Is a Human-Robot Relationship Wrong?
Robot relationships need not be kinky, exploitative or fake. In fact they might give human relationships a helpful boost
By John Danaher
There is a heartbreaking scene in the middle of Blade Runner 2049 (2017). The hero of the movie, a replicant called K, lives a drab existence in a dystopian, future Los Angeles. The one bright spot in his life is his patient and sympathetic partner, Joi. They share many affectionate moments on screen. But then she is killed, in the midst of declaring her love, in one of the movie’s most gut-wrenching moments. I know I shed a tear when I first saw it.
There is, however, something unusual about Joi. She is a mass-produced, artificially intelligent hologram, designed to be the perfect partner. She learns from her interactions with K, and shifts her personality to suit his moods. Her ‘death’, such as it is, is due to the fact that she can exist only in the presence of a particular holographic emanator. When it is destroyed, so is she.
Joi would be little more than a science-fiction curio if it were not for the fact that real-world companies are trying to create versions of her. The Japanese company Gatebox, for instance, sells Azuma Hikari. ‘She’ is a holographic AI, projected inside a…
