Galt's Gulch

Human to Robot Marriage by 2045?

Posted by bsmith51 6 years, 5 months ago to Culture
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How will humanity dodge this bullet (and can I get one that doesn't talk)?
SOURCE URL: https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/6366262/marry-robots-sophia-harmony-hanson-2045/

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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 6 years, 5 months ago
    No need for Marriage...one element is not human and no child to be legitimized, no need to be committed to the relationship...only a valid warranty.
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  • Posted by dnr 6 years, 5 months ago
    Marriage has nothing to do with anything. Religion has made it something. A dog can marry a rock. It is neither a religions or civil matter. Like any contract it is some form of agreement between two things. The law , as far as I know, doesn't say if they are human or not.
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  • Posted by TheRealBill 6 years, 5 months ago
    Human to machine marriage will likely become yet another form of defined-as-acceptable-in-law marriage allowed before polygamous ones. There is no small irony in that.
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 6 years, 5 months ago
    Marriage is the problem. We have created an issue bonding sex to a semipermanent institution with value only in raising children.

    Sex is sex.
    Raising children is raising children.
    A partner in life is yet another thing.
    It is beautiful when they can all reside together. However, that doesn’t seem to happen all that often, and even when it does, is it really a decision or a convienence?
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 6 years, 5 months ago
    There are already some man-robot sex partners, and as the technology improves I suspect the pairing will occur more frequently. Traditional marriage makes no sense, given there will be no progeny from the union. If and when the line between autonomy and true sentience is crossed, the robot/android member may desire some degree of independence and shared ownership of assets as a measure of security.

    Asimov's The Bicentennial Man rings a bell, as it was an epic tale of a robot who eventually becomes, for all intents and purposes, human. If we maintain a peaceful relationship between humans and the coming evolution of robots, the line will assuredly become blurred, as bionic elements create transhumans. Hard to predict.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 6 years, 5 months ago
    This totally reminds me! A couple years ago I started watching the old Twilight Zone series. I loved it. One that I remember is the one where the astronaut is out on a planet alone and they give him a female robot companion for company. He falls in love with her. But, when his tenure is over there isn't room to bring her back to earth. Anybody remember that episode? I think it's one of the better known ones... It was "The Lonely" and he was a convict. Pretty cool show.

    Why marry a robot? It's hard enough applying commitment to another human. No. Marriage is quickly dying on the vine. The paradigm doesn't fit this narrative...
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    • Posted by Steven-Wells 6 years, 5 months ago
      Rod Serling wrote that particular episode of The Twilight Zone. The Lonely was the 7th episode of the first season, starring Jack Warden as James A. Corry (the prisoner), and Jean Marsh as Alicia (the woman-like robot).
      We are a long way from computers that can emulate the human mind. So there is no possibility that I will become romantically involved with my toaster oven, in spite of the fact that "she" is quite hot.
      For a more recent take on a synthesized person in a marriage, see the 2014 movie, Transcendence, starring Johnny Depp as Will Caster, a dying (murdered) scientist whose mind has been transferred to a computer and Rebecca Hall as his wife, Evelyn Caster. Much of the plot, which has many thoughtful elements and an absurd (for many reasons) conclusion, deals with the question of whether the computer encoded version of Will Caster retains his human wisdom and morality. (The answer is yes, and far more than all the other human-iform fools in the rest of the movie.)
      When we reach the singularity (synthetic intellects reach/exceed human capabilities), gigantic changes will occur. The speed of silicon processors (or gallium arsenide when silicon becomes too slow) will enable synthetic intelligences to immensely outpace human thought for good or ill. Consider: you (a human) spend 10 seconds to think of what to say in a discussion. a slow robot does the same thinking in, say, 100 nanoseconds. In a conversation, that would be like you making a comment, and the robot mind having 30 years of equivalent contemplation to retort.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 5 months ago
    It reminds me of when I was a kid. In 25 years we went from breaking the sound barrier to putting things in LEO, to flying people to the moon (way beyond LEO, carrying enough fuel to land gently and return). Surely in another 25 years we'd have colonies on the Moon, Mars, and big spiral Gerard O'Neill space stations.

    In 25 years, I've gone from having 33MHz computer with a 9600 bps connection and a 150MB HDD, to something about about 1000 times more powerful that fits in my pocket. At this rate, surely computers will become sentient and enter contracts in 25 years.

    If history repeats, though, the next leap will come in some other area, maybe materials science or biotech.
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