Cars can’t think and feel like horses can, but that’s okay. No deep understanding is necessary to make them superior at labor. But what about in intimacy? The opening paragraph of a post at the Philosopher’s Beard about that potential moment (hopefully in the distant future) when the term computer dating takes on a new meaning:

“The robots are coming. Even if they don’t actually think, they will behave enough like they do to take over most of the cognitive labour humans do, just as fossil-fuel powered machines displaced human muscle power in the 19th and 20th centuries. I’ve written elsewhere about the kind of changes this new industrial revolution implies for our political and moral economy if we are to master its utopian possibilities and head off its dystopian threats. But robots won’t merely be set to work out in the world; they will also move into our homes. This will have consequences for human intimacy as we now know it. Robots will not only be able to do our household chores, but care work, performing the labours of love without ever loving. I foresee two distinct tendencies. First, because robots will allow us to economise on love, inter-human intimacy may become attenuated as we have less need of each other. Second, because robots will perform care better than we can, robots may become objectively more attractive than humans as intimate companions.“