SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Forget vibrators. According to Stowe Boyd, lead researcher for GigaOM, sexbots will be regular fixtures in American households by 2025.
Boyd’s prediction is included in the Pew Research Center report “Digital Life in 2025: AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs.” Pew brought together leading thinkers to project how the advance of artificial intelligence and robots will affect the lifestyle and job options of biological units — i.e., humans.
“Robotic sex partners will be commonplace, although the source of scorn and [derision in] the [same] way that critics today bemoan selfies as an indicator of all that’s wrong with the world,” Boyd said.
That’s not the only way technology will take over from humans, Boyd prognosticated.
“Pizzas will not be delivered by teenagers hoping for a tip,” he said. “Food will be raised by robotic vehicles, even in small-plot urban farms that will become the norm, since so many people will have lost their jobs to ’bots. Your X-rays will be reviewed by a battery of Watson-grade [artificial intelligence units], and humans will only be pulled in when the machines disagree.”
Today, sexbots are in their infancy, with companies like True Companion breaking new ground with the robotic companion Roxxxy. According to the company, the top-end RoxxxyGold model “has a personality which is matched as much as possible to your personality. So she likes what you like, dislikes what you dislike, etc. She also has moods during the day just like real people. She can be sleepy, conversational or she can ‘be in the mood.’ All of our robots can even have an orgasm.”
Olivia Solon, writing in the UK edition of Wired, tossed out a warning, though: There could be legal consent issues with advanced sexbots.
“Can an intelligent robot that’s been programmed to have sex consent to the act?” Solon asked. “The notion of informed consent suggests the ability to say no. If a robot has been programmed to only say yes, then it raises the question that having sex with such a robot constitutes rape and that owning one is tantamount to slavery.”
Don’t laugh. If U.S. corporations have Constitutionally guaranteed “personhood” rights in political and religious matters — as the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United and Hobby Lobby, respectively — then why shouldn’t artificially intelligent robots have human rights, as well?
Maybe Isaac Asimov’s Robot series embodied more prophecy than science fiction.
