If you're younger than 35, you'll probably live long enough to put David Levy's prediction to the test. Levy says that by 2050 we'll be creating robots so lifelike, so imbued with human-seeming intelligence and emotions, as to be nearly indistinguishable from real people. And we'll have sex with these robots. Some of us will even marry them. And it will all be good. If you are familiar with the name, its because Mr. Levy is a well known English chess player. But, you might ask, is it possible to make a robot that will really love you? Mr. Levy's experience with Chess leads him to conclude that it doesn't matter.
"I take a pragmatic point of view," he said, "partly because in my original field, computer chess, that was how the problem was solved." Not by making machines that thought like chess masters but by making machines that beat chess masters. Similarly, Levy thinks, robots need only "simulate" human intelligence and emotions "to the point that they are absolutely convincing." If you can't tell whether the thing is man or machine, what difference does it make? You'll treat it as if it were alive. The rest is philosophical hairsplitting.
Well, actually this last bit is a contentious assertion. Philosopher John Searle, with his Chinese Room thought experiment, has argued that a perfect simulation of human behavior does not give the robot an essential Humanity. On the other hand, Putnam (I think) has claimed that if you do not treat this kind of machine as human, it's a form of bigotry based merely on what is inside the brain case.
I have no opinion on this question; I just like the idea of a slutty robot. Too bad I'll probably be dead before their put into mass production.
