Jeremy Shere

Remember the Steve Spielberg movie “A.I.,” about an artificially intelligent boy robot who goes in search of his adopted human mother? An underrated film, I think. But the reason I bring it up is because one of the main characters is a “male” sex-bot, a sort of mechanical gigolo hired by women for sexual pleasure. It’s slightly creepy, but actor Jude Law gives the character a sort of soulful robot humanity, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, I was reminded of “A.I.” today when I came across this headline: “In 2050, your lover may be a … robot.” And then the subhead: “David Levy, a PhD in gender studies and artificial intelligence, predicts that by mid-century getting it on with an electronic femme-fatale or a superstud sexbot will become an accepted part of the human landscape.”

Needless to say, this was enough to get me to read on. Levy’s argument, in a nutshell, is that within the next several decades, sex with robots will become commonplace and that genuine loving relationships and even marriage between people and robots is the next logical step.

This may sound bizarre, but Levy is no raving lunatic. He’s a sort of robot guru and the author of “Love + Sex with Robots.” It’s a serious, well-researched book that’s been reviewed in the NY Times Book Review. I haven’t read the entire book, although I read as much as I could on Amazon . And it’s clear that Levy takes pains to craft a compelling argument. He examines what science knows about how love works between people, then discusses how people routinely fall in “love” with non-human things like dogs and other pets and even inanimate objects like cars and computers. So it’s not such a great leap, he argues, for people to love robots. And the more humanoid the robot, the easier it is to love.

As for sex, people have been having sex with a variety of mechanical objects for a long time–vibrators, sex dolls, telephone sex, etc. So is it really that big of a leap to look ahead and envision a time when robotics has advanced to the point that humans are having great sex with humanoid robots and even falling in love with them?

The first part–robot sex–seems plausible, I guess. That’s just technology advancing. But the falling in love part is trickier. I mean, I value my computer and appreciate its reliability and processing power, but I can’t honestly say that I love it or even feel anything approaching love as I sit gazing at its 15 inch screen. It’s just a tool I use to do my work. Same goes for the car I drive, the refrigerator in my kitchen, my electric toothbrush …

I suppose if robots one day became so human-like that it was nearly impossible to tell the difference (like in Blade Runner, to use an other movie reference) I could see people and robots actually falling in love. Maybe. But that version of reality seems very far off. I mean, we’re still laboring to build robots that behave in a way that’s even remotely human, let alone express and appear to feel love.

And even assuming that one day we could build robots capable of sweeping us off our feet, is this something to shoot for? Aren’t there enough real people around to love?