情報経営イノベーション専門職大学（東京都墨田区、学長 中村伊知哉、http://www.i-u.ac.jp、以下「iU」）は、このほど海外大学との提携の第一段階として、米国カリフォルニア大学サン・ディエゴ校（The University of California, San Diego (UCSD)、米国イリノイ大学シカゴ校（The University of Illinois at Chicago Campus）、英国シェーフィールド大学（The University of Sheffield）、マレーシアラッフルズ大学(Raffles University Malaysia )、シンガポール国立大学（National University of Singapore）、英国ニコラ・テスラ大学院大学 (Nikola Tesla Graduate School)、アフリカアクレ連邦技術大学（The Federal University of Technology、Akure、 Ondo State、 Nigeria: FUTA）の7校との包括的提携に合意しました。
Professional University of Information and Management for Innovation (Sumida-ku, Tokyo, President Ichiya Nakamura, http://www.iu.ac.jp, “iU”) announces that since opening the University on April 1st 2020, it already has reached a comprehensive partnership agreement with global seven prominent schools such as The University of California, San Diego (UCSD), The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), The University of Sheffield, Raffles University Malaysia, National University of Singapore, Nikola Tesla Graduate School in UK, and the Federal University of Technology, Africa (Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria: FUTA). Many more international collaborations will follow.
iU will continue to actively collaborate with major universities in Japan and overseas, aiming to realize the “World University Concept”, a world university as an intellectual hub for the IT and business world centered around iU.
Specifically, in addition to the exchange of students and faculty members and the implementation of joint research, the objectives are as follows:
(1) A “passport” system that allows classes at partner universities and is recognized as a graduation unit
(2) Joint development research of new industries and new products with joint use of strategic special zones
(3) Establishment of special visa zone for international students
(4) Other international collaborative research on eSports, super education, super sports, anime, otaku, etc.
(5) Entrepreneurship support and human resource development
This alliance with overseas universities is being promoted as part of the “World University Concept” advocated by iU. Through collaboration with each school, iU will be able to develop and hold international joint lectures, international joint experiments and implementation of various IT technologies, and international joint research through exchanges of students and teachers of each university. iU will work with universities and other well-known companies in Japan and overseas that support this activity.
In the 1999 film Bicentennial Man, Robin Williams plays a robot, Andrew, who is gifted with the capacity of emotion and creativity. Andrew eventually falls in love with a human lady and decides to marry her. When he petitions a regulatory body to recognise their matrimony, however, he is rejected as they were concerned that he could not age and this would spark an upheaval in society. Andrew then re-engineers his body so that it would deteriorate naturally with time, and then eventually die, thus making him fully human.
Bicentennial Man isn’t the first piece of art to explore the existential question of what it means to be human, and whether man-made machines can truly become sentient autonomous beings, and whether they will one day be placed on the same footing as us homo sapiens. Famous science fiction authors like Isaac Asimov have written hypothetical scenarios where humans are made to live side by side highly intelligent robots. Will there be chaos? Will they rule over us? How do we govern them?
These are but some of the many deep questions that our society needs to address as AI and robotics converge to produce artificial beings who are becoming more life-like. Robots have already bested our finest chess masters and have made thousands of administrative and clerical work redundant with their complex algorithms and lightning-speed processing power.
So what if one day, they are able to replace our spouse as well? Are romantic love and sexual desire just human wants that require a reciprocal response from a willing party, no matter what form it takes — even if it isn’t human?
At WiT Singapore 2019, Professor Adrian David Cheok, Director, Imagineering Institute, Malaysia, sought to address this issue – specifically on the topic of whether humans should be allowed to marry robots.
“Robots are going to engage with relationships with humans. Humans will love robots and treat them as partners,” Cheok declared.
Robots have a lot of desirable qualities. For one, their image, personality and body can be easily moulded to fit your personal desires. Imagine a ‘love robot’ that looks, moves and talks exactly like your favourite celebrity, or creepier yet, your crush. It is not a far-fetched idea, there are already prototypes that exist.
They can also easily be programmed with other positive ‘emotional’ attributes such as patience, kindness, honesty, uncomplaining, the list goes on. In essence, they can become the perfect partner.
The question now comes down to whether we as a society should recognise human-robot marriages. Whether man and machine can become one in, umm, flesh and silicon-covered robot parts.
Professor Cheok, Imagineering Institute, said creating the perfect partner is totally possible with software.
Human-robot marriages shouldn’t be controversial
Cheok argued that such marriages should not be controversial. Up to the late 1960s, the US still banned interracial marriages, he said. And homosexual unions were only first recognised in Copenhagen in 1989.
Traditional religious, cultural, and ethical values dictate that marriage is only valid between a man and a woman; but this notion is fast becoming archaic in many societies. More people, especially the younger generation, are opening up to new concepts of love, marriage and sexual identity. Can a transgender female marry a transsexual male? It wasn’t too long ago when this would be openly-ridiculed in public. In today’s world, however, you wouldn’t have to dig hard to find a supportive community, on the internet at least.
But how would a union between a human and a robot affect the upbringing of their child? (Let’s just assume for simplicity’s sake that robots and human spouses will adopt, because the idea of robots conceiving a child would just blow my mind). Would the child grow normally in the absence of a traditional nuclear family unit?
There are now some statistics that demonstrate that the old school mom-and-dad social unit may not be as critical to the healthy development of a child as one may think. Cheok cited a 2006 Pediatrics journal, which claimed that there is “ample evidence to show that children raised by same-gender parents fare as well as those raised by heterosexual parents.”
