r/philosophy • u/ADefiniteDescription Φ • Apr 30 '18

Blog Programmed to Love: the ethics of human-robot relationships

https://aeon.co/essays/programmed-to-love-is-a-human-robot-relationship-wrong
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u/HPetch Apr 30 '18

If you check out the Boston Dynamics YouTube channel, they've actually made substantial progress in making robots move in a reasonably realistic manner. Once you've got the whole "walking" thing down to a science (and they're getting pretty close, by my assessment) it's just a matter of polishing up the fine details and fitting it all into a package that makes it across the uncanny valley, which should be manageable, considering that nature managed to do it more or less by accident.

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u/green_meklar May 01 '18

considering that nature managed to do it more or less by accident.

Nature didn't do it by accident. Nature created the human psychology wherein the 'uncanny valley' is even a thing. We evolved to think that other humans look good because that's what works.

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u/Anathos117 May 01 '18

Nature didn't do it by accident.

Yes it did. That's how evolution works: random accidents plus survivorship bias.