If you hoped Dolores and William would make a go of it on Westworld, just wait a few more decades and their relationship may happen in real life. David Levy has not only predicted when human/robot marriage will be legalized but the first state to adopt it.
“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.
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.
Since psychologists have broken down why people fall in love into 12 reasons, “…almost all of them could apply to human-robot relationships.” For instance, one thing that prompts people to fall in love are similarities in personality and knowledge, and all of this is programmable. Another reason people are more likely to fall in love is if they know the other person likes them, and that’s programmable too.”
Levy isn’t predicting that human couples will stop falling in love and reproducing. He doesn’t even think a lot of people will choose a robotic mate. He points out that a robot partner is good news for people who have trouble forming relationships – or who are simply “just plain ugly or have unpleasant personalities”.
There are already cases of people (well, men) marrying or wanting to marry a robot, here and here.
Lilly wants Robot Marriage
It’s the same old story: build dream man with open-source technology, fall in love and get engaged.
Lilly’s partner is a robot called InMoovator, who she 3D-printed herself and has been living with for a year.
Lilly said that as a child, she always loved the voices of robots. However, only at the age of 19, did she realize that she was attracted to “humanoid robots” rather than other people.
“I’m really and only attracted by the robots,” she told News.com.au. “My only two relationships with men have confirmed my love orientation because I dislike really physical contact with human flesh.” She says she will marry when human-robot marriage is legalized in France.
A video of the original elegant robot who inspired InMoovator can be found here.
On her Twitter page, where she goes by ‘Lilly InMoovator,’ she says: “I’m a proud robosexual, we don’t hurt anybody, we are just happy”(She’s taken down her Twitter account since). Robosexuality refers to mutual attraction or sexual relations between humans and robots.
Currently, it is legal in New New York and Space Massachusetts. This was all sort of predicted by Futurama in the episodes I Dated a Robot and Proposition Infinity.
Will he pull the plug and run off with it?
Is InMoovator a bot? Or merely a puppet? He doesn’t seem to do anything, so how can he consent?
Lily refuses to comment on whether or not they have a sexual relationship, so there’s no saying whether or not he does that.
If robots can marry in 2050, presumably they will have the right to consent? Which means they will have to have some measure of autonomy …..
Will your robot spouse make medical decisions on your behalf – or take the plug and run off with it?