If two loving men or women can raise a healthy kid in their home, why not a loving man/woman and a robot? “Good parenting can happen as long as both parents are conscientious and nurturing. There is no reason why a sophisticated robot in the next few decades cannot be a partner in the provision of good parenting”, said Cheok.
Can robots consent?
For any marriage to take place, however, both parties need to consent to it. Consenting does not necessarily mean both parties have to be well informed, argued Cheok. He said that robots are capable of instrumental reasoning and are thus capable of deciding whether they want to marry.
“If the robot appears, by its behaviour, both actions and words, to understand the meaning of marriage, then we should accept that the robot [actually] understands marriage,” said Cheok.
Still, there are a ton of questions that need to be addressed in the future. Can humans unilaterally terminate a marriage contract? Can robots actually feel an emotional heartbreak, or are they only programmed to do so based on their manufacturers?
Or perhaps robots, by acquiring and integrating humanity’s vast quantum of knowledge, are merely displaying their interpretation of human behaviour. Marriage is seen universally as one of the most joyous occasions that will happen in a person’s lifetime. Is the robot partner merely replicating that feeling of exuberance because its processor has aggregated an immense history of human behaviour stretching back through time and across innumerable cultural practices, to arrive at an approximation of the appropriate human response?
Can a robot truly feel, as we humans like to say, “butterflies in its stomach”?
These are hard questions to tackle and they will not be resolved anytime soon. But we as a society can strive to be less judgemental of unorthodox unions, as long as they are between two consenting adults — whether they be of different sexual orientations, or whether they are made of flesh and blood, or steel. As The Beatles famously proclaimed in a song: “All you need is love”.
Whatever the case, Cheok predicted at WiT that human-robot marriages will be made legal by 2050.
The GOVERNOR GENERAL OF AUSTRALIA, Representative of Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II, has awarded AUSTRALIA’S highest honor the ORDER OF AUSTRALIA to Adrian David Cheok. It was announced by Queen Elizabeth on June 10th during the Queen’s Birthday Celebrations. Adrian David Cheok is awarded the prize for his contribution to international education and research. A brief bio of Adrian David Cheok follows:
Adrian David Cheok is Director of the Imagineering Institute, Malaysia, Full Professor at i-University Tokyo, Visiting Professor at Raffles University, Malaysia, Visiting Professor at University of Novi Sad-Serbia, on Technical faculty “Mihailo Pupin”, Serbia, Faculty of Ducere Business School, and CEO of Nikola Tesla Technologies Corporation.
He is Founder and Director of the Mixed Reality Lab, Singapore. He was formerly Professor of Pervasive Computing, University of London, Full Professor at Keio University, Graduate School of Media Design and Associate Professor in the National University of Singapore. He has previously worked in real-time systems, soft computing, and embedded computing in Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, Japan
Imagineering Institute is pleased to announce we have secured new funding (details to come soon). We will be opening soon in new location of Labuan Malaysia. Looking forward to continuing with new students and researchers to invent the future!
Adrian David Cheok is featured in the Channel News Asia documentary series “Becoming Human”, which explores love and artificial intelligence. It will be televised on 10th March 2019, Sunday, 9PM (GMT +8, Singapore, Jakarta and Delhi).
Following its success in London, the International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots will hold its fourth conference at the University of Montana in the United States on 13 – 14 December 2018.
Matt McMullen, CEO, artist and design director of Realbotix, will be the keynote speaker at the conference. He will be delivering a speech on the topic of “Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Intimacy: A new Alternative form of relationship”
For the past 20 years, McMullen has been creating “The World’s Finest Love Dolls”, as well as undertaking multiple custom projects along the way. He started Abyss Creations, the manufacturer of Realdoll, out of his garage in 1997. McMullen’s dolls have popped up on more than 20 television shows, and co-starred in 10 films. Now, he focuses on integrating cutting-edge technology with silicone doll artistry and believes that AI driven robots can become companions and partners to human beings, and can connect with us in ways that are often overlooked when considering these technologies.
The Love and Sex with Robots congress is the only annual academic event on the topic of human-robot intimate relationships. The congress was founded and chaired by David Levy, author of the eponymous New York Times bestseller “Love and Sex with Robots”, and Adrian David Cheok, Professor of Pervasive Computing at City, University of London and Director of Imagineering Institute, Malaysia.
ACE 2018 is calling for submissions to its 15th conference to be held at the University of Montana, USA, on 10-12 December 2018.
We seek all submissions on Affective Computing, Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality, Educational and Fitness Games, Game Design, Interactive Storytelling, Mobile and Ubiquitous Entertainment, Sound and Music Design, Tangible Interfaces etc. A full list of topics is available on our website: http://ace2018.info/topics/
Papers may range from 2 to 20 pages long, in the Springer CS Proceedings format. Deadline for submission is 15th July, 2018 (GMT). Detailed instructions for submission format is found on http://ace2018.info/call-for-submissions/.
This year, our keynote speaker is Professor Peter Gray, research professor of psychology at Boston College who has conducted and published research in neuroendocrinology, developmental psychology, anthropology, and education. He is author of an internationally acclaimed introductory psychology textbook (Psychology, Worth Publishers, now in its 8th edition), which views all of psychology from an evolutionary perspective. His recent research focuses on the role of play in human evolution and how children educate themselves, through play and exploration, when they are free to do so. He has expanded on these ideas in his book, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life (Basic Books). He also authors a regular blog called Freedom to Learn, for Psychology Today magazine. He earned his undergraduate degree at Columbia College and Ph.D. in biological sciences, many years ago, at the Rockefeller University. His own current play includes kayaking, long distance bicycling, backwoods skiing, and vegetable gardening. http://ace2018.info/keynote/
