Return of the Sex Bots

You can imagine my surprise.

I went to Yahoo last week.  Their top search trend was "sex robots."  Since I've blogged about it before, I clicked the link.  Of course it was all in the name of writing.  Yes, of course it was.

There were two top links.  The Huffington Post ran a story about how Sex Robots Will Revolutionize Sex.  How so?  Upshot of the article was "sex without the downsides."  Sexbots will be physical perfection and with the personality and demeanor that attracts you most.  They will not carry disease.  They cannot get pregnant.  They might even begin to end the trafficking of human beings for sexual slavery and the need for prostitutes in any way shape or form.  Another link invited the user to "Meet Roxxxy," a sexbot that may replace human prostitutes by 2050 and has a "skank mode" that the client can engage.

So what are we to take away from all of this?  Well for one thing, this is not a new concept.  Not by any stretch of the imagination.  Remember Pris from Blade Runner?  That's her pic above.  She was a "standard pleasure model" of Replicant.  Another thing is that sex has always driven technology.  Don't want the shame of going to a seedy theater downtown in order to see a porno?  Well here's the VCR.  Watch it from your own bedroom.  Don't want the embarrassment of going out to rent a tape?  The Internet will bring porn on demand into your home.  New software will allow for this material to be interactive, where you select how the man/woman will act.  The logical extension of all of this is a sex doll that will bring all of this to one in the physical here and now.  Entire industries like the Tyrell Corporation in Blade Runner will no doubt sprout up, each competing against the other in order to offer the "perfect" sexbot.

These market forces will, in my humble opinion, force forward the development of artificial intelligence.  The more complex the AI, the more desirable the sexbot will be.  If the sexbot is completely programmable to what the consumer wants, all the better.  This already causing many questions, including the usual from those who find such a concept obtuse, such as  "why have sex with actual humans if you can get anything you want from the bots?"

The questions do not end there, however.  Is it cheating if your spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend couples with a sexbot?  Is it still a sin if it's not with a person?  What are the ethics of this?  If they approximate human behavior to a high level, are the sexbots then endowed with human rights?  We don't know.   Yes, I know I've blogged about all of this before.  I do so again only because the questions are still with us.  They will be for quite a while to come.

The sexbots are on their way, everyone.  Best to grapple with the questions now.

Oh what have Philip K. Dick made out of all of this?


Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets