Can Loving a Robot Lead to Divorce?

robots are not needy

When the anatomically correct, customizable, touch-responsive, personality-changing sexbot named Roxxxy was unveiled at the Adult Entertainment Expo last year, it -- she? -- was met with a lot of snarky responses. Only losers and perverts would be interested in shelling out $7,000 for a glorified sex toy, many said.

Inventor and TrueCompanion founder Douglas Hines doesn't see it that way. With about 4,000 pre-orders, Hines believes artificially intelligent robots such as Roxxxy are "the future of robotics."

It also maybe the future of love and marriage, if you believe artificial intelligent (AI) expert David Levy, author of Love and Sex With Robots.

According to Levy, human-robot sex, love and marriage is inevitable -- perhaps as soon as 2025. He predicts that robots may not only be more lovable and faithful than many humans, but they may even be more emotionally available than the "typical American human male." Not only will they make us become better, more creative lovers, but they also will offer those singles who feel a void in their emotional and sexual lives and married couples with differing sexual needs new, nonjudgmental ways to be happy and healthy.

Even if you can't wrap your head around the idea of loving a robot (let alone marrying one), imagine that for a certain percentage of the population it's not only not fantasy but preferable to relationships with humans. What will that mean for us as a society as a whole?

Although Levy believes that the "availability of regular sex with a robot will dramatically reduce the incidence of infidelity as we know it today," he also acknowledges there may be some potential sticky points. "(S)ome human spouses and lovers might consider robot sex to be just as unfaithful as sex with another person."

And that's what caught the interest of Sonya Ziaja, a San Francisco Bay Area attorney who blogs at numerous law and policy media outlets as well as her own, Shark. Laser. Blawg. After reading about Roxxxy, Ziaga says she wondered about hypothetical situations in which a sexbot might create some legal headaches. "It was most fun to discuss those (situations) in which laws that were designed to regulate interactions between humans suddenly faced (with) the prospect of regulating interactions between humans and machines," she writes.

And what could be more fraught with legal dilemmas than a love triangle among a married couple and a sexbot? How that might impact a divorce? That's what Ziaja explores in her paper, "Homewrecker 2.0: An Exploration of Liability for Heart Balm Torts Involving AI Humanoid Consorts," which she presented at the 2011 International Conference on Social Robotics that took place in Amsterdam at the end of November.

reply to post by ICEKOHLD


i'm not sure if i would be more offended that my mate screwed another man or if she screwed a robot. not really sure how i would take this. now...if the robot cooks...my gf better watch out!

Sex with any life-form, whether it be with Human, Animal or Robot, is sex.

I can definitely see a huge market for those who wish to express and pursue their own personal sexual desires.

If one can not enjoy such desires with a Human, then there is nothing wrong with a Robot that is owned by the Human in question.

Of course, if the Robot was endowed with sufficient A.I, then it may become an issue, as it would then be a conscious sex-slave. Up until then, however, it is just a glorified sex-toy.

As it is, we know for a fact that Humans will slowly merge themselves with technology, and I am talking about a technology that is not really available, or even thought of, at this time.

The future will bring about many new laws and definitions of what it means to be Human.

Sure, the 'Human' will traditionally be the creature born by natural means, as a flesh and blood body, but many augmentations later, we will still see it as Human. This is a fact.

So, if a Human is 50% Robot, and a Robot is 50% Human, are they both the same, even if one was created in a factory?



I say they are.

reply to post by ICEKOHLD


Cheating is cheating. It's as simple as that in my book.

Lets face it I'd have cause for concern if I found my wife with a sex-bot

reply to post by Grifter81

It seems to me that a sex-bot is just expensive masturbation. Not a good thing to explain to the spouse on a regular basis.

On the other hand you could shoot your spouse's lover and get no more than a damage to property charge.

reply to post by charles1952


I have to agree (expensive masturbation)...

Sex with any life-form, whether it be with Human, Animal or Robot, is sex.

A robot is not a lifeform. It's not much different than a sex toy combined with a custom name POV video (if you have to ask, well...), just an expensive one. Personally, I don't get the attraction there...seems kinda weird to me...but different strokes (hehe, get it) for different folks I suppose.

They need to watch Futurama's informative video, "Don't Date Robots!"