How Storytelling Makes Sense of Robot Sex
After being canceled amongst much controversy in Malaysia last year, the Second International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots finally took place in London this week, hosted at Goldsmiths, University of London.
As you might expect, there were some interesting gadgets such as haptic lollypops and kissing phones on show. But the bulk of the discussions revolved around philosophical — and increasingly topical — issues around both the morality and practicality of human-robot interactions in a not-so-distant future.
“What strikes me about the last few years is that advances in technology, and particularly in AI, have been happening much faster than we thought,” said David Levy, author of the book that lent its name to the conference (Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships).
When he first wrote the book, he predicted we would see the first human-robot marriages by 2050. But — much like the exponential AI advances we’ve experienced with Google DeepMind — things are moving at a much more accelerated pace than initially predicted:
“So although this might appear to be a long way off, you can never tell about the future, and if you think it won’t happen in your lifetime, you’re probably wrong. I still think it will happen by 2050, if not sooner.”
Continue reading the full story on the Future of Sex website
Originally published at Alice Bonasio.
