Today, the technical ability to produce a robot that truly looks and moves and speaks like a human remains well beyond our reach.
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[Android creator Hiroshi] Ishiguro believes that since we’re hardwired to interact with and place our faith in humans, the more humanlike we can make a robot appear, the more open we’ll be to sharing our lives with it.…
“If a robot behaves as though it has feelings, can we reasonably argue that it does not? If a robot’s artificial emotions prompt it to say things such as ‘I love you,’ surely we should be willing to accept these statements at face value … Why, if a robot that we know to be emotionally intelligent, says, ‘I love you’ or ‘I want to make love to you,’ should we doubt it?” Human emotions, [AI expert David Levy] argues, are no less “programmed” than those of an intelligent machine: “We have hormones, we have neurons, and we are ‘wired’ in a way that creates our emotions.”
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Hiroshi [says] “We want to have some ideal partner, and the android can be a very strong mirror to reflect your own idea.” In this way, a relationship with an android is like having a partner who is, literally, an extension of yourself.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Are We Ready for Intimacy With Androids?