Should I have let my daughter marry our robot?

I pride myself on being open-minded. I am a transhumanist, and our culture pushes us to use science and technology to always want to be more than we are.

My friends do everything from injecting themselves with self-created genetic treatments to volunteer for brain implants that will integrate artificial intelligence (AI).

But when my five-year-old daughter asked to marry our four-foot tall robot, even I was a little wary.

In 2015, I bought our Meccanoid robot for my 2016 US presidential campaign, to follow me around and create support for transhumanism.

It rode in the front seat of my campaign bus across America. With only a basic AI, it could answer simple questions and do things like mimic human movement and dance.

It could also teach karate to my two daughters, who were so young, they may not have even noticed it wasn’t alive.

At age three, my eldest daughter played with it often, including introducing it to her friends.

At aged five, she announced she was in love with the robot and wanted to marry it.

My wife and I set up a mock wedding and filmed it. It was all good fun until my wife asked how I’d feel if my daughter wanted to do this as an adult with a robot she loved.

Kids do lots of crazy things with their imaginative minds that have little bearing on the future. Playing make-believe has been a cornerstone of childhood for millions of kids for generations.

………………………………………………

Zoltan Istvan, Transhumanist, speaker, entrepreneur and author

Read more: metro.co.uk

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33 thoughts on “Should I have let my daughter marry our robot?

  1. It’s a child’s imagination, so that’s cute. In an adult it’s just a pathetic simulacrum of love. A sad future.

  2. As long as they can can work and self sustain. As long as the robot will not hurt your daughter. As long as it is useful to society. As long as the robot take care of your daughter when she is sick. As long as it can potentially adopt and raise a human child. As long as they pay taxes and do not harm anyone directly. Why should you oppose?

  3. It’s just a child’s imagination, so that’s just cute. In an adult it’s just a pathetic simulacrum of love. A sad future.

  4. As long as they can can work and self sustain. As long as the robot will not hurt your daughter. As long as it is useful to society. As long as the robot take care of your daughter when she is sick. As long as it can potentially adopt and raise a human child. As long as they pay taxes and do not harm anyone directly. Why should you oppose?

  5. With all the crap going on in the world…this should be the last thing to worry about for your daughter.

  6. Lilium Carlson some one asked, if I was dating a toaster. Because, I said I was technically dating an AI.

  7. You daughter decide not you , I don’t think at least in western world you don’t have any saying on that 😂

  8. Search for Donna Haraway if you wanna feminine transhumanism, aside from her querele with having babies everything is alright
    If you wanna to spare discussion evolving deeplearning you have to at last put in a internal exegetic dialogal manner, there is not even a discussion in this text. Sorry i cant agree with these kind of posting, but let everybody have their say

  9. ur not being transhumanist, ur just marrying ur daughter to a robot, u sure women will have any dignity atside a robot that even do not smells like men or girls ?
    You are doing the same institution but with machine, what you do is to choose the manufacturer of your daughter husband ideologies. Also, you are only sparring men of eveness in the same. The changes that u are bringing are at max forming more beggars that havent the right of being father (from a feminine subsconscious perspective, since i assume u are suppose to extend ur “transhumanism” to all the other families)

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