RP151 Wired for Love

 RP151 Wired for Love?

In 2016, newspapers reported that a French woman had said something very strange. She was "engaged" to a robot and planned to marry it as soon as robot-human marriage became legal.

A strange story, yes. But in fact, people falling in love with non-human objects is nothing new. People have "married" the Eifel Tower, the Berlin Wall, and even the Statue of Liberty. In the past, these affairs were seen as strange and the people involved in them rather odd. Technology is now so advanced, however, that certain objects (such as computers and robots) can seem almost human. The question is no longer a joke. Could there be a future in which human-robot relationships not only exist, but are considered normal?

The fact is, over the past 20 years we have been interacting with technology in ever-more-intimate ways. The Tamagotchi craze of the 1990s had people giving up their lives to take care of tiny digital "pets." In the early 2000s, Sony's robot dog AIBO stole people's hearts. And in 2011, Apple's Siri gave iPhones voices and personalities. Nowadays, we often spend more time with our phones than we do with other people. Artificial intelligence will continue to simulate human personalities and behavior ever more accurately. And the barriers against falling in love with artificial humans may soon fall away altogether as a result. Indeed, surveys show that 30% of people feel they could fall in love with robots in the future. One scientist even predicts that human-robot marriages will be legal by 2050.

Technology is, of course, meant to make our lives easier. In this case, however, it seems the more advanced technology gets, the more complicated the situation might become. But then again, when was true love ever simple?