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Not Tonight, Dear, I Have to Reboot
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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
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Last year, David Levy published a book, Love and Sex with Robots, which marked a culmination of years of research about the interactions between humans and computers. His basic idea is that, for humans who cannot establish emotional or sexual connections with other people, they might form them with robots. The topic is ripe for ridicule: On The Colbert Report in January, host Stephen Colbert asked Levy, "Are these people who can't establish relationships with other human beings, are they by any chance people who write about love and sex with robots?" The 62-year-old Levy, though, is quite serious, as he explains to frequent contributor Charles Q. Choi in the Insights story "Not Tonight, Dear, I Have to Reboot," appearing in the March issue of Scientific American. Here is an expanded interview.
How did you first become interested in artificial intelligence (AI)?
Everything happened almost by accident. I learned to play chess by eight—it was my big passion in high school and university. In my last year at university, I came across a thing called a computer. I heard about it, but knew nothing about it. They were incredibly primitive then—they didn't run on transistors, but on vacuum tubes. I got interested in computer programming through programming games. Then I head about a subject called AI, which people in Edinburgh were working on, such as Donald Michie, the head of the department of machine intelligence at the University of Edinburgh, who worked with Alan Turing on breaking German codes. Donald Michie was an amazing guy who was killed just recently in a car crash. He was the founding father of AI in the U.K. and introduced me and others to AI.
So your interest in chess programs led you to computers and, ultimately, artificial intelligence?
Back then, people wrote chess programs to simulate human thought processes. It turned out in time that approach didn't work, that chess programs would use completely different techniques that are not humanlike at all. But I was still left interested in simulating human thought processes and emotions and personality. I thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting if there were artificial people we could talk to?" So that started me thinking even more about the way humans interact with computers—not just by typing on a keyboard, but how people could interact with computers in a humanlike way. I funded a project for three years that won the Loebner Prize in 1997, a world championship for conversational computer programs decided by a Turing test–type conversation.
In other words, the program's responses tried as much as possible to be indistinguishable from those of a human, and in Turing's conception, the machine could be said to think. So, moving on from mere conversation, you began researching how, um, far interaction between humans and robots could go?
Around the year 2003, I started researching this topic very seriously. I was writing a book, Robots Unlimited, with a couple of chapters on robot emotion—love, even sex. I found so much material that when I finished that book, I wanted to look even more deeply in human emotional relationships with computers, with the possibility of sexual relations. I decided to call the book I wrote Love and Sex with Robots.
Did any of the research you found prove especially memorable?
The one single thing that made me go into this subject deeply was when I read a book by Sherry Turkle, The Second Self. In there, she wrote about some students she interviewed in her attempts to figure out how people related to computers. In one anecdote with a student dubbed "Anthony," he tried having girlfriends but preferred relationships with computers. With girls, he wasn't sure how to react; but with computers, he knew how to react. I thought that was so fascinating. And there are loads of Anthonys out there who find it difficult to, or can't form satisfying relationships with, humans. I dedicated my book Love and Sex with Robots to Anthony and all the other Anthonys before and since of both sexes—to all those who feel lost and hopeless without relationships, to let them know there will come a time when they can form relationships with robots.
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21 Comments
Add CommentWell, that's an excellent way to breed Asperger's characteristics out of the human race.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPersonally, I think that women will be a bigger market than men in the long run. Think of it as the ultimate bodice-ripper novel, or the perfect gigolo, or the walking, talking, no-guilt vibrator. But I doubt that women will stop having sex with men, though a husband may once in a while "kill" his wife's robot lover.
Oh! This is so outlandish that it must be true! He's really thinking outside the box...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWithin fifty years, AI will lose the A. Circuitry will yield to designer flesh that is perpetuated through advanced varieties of nano-bots. The end effect is the continuation of the human mind to the lengths of infinity or whatever becomes the current social quo. By the time sexual androids come into vogue, the problem won't be compatibility with humans and vice-versa, but in effect the ties the "AI" will form and ultimately the respect that all intelligence demands. Until then, a sex-bot could easily fill the niche that prescribes to the long desired three-some.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course, the Greeks thought about this a long time ago, in the myth of Pygmalion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHis argument about 'marrying' robots depends upon his definition of marriage. Only in relatively recent years has marriage been endowed with a sentimental element as opposed to 'necessity' to have a partner to create a family for labour & old-age security or dynastic reasons.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWould be very interesting and important to have a Scientific American special issue on "AE" (Artificial Emotion) with invited articles by Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Alan Kay, Nicholas Negroponte, Stephen Wolfram and other visionaries. Sample speculative fiction by Stanislaw Lem, Olaf Stapledon and others of that caliber would be an important added dimension.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst, before people start marrying robots, i think there will have to be sufficiently convincing emotional AI present to fall in love with. Im sure id fall in love with it, if it existed, even if we never got to 3rd base. The fact is though, it doesn't exist. And AI, although a very promising field, hasn't progressed enough in its entire history to think its going to progress as far as seamless emotional feedback in the next 50 years. It very well could, but i don't see any reason to assume it is likely to happen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe time line aside, I do not see why in the distant future, this wouldn't be possible. I do not like the analogy with gay marriage though: the mental block that prevented gay marriage was social, what keeps us from serious consideration of marriages that include smart, funny, sensitive robots on the other hand, is their absence from the reality of the present tense. Gay people, on the other hand, did exist in the 60s.
