At the Museum of Sex in New York City, artificial-intelligence researcher David Levy projected a mock image on a screen of a smiling bride in a wedding dress holding hands with a short robot groom. “Why not marry a robot? Look at this happy couple,” he said to a chuckling crowd.

When Levy was then asked whether anyone who would want to marry a robot was deluded, his face grew serious. “If the alternative is that you are lonely and sad and miserable, is it not better to find a robot that claims to love you and acts like it loves you?” Levy responded. “Does it really matter, if you’re a happier person?” In his 2007 book, Love and Sex with Robots, Levy contends that sex, love and even marriage between humans and robots are coming soon and, perhaps, are even desirable. “I know some people think the idea is totally outlandish,” he says. “But I am totally convinced it’s inevitable.”

The 62-year-old London native has not reached this conclusion on a whim. Levy’s academic love affair with computing began in his last year of university, during the vacuum-tube era. That is when he broadened his horizons beyond his passion for chess. “Back then people wrote chess programs to simulate human thought processes,” he recalls. He later became engrossed in writing programs to carry on intelligent conversations with people, and then he explored the way humans interact with computers, a topic for which he earned his doctorate last year from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. (Levy was sidetracked from a Ph.D. when he became an international master at chess, which led him to play around the world and to found several computer and chess organizations and businesses.)

Over the decades, Levy notes, interactions between humans and robots have become increasingly personal. Whereas robots initially found work, say, building cars in a factory, they have now moved into the home in the form of Roomba the robotic vacuum cleaner and digital pets such as Tamagotchis and the Sony Aibo.

And the machines can adopt a decidedly humanoid look: the robot Repliee from Hiroshi Ishiguro, director of Osaka University’s Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, can fool people into believing that it is a real person for about 10 seconds from a few feet away. And “it’s just a matter of time before someone takes parts from a vibrator, puts it into a doll, and maybe adds some basic speech electronics, and then you’ll have a fairly primitive sex robot,” Levy remarks.

Science-fiction fans have witnessed plenty of action between humans and characters portraying artificial life-forms, such as with Data from the Star Trek franchise or the Cylons from the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. And Levy is betting that a lot of people will fall in love with such devices. Programmers can tailor the machines to match a person’s interests or render them somewhat disagreeable to create a desirable level of friction in a relationship. “It’s not that people will fall in love with an algorithm but that people will fall in love with a convincing simulation of a human being, and convincing simulations can have a remarkable effect on people,” he says.

Indeed, a 2007 study from the University of California, San Diego, found that toddlers grew to accept a two-foot-tall humanoid robot named QRIO after it responded to the children who touched it. Eventually the kids considered QRIO as a near equal, even covering it with a blanket and telling it “night night” when its batteries ran out. “People who grow up with all sorts of electronic gizmos will find android robots to be fairly normal as friends, partners, lovers,” Levy speculates. He also cites 2005 research from Stanford University that showed people grew to like and trust computer personalities that cared about their wins and losses in blackjack and were generally supportive, much as they would respond to being cared about by other people.

5 Comments

1. 1. bucketofsquid 09:41 PM 2/19/08

   I'm pretty sure that since the robots don't have the hormones and chemical interactions that real humans have, that this will be limited to a few defective individuals that are prone to mental illness. Besides, after Star Trek made it fasionable to have sex with nonhumans, why not just find a nice sheep or goat. About the same as a robot but warmer. Sick is sick people! Wouldn't it be better to get them some mental health assistance?

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

2. 2. Scepticon 05:44 AM 2/20/08

   I don't think that condemning the idea as "sick" (whatever that means) is a particularly productive way to discuss this topic.
   
   It has already been noted in this article that the the drives we feel to procreate and form attachments do not require a human to stimulate them ie romantic movies, stories etc, your relationship with your pet or even your car.
   
   Given sufficiently advanced levels of simulation of human responses and body forms I think it isn't particularly far fetched that people would form strong relationships with a robot. Even to the point of wanting to formalize this relationship with a ceremony similar to marriage.
   
   I mean we're not talking about humping C-3PO here.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

3. 3. Jennifer 04:37 AM 2/21/08

   Anyone who finds this idea intriguing should read Tanith Lee's 1981 novel "The Silver Metal Lover"

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

4. 4. Red Fault 08:57 PM 3/5/08

   [b]It has already been noted in this article that the the drives we feel to procreate and form attachments do not require a human to stimulate them ie romantic movies, stories etc, your relationship with your pet or even your car.[/b]
   
   
   Likewise, conditions stimulating an organism's reflexive self-defense responses are not necessary in order for me to want to punch someone in the face - but punching someone in the face for any reason not related to self-defense is not automatically acceptable because of that.
   
   Because a bunch of social failures can't find a way to get laid by a free-thinking organism of their own species, they want to create a substitute that behaves exactly the way it's told to. Go ahead and do so, but I would have to agree with the poster who says these people are mentally unhealthy.
   
   --
   Edited by Red Fault at 03/05/2008 12:58 PM

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

5. 5. Scepticon 07:30 AM 4/15/08

   I think that perhaps the example of punching someone in the face may not be as good as it seems on the surface. As there are situations where this behavior is acceptable, boxing and similar sports in particular.
   
   So, maybe the sort of physical relationships discussed in this article would be acceptable under certain situations and not others. It could be that forming emotional attachments would be considered as much bad form as boxers developing grudges that they act on outside of the ring.
   
   However, in looking to the future, contemplation of the possibilities has to include the question of: at what point does an artificial being become a real person, and if that line is crossed, do we have the right to curtail the freedoms of that being if it wants to form relationships of the kind that we would recognize as romantic?

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this