And you thought same-sex marriage was bad:
Humans could marry robots within the century. And consummate those vows.
“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. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it.
At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, “but once you have a story like ‘I had sex with a robot, and it was great!’ appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I’d expect many people to jump on the bandwagon,” Levy said.
In his thesis, “Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners,” Levy conjectures that robots will become so human-like in appearance, function and personality that many people will fall in love with them, have sex with them and even marry them.
“It may sound a little weird, but it isn’t,” Levy said. “Love and sex with robots are inevitable.”
When I read this story from LiveScience, all I could think was, “geez, another science nerd who can’t get a date!”
October 15, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Please, Please Tell Me You Made That Up. Please.
October 16, 2007 at 1:34 am
[...] Too. Weird. The Reformed Pastor has a post that is Just Too Weird. I accused him of making it up, but I’m afraid he [...]
October 16, 2007 at 10:46 am
Danger Will Robinson! Danger! You forgot to pick up your socks this morning! Danger!
October 16, 2007 at 11:00 am
LOL!
October 16, 2007 at 9:10 pm
’splain, please? I don’t get the reference, and I hate to miss out on a good joke these days…
October 16, 2007 at 10:16 pm
mrsfalstaff, please don’t tell me you never watched Lost in Space? It was a great (horribly cheesy) television series in the late ’60s in which a robot that ostensibly belonged to a science team that was comprised of a family of five, a pilot, and an evil doctor but who in practice became the young son Will’s de facto playmate would occasionally cry out “Danger, Will Robinson” at appropriately dangerous moments.
I haven’t watched it since I was a kid, so it’s probably much worse than I remember. But I loved it at the time.
October 16, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Here’s a picture from the series that includes cast and robot.
October 17, 2007 at 7:55 am
No, I never did watch it, although I was a science fiction geek.
October 17, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Pastor Fischler,
As a science geek myself, all I can say is Holy Cow!!! Sometimes, I could not get a date for a dance but holy Toledo!! This is beyond weird.
What worries me most is that there is a University which would grant a PhD to someone on the basis of a Dissertation on Human/Cyborg Relations!!
This gives a new meaning to “Resistance is futile” and “You will be assimilated!!” (Star Trek Reference-The Borg)
October 17, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Love the Star Trek reference, Chip. Some might say that they wouldn’t mind being assimilated by Jeri Ryan, but I wonder if they’d still say that if she’d stayed trussed up in that Borg outfit rather than the bunny suit.
More seriously, you raise a real concern for anyone who cares about the future of higher education: the amount of genuinely worthless “research” that is going on, especially in the social sciences and humanities, that is then rewarded with a doctorate. Whatever happened to intellectual discernment?
October 18, 2007 at 6:32 am
Well, you know what they say about higher education – you learn more and more about less and less until eventually you know everything about nothing!
Do I need to duck virtual rotten tomatoes?