The Errant Æsthete

Is love and marriage with robots an institute you can disparage? Not to computer pioneer David Levy. Continuing advances in computers and robotics, he thinks, will make legal marriages between Homo and Robo feasible by mid-century.

Last year, David Levy published a book, Love and Sex with Robots, which marked a culmination of years of research about the interactions between humans and computers. His basic idea is that, for humans who cannot establish emotional or sexual connections with other people, they might form them with robots. The 62-year-old Levy, is quite serious, as he explains to frequent contributor Charles Q. Choi in the Insights story “Not Tonight, Dear, I Have to Reboot,” appearing in the March issue of Scientific American.

“If the alternative is that you are lonely and sad and miserable, is it not better to find a robot that claims to love you and acts like it loves you? Does it really matter, if you’re a happier person?”