David Levy – Social Robot Futures

Machines and the Ethics of Miscegenation

Oct 16, 2019Sep 16, 2021

In a fascinating new article in Glass Bead Journal, Louis Chude-Sokei (2019) begins by challenging the parallels between humans and machines that David Levy (2007) mobilizes in his controversial book Love and Sex with Robots. The parallels Levy sets up, Chude-Sokei maintains, have been “less controversial than his book’s assumptions of and possible impact on gender relationships, and his nonchalant relationship to ethics.”

Discussion

Why Science Needs Fiction

Feb 28, 2014Jan 31, 2023

–Introducing the Social Robot Futures website

By Teresa Heffernan

Scientists working in artificial intelligence and robotics often comment on the inspiration they draw from fiction. Yet what role do literature and film play when it comes to questions about the future of the industry, social policy, and ethics? Social Robot Futures is a place that takes seriously the feedback loop between science and the humanities, and that restores fiction to the industry of robotics and AI. It opens up a space to imagine this technology as untethered by questions of profit or military funding.