Technology is experimenting with robot lovers to simulate feelings and evoke strong sexual and emotional reactions in humans, making them the perfect companions and eventually even spouses. But, are we capable of falling in love with a non-thinking machine?

The dystopian scenario – an AI romantic futuristic robot-romance novel – seems distant, unrealistic, and very artificial. But the truth is this scenario may be more current and closer to reality than you would think, especially with the progress in new technologies and the current loneliness of our society.

In a modern world where we interact more online than offline, it is not absurd to imagine a future where AI and Robot technology companies will propose themselves as the architects of our next intimacy chapter. In an episode of Black Mirror, a young widow creates an AI version of her dead husband through the use of a computer software by collecting all of his online identity data.

The main question that arises: “Why would we even want that?”. The number one reason is that with robots you can decide the level and type of interaction you wish to engage in. The robots are created by the owner’s imagination. Besides that, it will never offend you unless you program it to do so. For example, the robots can be programmed to never nag, always be positive and helpful and be responsive to your moods. It will ultimately act as the perfect partner. Now the question might rather be: “Why would a human choose to have a relationship with another human?”.

Sources:

https://medium.com/@orge/the-future-of-love-robot-sex-and-ai-relationships-3b7c7913bb07

http://theinstitute.ieee.org/ieee-roundup/members/achievements/in-the-future-humans-will-form-romantic-relationships-with-robots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEP02sreGpA&frags=pl%2Cwn

Today, a new generation of self-learning computers have begun to reshape every aspect of our lives. Incomprehensible amounts of data are being created, interpreted, and fed back to us in a tsunami of apps, smart devices, and advertisements. Every industry on earth is experiencing the transformation, from job automation to medical diagnostics.

This transformation is referred to as the upcoming computer science called Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI brings both promises and perils. The promises, from speech recognition to problem solving, are familiar to us. However, the perils are somewhat unknown and/or less highlighted.

First, the multi-billion dollar industry has almost no regulations. The opaque nature and development speed of AI raises some urgent moral questions. Nobody really understands how AI works, even the people who create it don’t fully understand it. Because AI consists of millions of elements, it becomes completely impossible for a human being to understand what’s going on. Therefore, an internationally recognized ethical and legal framework for the design, production and use of AI is needed.

Moreover, robots are able to develop themselves. As we put more and more intelligence into robots, they will learn what will work and what not. AI may take a little while to wrap its tentacles around but when it gets it, it will be unstoppable. An example mentioned in the documentary “Do you trust this computer?”, where a robot was programmed to walk, it eventually developed itself and was able to recognize human faces. It was never trained to do so and yet somehow it learned to do that.

Both of these perils are less known to society, but are definitely of a dangerous nature. Are we able to tackle the perils AI brings?

Sources:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/do-you-trust-this-computer-documentary-elon-musk/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEP02sreGpA&frags=pl%2Cwn (must see!)

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/190/artificial-intelligence-ai

https://diginomica.com/2018/03/12/eu-debate-artificial-intelligence-regulation-legal-issues/