"Let's face it . The singularity is a religious rather than a scientific vision. The science-fiction writer Ken MacLeod has dubbed it ”the rapture for nerds,” an allusion to the end-time, when Jesus whisks the faithful to heaven and leaves us sinners behind.
Such yearning for transcendence, whether spiritual or technological, is all too understandable. Both as individuals and as a species, we face deadly serious problems, including terrorism, nuclear proliferation, overpopulation, poverty, famine, environmental degradation, climate change, resource depletion, and AIDS. Engineers and scientists should be helping us face the world's problems and find solutions to them, rather than indulging in escapist, pseudoscientific fantasies like the singularity."
from The Consciousness Conundrum by John Horgan, on the IEEE website, June 2008
The New York Times recently published an article on its cover entitled "Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man" (7/25/09). It suggests that we may be on the cusp of a post-human era in which computerized superintelligences reign on Earth. The moment this starts to take place is called "The Singularity", meaning the latest in several technological singularities which have changed the way humans live and process information. Technologists and futurists called Singulatarians are worried about how the public will deal with the ramifications of this event. After all, we have already been giving up our jobs and human interactions to robots and artificial intelligence (AI) systems plenty over the past several decades. Are we ready for robot bosses and lovers?David Levy's book "Love and Sex with Robots" includes an edutaining history of AI, robotics and sex toys and presents this alongside a sometimes disturbing psychological study of our emotional attachment to inanimate objects such as dolls, cars and yes, robots. This is all fascinating, but Levy makes the annoying mistake of insisting throughout that it is simply a hop, skip and a jump from loving a doll and using a vibrator to falling in love with and marrying a robot. I'm not talking a cyborg here, either - Levy insists that the AI will be so convincing and customizable, the sexual prowess so indefatigable, that the lure of the robot lover will be much more compelling than that of any human lover.
Research on human interactions with computerized systems shows that people like to interact with AI that behaves in an empathetic manner, and that we tend to respond as we would to a kind person when dealing with a "kind" computer program. Levy claims that a simulation of a human being would be just as good as a real human being inasmuch as it can be programmed to behave in the way we would like. He uses examples of people who use sex dolls and vibrators to bolster his argument, as these marriageable robots (and humans?) are ostensibly just dolls with really good programming.
Japanese culture plays a large part in the book. The Japanese are great pioneers in robotics and their animist religion allows them to see robots as beneficent living things, much as a sacred rock or sand sculpture. Levy tries to make a case that, because of this cultural premise, the Japanese are quicker to accept non-human and even inanimate objects as being equally valid to humans. He also tries to say that Western culture has tended to paint robots as sinister a la Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but remembering the likable robots in Star Wars, Lost in Space, and The Jetsons, I don't buy that argument.
The New York Times magazine from July 26, 2009 has an article called Love in 2-D, which is all about lonely Japanese men who carry on relationships with stuffed pillowcases emblazoned with the images of scantily clad young cartoon women. The one man whose photo was included with the article looks like your classic "loser", the likes of which we also have plenty in the West. Perhaps it is Japan's higher public tolerance for what we regard as fetish behavior (panty vending machines, rape comics, etc.) which Levy is confusing with the synergistic compassion and empathy that living creatures feel for one another. Levy would argue that this compassion and empathy can be virtually reproduced, creating the requisite chemical responses in us humans that render their source, their inspiration moot.
Robot minders are now being used in Japan to monitor senior citizens who are left alone. Japan also boasts a highly successful brothel chain specializing in the rental of sex dolls. My husband, who also read the book, made a compelling suggestion when we were driving the other day. He works at a Veterans' hospital where he regularly encounters men with serious post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), men who are so psychologically disabled by this condition that they cannot have normal relationships, so no one takes care of them, and their health further deteriorates. A robot-minder who cared for them, provided talk therapy, made sure they took their medicines, and yes, had sex with them, my husband argues, would greatly improve these alienated and deteriorating veterans' lives. Even if they only talked and had sex with them it would be an improvement.
My husband then asked whether I would prefer spending time with an AI-programmed robot of my late father (may he rest in peace) or a to-be-unnamed person whom I don't like. Seeing as I'd rather spend time alone than with someone I dislike, it wasn't entirely a fair question, but it did make me miss my Dad. The father-robot would be programmed with my father's bank of interests, deductive abilities, ethnic and local background, communicative style and sense of humor. That I'd like to see. Or would I?
Am I being sentimental in embracing the frailty, the foibles of life, of preferring them to pre-programmed perfection? This response is inevitable when being banged over the head by Levy's insistence that there really is no difference between being inspired by an inanimate or an animate object. It's not that I discount the real and potential value of robots, or even that I haven't experienced strong emotional responses to things like paintings and characters in novels. My objection is to Levy's facile reductionism. Yes, we may one day better understand how our brain works - memory, inspiration, creativity, attraction, deduction and a host of other brain activities - but, despite Levy's incessant urgings, we really aren't there yet. As a specialist in computer chess and games he confuses the ability to deduce with the whole of one's humanity.
Getting back to the notion of an imminent "Singularity", some proponents of this perceived inevitability (Singulatarians, who are a variant of the Transhumanist Movement) tout that supreme AI will solve all of humanity's problems, ushering in an era of peace and prosperity for all. This is the view of the Zeitgeist movement, which blames the current global monetary system for all the world's ills. Their online forum actually features posts in which movement activists assure members that drunk driving will not be a problem in the future because vehicles will a) fly, and b) include avoidance sensors, and c) be so well-padded and well-suspended that any collision would be rendered harmless. The movement also claims that since technology will take care of all drudge tasks, humans will be free to engage solely in creative and self-improving endeavors. Opponents warn that robots will steal even more (if not all) human jobs and their supremacy will lead to further natural degradation and humans living under a totalitarian regime, not to mention a further degradation of telephone and internet support services.
So, will a significant number of us be schtupping robots in the next few decades? Will people be marrying robots in 2050, as Levy prognosticates? Who knows? I have to agree with the quote at the beginning of this blog entry though - we have serious problems to tackle. The puerile fixation on how far we can take the blow-up doll is disappointing. The notion that a profit motive driven by the popularity of long-distance robo-sex using the Internet and haptic interfaces will make this happen sooner - is just creepy.
Images, I, Robot movie poster, 20th century Fox; Astroboy by Osamu Tezuka, Dark Horse Comics
