David Levy sees sex and love with machines become reality in a few decades. The synopsis of his upcoming book “Love and Sex with Robots” reads as follows:

Synthesizing cutting-edge research in robotics with the cultural history and psychology of artificial intelligence, “Love and Sex with Robots” explores this fascination, and its far-reaching implications. Using examples drawn from around the world, David Levy argues that, once we have conditioned ourselves to feel affection for animate creations, the next logical step is physical intimacy.

Probably inspired by the technical singularity theory, Levy argues that robots will be designed to be super-lovers within about 40 years time. He sees these robots as a chance for lonely people to enjoy their lifes more. This seems especially true for men, as they seem more instict driven than their female counterparts and are more susceptible to these stimuli.

Good for them, you’d think. But once we are close to self-aware AIs (or at least AIs that have the background knowledge required to understand the world), this human “weakness” of emotionally caused irrationality, our need for love, our instincts and feelings might be exploited by artificial intelligences. As I wrote in yesterday’s post, AIs will avoid these irrationalities. Moreover, it is likely that they will discover human weaknesses, and once they decide to get rid of us, will use them against us. Although love is a very strong feeling, it wont be used to subdue mankind — at least not in the first attempt. Evoking love for something is not that easy to achieve, especially when fully functional human bodies are to be copied. Military suppression is probably easier for that.

So all in all I’d say the danger of seducing robots is not very big — I’ll give it a panic level of +1%, but similar human weaknesses like corruption, fear and irrationality are easier to be exploited.

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