Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
gain admiration. A robot can have many of these different temperament
traits active at the same time—each robot's individual combination of
traits will give it its own manifestative personality.
Robots with personality will exhibit different moods. A robot's
moods, like those of humans, can vary over time and correspond to cur-
rent emotions or to sensations that arise from the robot's current situa-
tion. Robots, like humans, will have their own (different) personalities,
and will therefore be able to experience different moods in a given situ-
ation, or the same moods but with differing intensities. For example, a
self-confident robot would probably feel angry when threatened while an
insecure robot would be afraid in the same situation.
Love and Marriage with Robots—An Acceptable Idea?
Nowadays scientists, psychologists and philosophers are asking, more and
more often, questions such as “Can robots fall in love?” The question
may seem to some of you to be unnecessary because love is an experience
peculiar to warm-blooded mammals—anything in a programmed entity
is merely a simulation, however convincing the display. But if a robot
exhibits all the signs given out by a human in love, then surely that robot
has passed the “in love” version of the Turing Test. The fact that the ro-
bot does not have feelings as we know them does not prevent it from be-
having exactly like a human in love. If your human spouse/partner/date
behaves as though he or she is in love with you, then so far as you are
concerned, he or she is indeed in love with you. In decades to come an
ever-increasing proportion of the human race will be equally accepting
of the notion that their robot is in love with them.
An even more important psychological and sociological question for
the future is “Will people fall in love with robots?” I believe the answer
to this question to be an unqualified “Yes”. Though this idea will be
abhorrent to many people, the rapidity with which millions developed
emotional attachments to their Tamgotchis, a very simple type of robot,
surely is an indication of the strength of emotion that millions of peo-
ple will feel for robots that are far more sophisticated in so many ways.
Within the next 20 years I expect some people, maybe only needy people,
to fall in love with robots. And as time goes on the “neediness” threshold
required before a human falls in love with a robot will surely be reduced.
