriend doesn’t care if you stay out late playing poker or sleep with her sister. Mostly it means just eliminating the personality algorithms altogether and staying with the important functions.

So Levy can keep his 12 reasons people fall in love and how they can apply to robots. Here are 10 reasons it will be better just to keep them for the sex:
1) Robots come with manuals
2) A robot will function the same way every day of the month
3) With a robot, Larry Craig can get dates outside of public restrooms
4) A robot will take up less room in the closet - they sleep standing up
5) Robots don’t have in-laws

6) A robot won’t take half of your assets when you replace it
7) You won’t need counselling to fix a robot’s alignment
Robots don’t have cats
9) You won’t be able to marry a robot outside Massachusetts
10) A robot won’t expect to be let off a sinking ship first
So what do you think? Do we need to re-examine the social fabric of our culture and re-define what intimacy is? Will this change the very nature of humanity and civilization?
I have no idea. I just want to know if they will make a version that can create pie crust from scratch.
This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 2:14 pm and is filed under culture, geeks, relationships, robots, sex, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.










October 17th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Making a pie crust from scratch would probably require more subroutines than the actual program that mimics sexual function. Making a good pie crust is that difficult.
I’m curious as to what your idea for the three laws of (sex) robotics would be…
October 18th, 2007 at 7:37 am
Hmmm, seems cool.
Joe joestain13@yahoo.com
October 19th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
I agree that we will have cures for cancer and free money long before we will have a decent crust-making robot.
The robot laws, however, are easy to do now:
1) A robot chick may not cause or, through inaction, allow dinner to be caused to not be on the table when a man gets home from work.
2) Robot chicks must obey orders at all times.
3) Men come first, robot chicks second. Or not at all.
I suppose we could put women in place of men for some of these, in the interests of gender equality and all that nonsense.