Robot Marriage - Researching and Developing the Message of the Project

As my project has progressed to the point of  creating some more in depth and developed responses, I wanted to consider the message and aim of my project, how exactly I will communicate that and what I will produce as a response. 

My project aims to communicate to people that the robotic singularity and the development of artificial intelligence is a very likely event. It doesn’t put it in a negative light, nor does it celebrate it, its purpose instead is to just bring light to it in the hopes that it’s imminence will be recognised.

Within the past couple of years, Vladimir Putin has stated that whichever country has the most developed AI, will rule the world. One of the most well known people against the development of AI is Elon Musk. Musk is constantly talking about how World War 3 will be caused by the singularity and that he thinks it’s likely that human extinction could be caused by technology. He is an advocate for having the singularity as an issue, be brought up, and for laws and regulations to be put in place. Which seems like a sensible idea. 

In my research I found that the word robot actually comes from the Czech word ‘robota’ which means forced labour. I also found the 3 laws of robotics, created by Isaac Asimov, a science fiction author:

1. First Law:	A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. Second Law:	A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. Third Law:	A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

These ideas of what a robot will be in the future directly contrast views by Dr David Hanson who views robots as becoming part of society instead of being a subservient race. Perhaps this is a better view, because maybe if robots do become become forced labour, this will ultimately be the reason they might rise up and take control. Either way, for the purposes of this project, having robots as an equal part of society allows for a more engaging and shocking idea. 

Robots and Marriage

Creating branding for a wedding chapel for robots means that this idea of bringing awareness to the singularity can be communicated through a slightly more fun yet still attention grabbing platform. It also means that the project can have a social commentary on current issues related to marriage. As of April 2019, Same sex marriage is only legal in 28 different countries, yet at some point in the future, robots will be able to marry?

As a produced outcome for this project, I will produce a sort of welcome package/starter kit for this wedding chapel; it will come in a box and contain a pamphlet/publication about the chapel, as well as various other produced materials such as business cards, flyers about related robot marriage services and maybe even items such as stickers or a key chain. I want the packaging to have the feel of packaging you’d get for an iPhone or something, coming in a sleek box with everything slotted inside very efficiently - I think this will further emphasises the technological/ futuristic side of the project, yet this will be contrasted by cliched wedding imagery and colours. By creating the outcome like this, it makes the idea more immersive for whoever reads it because its as if they are being put in the position that the robots hypothetically would be. Thinking about it as a product, and how this product would communicate it’s message, as a package, it could be sold as a publication in independent book shops etc.