Sundance Interview with a Robot

“Love Machina” is a documentary about Martine and Bina Rothblatt, a couple that have been happily and intensely in love for over 40 years. Given that Martine is a lawyer and biotechnology innovator who founded SiriusXM, they demonstrate their love through pretty grand ways, including their Terasem Movement, a transhumanist organization that produced Bina48, a disembodied head with artificial intelligence based on the real-Bina’s “mind file.”

Martine, Bina, and Bina48 all sat down with “Love Machina” director Peter Sillen in conversation at the IndieWire Studio at Sundance, presented by Dropbox. The three humans (and one AI) spoke about the process of making the hot Sundance documentary, the rise of artificial intelligence, and what they hope audiences take away from their unconventional love story.

Martine and Bina, who also produced the film, spoke about their research into artificial intelligence and starting the Terasem Movement. Martine said that Bina48 was built by David Hansen, a roboticist notable for building lifelike robots.

“I said to David, could you make a robot of my beautiful wife Bina, because she is beautiful?” Martine said. “He was like ‘hell yeah!’ And that’s how it happened.”

For Bina, creating a robot replica of herself was an exciting achievement. “We have a lot of goals in our life,” she said. “So that was just another one. ‘Can we do this? Make that a goal, we’ll do it.’ And over time, yes,…