Marrying or even falling in love with robots, seem to be a theory so dangerous to me that even the thought of making it a science is way out of common sense. Today, when the world needs more love and human treatment to survive than ever before in history, it seems to me that the whole idea, besides being dangerous, is totally unethical and completely nuts
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI hope polygamy will not be a problem and you should also be given tax breaks when filing jointly !
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think Dr. Levy is actually rather narrow minded and human-centric. He is focusing on precise copies of a human. If you look at just the underlying human emotions, many people have already fallen into relationships with computers and the internet. The first human computer marriage has already occurred. What would be interesting is steps to encourage human-human relationships.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou know, there is something to said for this. To have a "man" who can do for me the things I want(like cooking and love making), then be switched-off when I want my space.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> Humans Marrying Robots? A Q&A with David Levy
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeing Aspie I guarantee that we enjoy human company as much as you Neurotypicals.
And though I might prefer having an easier social life, I don't intend to breed myself out. The possibilities of flesh-on-flesh sex are far from exhausted...
Not everything that makes sense in the abstract is a good idea in practice. For example, feminism and birth control are hard to oppose on a philosophical level, but societies that have adopted them are dying out demographically in favor of societies where women have more traditional roles and birth control is discouraged if not outright illegal. Similarly, what man or woman would put up with the foibles and frustrations of a real-life mate when he or she could have a robotic mate with perfectly sculpted features and a custom-programmed personality? Human nature evolved to cope with certain situations; take us out of those situations and you'll get unpredictable, often undesirable, results. Apples are sweet, but not nearly as sweet as candy, which isolates the attractive element in apples and concentrates it, so people prefer candy to apples. Customized robotic mates would work the same way. Though they might be pleasant, they would be the death knell of human relationships.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI confess to being baffled as to what the criteria was for this "expert" to be worthy of an article in Sci Am?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom a theoretical standpoint this proposal has been around as long as robots have. Sci Fi authors from Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein in the 50's to the anime series Chobits by the Japanese group Clamp recently, this topic has been theorized, explored, and debated.
He's not proposing anything that isn't be said everywhere, why treat him like he's thinking out of a box?
Nor is it really worthy from a technical standpoint, since he offers nothing in that direction beyond generalities. Conversations I've had with programmers interested in this concept say anything even aproximating meaningful two-way interaction with AI's is several decades away at best. One-way interaction is possible now, marry your toaster.
I just had an incredibly useful scientific epiphany, everyone! We should manufacture a product that is capable of humanlike thought and emotion, but does not feel pain, has no reason to fear death, no instinctive drive to preserve itself, no inherent need for nourishment, and no sense of jealousy unless we choose to program it in. Then let's customize its ability to please us emotionally and sexually, so it does all the things we don't have the guts to ask a human partner to do for us. Then, let's introduce it into society, legalize marrying it, and COMPETE WITH IT FOR MATES.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf this came to pass (and since we're all so obsessed with it, obviously it will), then there would be no need for human-human interaction - even reproduction could be handled with a turkey baster. Any techie geeks that are seriously working on "lifelike" android sex partners should get away from their computer desks quick, and go get laid for real.
Today we demand, 'Robot, be more like me.' Tomorrow we will beg, 'Robot, please make me more like you.'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLevy's basic premise is that robots will be in many ways better than human. We, as a species, will not allow that to happen. We will integrate the same technologies into our bodies and minds and become super human. There will still be people who ask 'how many of your parts are original?' but I think that the majority simply won't care. The line between man and machine will become so blurry that it will, be irrelevant.
Robotics is simply the next stage of our evolution.
Who is programming these robots? If they know how to make them loveable, where do they learn that? Maybe they could teach that to humans. That would help a lot.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyawn........ more posthumanity anti human talk with people trying to make the human race obselete. i just laugh at posthumanist who think that they can get away with this without a world war. Its a shame that science will be blamed by the unethical view of those who wish to achieve "godhood" . Yeah i trust a bunch of scientists who already have a god complex to treat me as a equal when they become posthumans. Good to see the ground work for Humans vs Robots being laid. X-(
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've read this book by David Levy, although I'm a little concerned about this as well. I think that's a little far fetched for robots to do with humans. But I can see that artificial intelligence will find a present in the world because robots are more accurate than humans in their ability to think.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswe need robot humans in indianapolis!and kokomo!please let us have robot humans in indianapolis!and kokomo! we don't want to buy robot humans!we want to have robot humans!like girlfriend,friends,hookers,pimps,ladiesman,sugardaddie, strippers!please!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlready there are very life like dolls.As for sex, adding sexual mechanics to them would not be to great of a feat,so this kind of thing is but a few years away.It would would eliminate STD's all together,the devices could be thoroughly cleaned after each use.Since the sex bot as you may call them would never be untrue.Unfaithfulness would never be a problem.Now sex aside having someone to talk to,would be nice.An electronic personal assistant that gave you feedback on your feelings,that you could trust to never tell anyone about what you said would be great.It could also keep track all important dates and bills.This could be a computer program on everybody's PC.If such a thing already exist could someone please point out where I could find it?
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