What’s Love Got to Do with It? Robots, Sexuality, and the Arts of Being Human

Abstract

This chapter explores contemporary Artificial Intelligence (AI) and social robots in order to clarify what people may expect of these in terms of love and friendship. It reviews Anne Gerdes' discussion of phronesis and reflective judgment as remaining computationally intractable. The chapter complements the two threads with Sara Ruddick's phenomenological account, as foregrounding embodiment, autonomy, and self-awareness as necessary conditions of "complete sex"—including the specific desire that our desire be desired by the Other. Social robots arguably lack all of these capacities—including autonomy and embodied awareness of desire—and so cannot qualify for complex sex and human eros. Ruddick's account thus works to counter then-prevailing Cartesian dualisms—that is, views that presumed a strong ontological split between mind and body. The chapter reinforces and expands John Sullins' approach in a number of ways—beginning, for example, with Rollo May's analyses of eros and sexuality in the modern world.