Cribbed from /. but still good

Two rather good articles cribbed from Slashdot: Simson Garfinkel on robot gender, and the NYT on the living-ness of virtual pets.

Of course, when you talk about whether they’re alive, it’s a short hop to souls. Does Rover have a soul? Does Asimo or TiVo? And when someone says “what sort of relationship is it appropriate to have with an automaton?” I think immediately of the episode of Futurama where Fry dates a robot, and the rest of the crew shows him a social hygeine film explaining why dating robots is bad. Also Nat and Rony’s paper on robots and, you know, that thing people do.