Mr. Roboto
The right wing won’t be happy about this one and no doubt we gays will take the blame: “Sex with robots may sound sci-fi, but finding a silicon soulmate is closer to reality than we think, says a British researcher. Human-like robots with all the working parts will make their way onto consumer markets in the next five years; in 20 years they will become socially accepted; and by 2050 the first human-robot marriage ceremony will take place, says David Levy, the London author of Love and Sex With Robots.” [Edmonton Journal via POQ]
I’d sooner get with a goat.
Hopefully, by 2050 most people won’t care that a person wants to spend the rest of his/her life with a mechanical mate (some marriages may seem like that anyway), just as people should not care that two consenting adults who happen to be gay want to do so now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How do I get my hands on one-o’ them robocock prototypes?
Marriage won’t happen. For the same reason we will never be able to marry a chair, or a motorcycle, a dog, or a small child: The other party must consent to the marriage. A computer or a robot does not have a will of its ownor the comprehension to make such an important decision. It can only be programmed to comply with its owner’s commands. Even by 2050, I highly doubt that we will have developed Artificial Intelligence enough for it to be readily available in what is basically a complicated sex toy.
Forgetting about arranged marriages are we? Ask the women who are forced into marriage against their will and without their consent every day in some cultures and religions.
Maybe someone who owns said robot can arrange a marriage with said non-robot.
What would be the difference?
So within the next 50 years people and robots can marry but gays can’t and we have beeen around since the beginning of time. That does not sound quite right…huh
Mr Levy seems to be skipping a step: the point where artificial intelligences are recognised as persons under the law. Until they are, marriage is out of the question. And I don’t think that’ll happen by 2050, somehow.