It might sound like the stuff of a (admittedly, not exactly ground-breaking) sci-fi film, but it looks like robot sex might be a significant part of our not-so-distant future in only a matter of years. In a new Pew report on robots called ