Abstract
In this chapter, we discover the history of love between humans and artificial partners, which has its origins in ancient Greek mythologies. Our fascination with artificial companions is evident in science fiction, films and television. With the research developments in robotics and artificial intelligence, intimate relationship with virtual and robotic partners is no longer pure science fiction, but it is also studied as a serious academic subject, known as Love and Sex with Robots. In order to continue with the discussion on this topic, it is necessary to understand the complicated emotion of love. We will attempt to explain this human desire by examining several popular theories of love. Finally, we will discuss whether and how could this new type of love be accepted in society.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Kirsty Boyle, 2008. karakuri.info. http://www.karakuri.info/perspectives/index.html.
- 2.
I Dated a Robot. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Dated_a_Robot.
- 3.
David Levy predicts that human-robot marriage will be legalised by 2050 on the condition that robots will be able to demonstrate sufficient artificial intelligence to understand, make decisions, and give consent to the marriage (see Chap. 9). Similarly, a virtual character with the same software capabilities should also be granted the same legal right if they can demonstrate a similar intelligence.
- 4.
1st International Conference on Human-Robot Personal Relationships. https://hrpr.uvt.nl/2008.
- 5.
International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots. http://loveandsexwithrobots.org/.
- 6.
Lovotics Journal. https://www.omicsonline.org/lovotics.php.
- 7.
The Institute, IEEE. 7 April 2008. http://theinstitute.ieee.org/members/profiles/is-cyberspace-making-you-sick7.
References
Asimov I (1957) Earth is room enough. Doubleday, Garden City
Asimov I (1978) The machine and the robot. Science fiction: contemporary mythology, pp 248–52
Asimov I (1983) Goodman RB (ed) True love
Asimov I, Silverberg R, Batho K (1993) The positronic man. Doubleday, London
Baumeister RF, Leary MR (1995) The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychol Bull 117(3):497
Becker-Asano C, Ishiguro H (2011) Evaluating facial displays of emotion for the android robot Geminoid F. In: 2011 IEEE workshop on affective computational intelligence (WACI), IEEE, pp 1–8
Berscheid E (2006) Searching for the meaning of “love”. The new psychology of love, pp 171–183
Beschorner T, Krause F (2017) Dolores and robot sex: fragments of non-anthropocentric ethics. In: International conference on love and sex with robots. Springer, Berlin, pp 128–137
Bołtuć P (2017) Church-turing lovers. Robot ethics 2.0: from autonomous cars to artificial intelligence. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p 214
Bryce E (2013) Manipulative machines: why we like robots (pCWorld). https://www.pcworld.com/article/2040862/manipulative-machines-why-we-like-robots.html
Calvo RA, D’Mello S (2010) Affect detection: an interdisciplinary review of models, methods, and their applications. IEEE Trans Affect Comput 1(1):18–37
Cheok AD, Levy D (eds) (2017) Love and sex with robots: third international conference, LSR 2017, London, UK, December 19–20, 2017. Revised selected papers, Springer
Cheok AD, Devlin K, Levy D (eds) (2016) Love and sex with robots: second international conference, LSR 2016, London, UK, December 19–20, 2016. Revised selected papers, Springer
Dick PK (1968) Do androids dream of electric sheep? Doubleday, New York
Dion KK, Dion KL (2006) Individualism, collectivism, and the psychology of love. The new psychology of love, pp 298–312
Edirisinghe C, Cheok AD (2016) Robots and intimacies: a preliminary study of perceptions, and intimacies with robots. In: International conference on love and sex with robots. Springer, Berlin, pp 137–147
Fisher HE, Aron A, Mashek D, Li H, Brown LL (2002) Defining the brain systems of lust, romantic attraction, and attachment. Arch Sex Behav 31(5):413–419
Fisher HE, Aron A, Brown LL (2006) Romantic love: a mammalian brain system for mate choice. Philos Trans R Soc B 361(1476):2173–2186
Fong T, Nourbakhsh I, Dautenhahn K (2003) A survey of socially interactive robots. Robot Auton Syst 42(3–4):143–166
Friedman B, Kahn Jr PH, Hagman J (2003) Hardware companions? What online AIBO discussion forums reveal about the human-robotic relationship. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, ACM, pp 273–280
Galbraith PW (2011) Bishōjo games:‘techno-intimacy’and the virtually human in Japan. Game Stud 11, 2
GameLook (2018) [paying for love! “love and producer" DAU exceeds 4 million! monthly revenue expected to reach 300 million] (translation). http://www.gamelook.com.cn/2018/01/317760
de Graaf MM, Allouch SB, van Dijk JA (2017) Long-term evaluation of a social robot in real homes. Interact Stud 17(3):462–491
Helm B (2017) Love. In: Zalta EN (ed) The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, fall, 2017th edn. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University
Hendrick C, Hendrick SS (1986) A theory and method of love. J Personal Soc Psychol 50(2):392–402
Hoffmann L, Krämer NC, Lam-Chi A, Kopp S (2009) Media equation revisited: do users show polite reactions towards an embodied agent? In: International workshop on intelligent virtual agents. Springer, Berlin, pp 159–165
Kim KJ, Park E, Sundar SS (2013) Caregiving role in human-robot interaction: a study of the mediating effects of perceived benefit and social presence. Comput Hum Behav 29(4):1799–1806
Krämer NC, Rosenthal-von der Pütten AM, Hoffmann L (2015) Social effects of virtual and robot companions. The handbook of the psychology of communication technology, pp 137–159
Lah K (2009) Tokyo man marries video game character (CNN). http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/16/japan.virtual.wedding/index.html
Law JM (1995) Religious reflections on the human body. Indiana University Press, Bloomington
Lee JA (1973) Colours of love: an exploration of the ways of loving. New Press, Toronto
Levy D (2007) Intimate relationships with artificial partners. PhD thesis, Maastricht University
Levy D (2007) Love and sex with robots: the evolution of human-robot relationships. Harper Collins, New York
Levy D (2007) Loving our pets. Love and sex with robots: the evolution of human-robot relationships. Harper Collins, pp 46–63. 2
Libin A (2001) Virtual reality as a complex interactive system: a multidimensional model of person artificial partner co-relations. In: Proceedings Seventh International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia, IEEE, pp 652–657
Libin AV, Libin EV (2004) Person-robot interactions from the robopsychologists’ point of view: the robotic psychology and robotherapy approach. Proc IEEE 92(11):1789–1803
Mar A (2017) Are we ready for intimacy with robots? (Wired). https://www.wired.com/2017/10/hiroshi-ishiguro-when-robots-act-just-like-humans/
Marazziti D, Akiskal HS, Rossi A, Cassano GB (1999) Alteration of the platelet serotonin transporter in romantic love. Psychol Med 29(3):741–745
Marsh J, Ogura J (2017) The rise of romance gaming: is the perfect boyfriend inside your phone? (cNN). https://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/21/asia/romance-gaming-japan/index.html
Metropolis magazine (2009) Love bytes. https://metropolisjapan.com/love-bytes/
Moran ME (2006) The da vinci robot. J Endourol 20(12):986–990
Moseley A (2001) Philosophy of love. In: Internet encyclopedia of philosophy. https://www.iep.utm.edu/love/
National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (2015) The fifteenth Japanese national fertility survey in 2015. http://www.ipss.go.jp/ps-doukou/e/doukou15/Nfs15R_points_eng.pdf
Nomura S, Soon J, Samani HA, Godage I, Narangoda M, Cheok AD, Katai O (2009) Feasibility of social interfaces based on tactile senses for caring communication. In: the 8th international workshop on SID, vol 68
Rosenthal-von der Pütten AM, Krämer NC, Hoffmann L, Sobieraj S, Eimler SC (2013) An experimental study on emotional reactions towards a robot. Int J Soc Robot 5(1):17–34
Reeves B, Nass CI (1996) The media equation: how people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Ruptly (2017) ‘Until a reboot do us part’: Japanese guys are marrying VR brides (video). https://www.rt.com/viral/394916-virtual-reality-brides-japan/
Sabelli AM, Kanda T, Hagita N (2011) A conversational robot in an elderly care center: an ethnographic study. In: 2011 6th ACM/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction (HRI), IEEE, pp 37–44
Sharkey N, van Wynsberghe A, Robbins S, Hancock E (2017) Our sexual future with robots. Foundation for Responsible Robotics
South China Morning Post (2018) China’s women gamers take centre-stage with ‘virtual boyfriend’ game love and producer. http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2127116/chinas-women-gamers-take-centre-stage-virtual-boyfriend-game-love
Sternberg RJ (1986) A triangular theory of love. Psychol Rev 93(2):119
Syrdal DS, Dautenhahn K, Koay KL, Ho WC (2014) Views from within a narrative: evaluating long-term human-robot interaction in a naturalistic environment using open-ended scenarios. Cogn Comput 6(4):741–759
Usher P (2016) Why women are choosing virtual boyfriends over real ones? Vogue Mag. https://www.vogue.com/article/virtual-romance-apps
Wada K, Shibata T (2006) Robot therapy in a care house-its sociopsychological and physiological effects on the residents. In: Proceedings 2006 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation, 2006. ICRA 2006, IEEE, pp 3966–3971
White JK, Hendrick SS, Hendrick C (2004) Big five personality variables and relationship constructs. Personal Individ Differ 37(7):1519–1530
Wilks Y (2004) Artificial companions. In: International workshop on machine learning for multimodal interaction. Springer, Berlin, pp 36–45
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cheok, A.D., Zhang, E.Y. (2019). An Overview of Love Between Humans and Artificial Partners. In: Human–Robot Intimate Relationships. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94730-3_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94730-3_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94729-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94730-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)