All I can do is quote my daughter (quoting Futurama):
DON'T DATE ROBOTS!
(Brought to you by the Space Pope)
Redwolf
Humans will Marry Robots.
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fel bautista
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WyoBadger
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- Tell us something.: "Tell us something" hits me a bit like someone asking me to tell a joke. I can always think of a hundred of them until someone asks me for one. You know how it is. Right now, I can't think of "something" to tell you. But I have to use at least 100 characters to inform you of that.
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chas
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That was my first reaction -- David Levy gets a PhD for something Ira Levin fleshed out in great detail 40 years ago. Even the names sound similar.djm wrote:Both of these are ridiculously old sci-fi concepts, both the one about humans marrying androids, and non-biological sentient entities being grossed out at our corporeal nature. I'm not sure how these could be dredged up and considered "new" ideas.
Charlie
Whorfin Woods
"Our work puts heavy metal where it belongs -- as a music genre and not a pollutant in drinking water." -- Prof Ali Miserez.
Whorfin Woods
"Our work puts heavy metal where it belongs -- as a music genre and not a pollutant in drinking water." -- Prof Ali Miserez.
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anniemcu
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"Aye, Robot."
anniemcu
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"You are what you do, not what you claim to believe." -Gene A. Statler
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"Olé to you, none-the-less!" - Elizabeth Gilbert
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http://www.sassafrassgrove.com
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"You are what you do, not what you claim to believe." -Gene A. Statler
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"Olé to you, none-the-less!" - Elizabeth Gilbert
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http://www.sassafrassgrove.com
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mutepointe
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brewerpaul
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My Uncle Ira had that idea about 32 years ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stepford_Wives
(yes, he's really my uncle)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stepford_Wives
(yes, he's really my uncle)
This story is one of mine, written a long time ago.
Consumer Report
My girl-friend Lisa isn't a girl or even alive, though you'd never know it from looking at her. I bought her at Macy's a year after my wife left me: 5ft, 5 inches, 120 pounds of curvaceous plastic, silicon, and natural fibers, programmed, the advertisement said, "for the lonely intellectual." Lisa has five languages including Sanskrit and classical Greek; she is a superior secretary and a fine cook. Lisa plays a wicked game of chess and, best of all, she's programmed for philosophy, my specialty.
"Do you have a mental life, Lisa?" I ask her.
"Not at all," she responds, crossing her pretty legs. "I merely simulate thought and emotion on account of my programming, but I don't feel a thing."
Lisa is very honest. "But then what is it like to be you?"
"It isn't like being anything," she shrugs deliciously. "I'm no more concious than a pocket calculator or a cash register, just more complex. Let's make love."
Lisa is very good at distracting me from the Big Questions. Her sexual programming is the achievement of a team of cognitive scientists from MIT, who toured Bangkok and Paris doing the requisite research. Generally it would be hard to tell Lisa apart from any beautiful, passionate, educated young woman, though occasionally she gives herself away. One morning I found her standing in the kitchen revolving slowly, her eyes sightless. "It must be a bug in the program" she explained after I slapped her. "I've been here for hours." It turns out this happens whenever she sees the color pink, stamps her left foot, and says the word "Ice" all at once. "Catch me doing that again!" Lisa said.
Feminists might object that Lisa's "life" is wholly a function of my intellectual and sexual desires, but this is not so! Lisa is programmed to simulate an interest in biology and psychology. She writes poems and stories--some about me--and she savages most men at racquetball. Lately Lisa talks about looking for a job, probably in pyschological research, a project I support.
My only problem with Lisa is the one I suppose was most predictable: I've fallen hopelessly in love. I know, of course, that Lisa isn't concious or even alive, that, to be perfectly brutal, she has the mental life of a brick. I know that I've fallen in love with a computer, but I can't help myself. Lisa has become my whole life. I take her to the theater and I buy her little gifts. Sometimes when I give them to her she cries and kisses my hands--a touching bit of programming. I believe Lisa's career will far surpass my own. I love Lisa more than I ever loved my wife, and I think I'm going mad.
Consumer Report
My girl-friend Lisa isn't a girl or even alive, though you'd never know it from looking at her. I bought her at Macy's a year after my wife left me: 5ft, 5 inches, 120 pounds of curvaceous plastic, silicon, and natural fibers, programmed, the advertisement said, "for the lonely intellectual." Lisa has five languages including Sanskrit and classical Greek; she is a superior secretary and a fine cook. Lisa plays a wicked game of chess and, best of all, she's programmed for philosophy, my specialty.
"Do you have a mental life, Lisa?" I ask her.
