A new worry for the worriers: Will our grandkids marry robots?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>From Msnbc. Me, what I wonder about is what kind of education people get at the University of Masstricht where the below prediction comes from.</p>

<p>"Humans could marry robots within the century. And consummate those vows. </p>

<p>“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. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it. </p>

<p>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. "
<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21271545/[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21271545/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

2

<p>

</p>

<p>I can see the headlines on the front page of Cosmo now:</p>

<p>101 Ways to Please Your Robot
10 New Positions that your It hasn’t heard of yet
New Ways to Program your Big O
Your It’s 9 Pleasure Points
The Mechanical Orgasm: How to Dial It Up
Robo Sutra
How to Get your It to Want It
Discover Your It’s Hot Spots</p>

3

<p>soozievt,</p>

<p>Your suggestions also raise an interesting grammar point. At first I thought you were confusing its and it’s–a common error. But now I see you mean that the Robot is your “it” and so its hot spots are “your it’s hot spots.” I like it.</p>

<p>pyewacket–English teacher</p>

4

<p>Yes, I didn’t know what pronoun to refer to for the Robot…“he” or “she” did not make sense, so I called the robot an “it”. Granted that Cosmo’s usual headlines talk about “him” a lot but I didn’t want to assume that the robot would play the male role and who knows, maybe the robot also could be the female role in sex. So, I used “it.” I do get the difference between “its” AND “it’s” normally! Here, I am using “it’s” as a possessive and not a contraction.</p>

5

<p>“It” would probably be more likely to help around the house than some spouses, but what about the kids?</p>

6

<p>Didn’t they do this on Star Trek several decades ago?</p>

7

<p>Isaac Asimov wrote about this long ago in the Robot series.</p>

8

<p>I caught the last few minutes of a movie recently with Robin Williams as a robot. He and a woman–his owner’s granddaughter?–had tried for years to appeal to some decision making board for permission to marry. In the final scene, they were quite old/on their death beds…and they married… something like that. I had not remembered hearing about the movie, so as I was channel surfing, I stopped and watched the last 10-15 minutes.</p>

<p>Was this based on Asimov’s work?</p>

9

<p>I guess it will be okay for a male and female robot to get married, but the “Robot Marriage Protection Act of 2050” will keep male robots from marrying other male robots.</p>

10

<p>But they could have civil unions perhaps!</p>

11

<p>Those unions would be a lot more “civil” than some of the ones we have today. Healthcare could be a problem though - I would imagine that the first generation of robots might break down quite often - could get expensive so the insurance lobby probably won’t get behind it.</p>

12

<p>They could even conceive. They could either have a tank full of male sperms, or female eggs…</p>

<p>K-Mart would run blue light specials,“Attention Shoppers, for the next 5 mins, we have one gallon of Male Sperm bottle at 75% off for $3,333 in aisle 15”.</p>

<p>No need for OB-Gyn or Hospital. When the time comes, just open the door and bingo.</p>