Robots and sex have been discussed and debated for more than a century.
The first film to showcase a “robot” was also a sexy love story! Back in 1896, the French movie “L’Eve Futur” (“The Future Eve”) featured a storyline revolving around a brilliant scientist. After he constructs a female machine a British lord falls in love with her. What follows is a Pygmalion story with a robot as the protagonist.
But no one called mechanical men “robots” back then. The term wasn’t coined until Czech playwright Karel Capek created the word “robot” in his 1920 play, R.U.R. (an acronym for “Rossum’s Universal Robots”). The word itself is derived from the Czech word “robota” meaning “work.”
Robots have been used for entertainment, rescues, construction, manufacturing, teaching…just about anything the human mind can conceive of. And of course one of the things often at the forefront of human minds is sex. So why not with robots?
David Levy, an artificial intelligence (AI) researcher at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands shred his personal vision of robotics back in 2007. “My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots.”
And he’s not alone. Many of those on the cutting edge of robotics and AI share Levy’s vision of “fully functional” robots within 40 years or less.
Invasion of the sexbots
Robotic researcher Hank Hyena tore up the 2050 time line and boldly predicts sexual robots by the end of 2011. He made his prediction in the article, “Sexbots Will Give Us Longevity Orgasm” in the magazine H+ (December 2009 issue). Here’s a brief excerpt:
“Remember the most convulsive, brain-ripping climax you ever had…? Sexbots will electrocute our flesh with climaxes twice as gigantic because they’ll be more desirable, patient, eager, and altruistic than their meat-bag competition, plus they’ll be uploaded with supreme sex-skills from millennia of erotic manuals, archives and academic experiments, and their anatomy will feature sexplosive devices…”
The article becomes a bit more explicit after that.
Levy completed his PhD 3 years ago focusing on the subject of current and future human-robot relationships. His ground-breaking thesis addressed many of the philosophical, ethical and legal issues concerning relationships, sexual unions and marriages with intelligent machines.
The ancient Greeks and Romans had fables of artists falling in love with machine-like muses and men beguiled by statues that came to life.
Science fiction has covered the idea of man-machine love affairs extensively since at least the 1960s in short stories, books and films.
The ELIZA experiment
After the introduction of MIT’s famous ELIZA program, some of the research team became aware that certain students began to develop crushes on the machine. The computer (certainly not sexy) was primarily designed to mimic a psychotherapist in question and answer sessions with student volunteers as the subjects. Outside the lab, a rumor circulated that one of the students confessed to “falling in love” with ELIZA.
Could this really happen? Could humans in the future really fall in love with—or at least be sexually attracted to—a machine? It’s actually not as far-fetched as it might seem at first glance.
Since the mid-1990s robots have become more sophisticated. The advances in robotics is keeping pace with computers. Soon, futurists say, they’ll catch up with us.
Robots that look like people are called androids. One company, Real Dolls, has been working towards functioning sex androids for more than a decade. Some of the futurists point to that company’s progress, but little robotics have been incorporated into their products.
Artificial partners
Levy’s thesis intriguingly titled, “Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners,” Levy postulates that someday the robots humans design and build will become virtually indistinguishable from people. They will mimic humans in every way and some humans will literally fall in love with them, lust for them, and enter into sexual relationships with them.
Not long after that, humans will begin marrying robots.
While no one wants to marry their toaster, advanced AI melded with advanced robotics and materials will be almost more human than some humans. And eventually, some will be unable to resist the appeal of designing their lover—every specification including personality, intelligence level, emotional depth and responses, and so on.
“It may sound a little weird, but it isn’t,” Levy asserts. “Love and sex with robots are inevitable.”
Of course, other than the legal and moral implications or human-robot sex and actual relationships, ethics will become a key issue.
Levy agrees. “…the ethical issues on how to treat them are something we’ll have to consider very seriously, and they’re very complicated issues.”
If all of this comes to pass whatever will become of the girl next door? And hey, would you really want your daughter to date one?
Links
“The Rise of Sex robots and pleasure machines,” Geoff Shearer. FOX News
“Forecast: Sex and Marriage with Robots by 2050,” Charles Q. Choi. Live Science
“Scientist predicts sex with robots by 2011,” Tima Vlasto. Examiner
“Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships,” David Levy. HarperCollins