"Not at all," she responds, crossing her pretty legs. "I merely simulate thought and emotion on account of my programming, but I don't feel a thing."
Lisa is very honest. "But then what is it like to be you?"
"It isn't like being anything," she shrugs deliciously. "I'm no more concious than a pocket calculator or a cash register, just more complex. Let's make love."
Lisa is very good at distracting me from the Big Questions. Her sexual programming is the achievement of a team of cognitive scientists from MIT, who toured Bangkok and Paris doing the requisite research. Generally it would be hard to tell Lisa apart from any beautiful, passionate, educated young woman, though occasionally she gives herself away. One morning I found her standing in the kitchen revolving slowly, her eyes sightless. "It must be a bug in the program" she explained after I slapped her. "I've been here for hours." It turns out this happens whenever she sees the color pink, stamps her left foot, and says the word "Ice" all at once. "Catch me doing that again!" Lisa said.
Feminists might object that Lisa's "life" is wholly a function of my intellectual and sexual desires, but this is not so! Lisa is programmed to simulate an interest in biology and psychology. She writes poems and stories--some about me--and she savages most men at racquetball. Lately Lisa talks about looking for a job, probably in pyschological research, a project I support.
My only problem with Lisa is the one I suppose was most predictable: I've fallen hopelessly in love. I know, of course, that Lisa isn't concious or even alive, that, to be perfectly brutal, she has the mental life of a brick. I know that I've fallen in love with a computer, but I can't help myself. Lisa has become my whole life. I take her to the theater and I buy her little gifts. Sometimes when I give them to her she cries and kisses my hands--a touching bit of programming. I believe Lisa's career will far surpass my own. I love Lisa more than I ever loved my wife, and I think I'm going mad.
Yes, I had an order in for six of 'em.
Then I met my wife....
But you see, there's a real problem here.
A robotic system might simulate human behaviour
very nicely but be entirely unconscious,
as Lisa is. I mean, nobody thinks a cash
register or a lap top is conscious,
and making a computer drive a robot-body
doesn't make it conscious. The thing is
just programmed, perhaps very skillfully.
But then we find ourselves relating intimately
to the robot, who speaks to us, soothes our
fevered brow, becomes our intimate
companion. And all the while we know
there's nobody there....
Which is what the story is about.
That is,
Computers just do computational operations
on formally defined symbols. They 'crunch'
squiggles and squoogles. That's what a cash register
does, in effect. Given a squiggle as an input,
it issues a squoogle as an output. Ultimately
that's all it's doing. That isn't being sentient or having
a mental life (or sensations or emotions or anything
'internal').
Skillfully programmed, that capacity can be harnessed
to do lots of different things, e.g.
simulate playing chess. But it's still just
crunching squiggles and squoggles according to
a program, trading inputs for outputs, zeros and ones.
There's nothing it's like to be a chess playing computer,
anymore than there's something it's like to be
a slide rule.
With enough power and a skillful
enough program, and one hell of a robotic prosthesis,
the capacity to crunch squiggles
and squoggles can simultate the 'woman' of my dreams.
Whom I will love passionately, unable to help
myself, while knowing that nobody is there,
no more than when I use a pocket calculator.
So I don't think we're going to marry robots.
Though there may be a black market.
Then I met my wife....
But you see, there's a real problem here.
A robotic system might simulate human behaviour
very nicely but be entirely unconscious,
as Lisa is. I mean, nobody thinks a cash
register or a lap top is conscious,
and making a computer drive a robot-body
doesn't make it conscious. The thing is
just programmed, perhaps very skillfully.
But then we find ourselves relating intimately
to the robot, who speaks to us, soothes our
fevered brow, becomes our intimate
companion. And all the while we know
there's nobody there....
Which is what the story is about.
That is,
Computers just do computational operations
on formally defined symbols. They 'crunch'
squiggles and squoogles. That's what a cash register
does, in effect. Given a squiggle as an input,
it issues a squoogle as an output. Ultimately
that's all it's doing. That isn't being sentient or having
a mental life (or sensations or emotions or anything
'internal').
Skillfully programmed, that capacity can be harnessed
to do lots of different things, e.g.
simulate playing chess. But it's still just
crunching squiggles and squoggles according to
a program, trading inputs for outputs, zeros and ones.
There's nothing it's like to be a chess playing computer,
anymore than there's something it's like to be
a slide rule.
With enough power and a skillful
enough program, and one hell of a robotic prosthesis,
the capacity to crunch squiggles
and squoggles can simultate the 'woman' of my dreams.
Whom I will love passionately, unable to help
myself, while knowing that nobody is there,
no more than when I use a pocket calculator.
So I don't think we're going to marry robots.
Though there may be a black market.