Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

My Machine, My Love

Programmed for Love – washingtonpost.com
Here’s a prediction that’ll make you squirm: In the future, people will fall in love with robots. Robots will not be cold, predictable machines, but actual lovers — precocious, sexy, and remarkably humanlike in appearance. Humans will even marry robots in certain obliging jurisdictions. Now send the kids into the other room while we mention the obvious, bizarre implication: Someday, people will have sex with robots.

True. The idea does make me squirm — but probably not in the way the author meant. I guess I got a little too involved with the robo-gigolo played by Jude Law in AI. Apparently I wasn’t alone. Gigolo Joe was voted “best male pleasure-bot EVER” on wired.com.

Regardless. The idea of sex with a machine isn’t particularly shocking or new. People — men and women — have been having sex with machines for decades. Falling love with a machine, though… that’s an interesting idea. I believe one requirement for being in love (as opposed to infatuation) is believing in the genuineness of the other person’s feelings. But even assuming the robot’s “feelings” weren’t as complex as those of another human, that doesn’t necessarily mean they wouldn’t be genuine. (Even this is all based on a robot model far more sophisticated than anything that currently exists.)

Say your robot were capable of genuine emotion on the level of that demonstrated by a cat or a dog. Would that be sufficient for a real love relationship? And…. if it were capable of that kind of genuine emotion (but nothing more sophisticated), at what point would sex with the robot become something terrible — like child or animal abuse?