“Will the recent Obergefell decision protecting same-sex marriage apply to open the door to robot-human marriage?”
This absurd question is posed by Slate contributor and Arizona State University Law professor Gary Marchant in his Aug. 10 article, A.I. Thee Wed.
In his piece for Slate, Marchant claimed that the Obergefell v. Hodges decision confirmed the “fundamental right” of a person to freely choose “the nature of the relationships and lifestyle they choose to pursue.” Now, he said, that should apply to robots, too.
He predicted not everyone would agree. “Most people (including judges) presumably think robot-human relationships are absurd and twisted,” Marchant wrote. However, he thinks they’ll come around in time: “That was once also the case for interracial marriage and same-sex marriage.”
“Of course those advances…[are] arguably quite distinct from recognizing human-machine marriage,” he admitted.
But that didn’t stop him from crafting his robot-marriage argument. “[A]s robots become more and more humanlike in their appearance and behavior, this distinction may eventually erode away,” he insisted.
Deep thoughts from a law professor.
With Marchant’s perspective, if a computer had the appearance of a human they’d be fair game for marriage. “While few people would understand or support robot-human intimacy today, as robots get more sophisticated and humanlike,” he concluded, “more and more people will find love, happiness, and intimacy in the arms of a machine.”
Marchant isn’t the only who thinks this is not only inevitable but also a good idea. The media have been warming up to the idea that there might be a future with human-robot relationships for a while. Recently, many different movies and television shows have navigated what life might be like with romantic ties to artificial beings. Movies like Her, Ex Machina, Lars and the Real Girl and television shows like Humans and Orphan Black question whether humans can love robots, dolls and clones in the same way they can anyone else.
But these are fictional entertainment. It’s scary to think and professors like Marchant honestly believe this is a good idea.
First it was cheating with multiple people and pretending you’re married (“polygamy”), then cheating without being "married" (“polyamory”), now the media think making a life-long commitment to a piece of machinery is the next best thing?
You can’t make this stuff up.
Liberals have long mocked conservative politicians for making the case that legalizing same-sex marriage would open the door for a whole host of other types of marriages as well. Ironically, those same liberals are the ones pushing for these deviant “relationships” now.
If you think this is crazy, last year The Guardian’s Tauriq Moosa made the case that sex with robots should be embraced. Well at least it’s not animals, this time.
(H/T: The Federalist)
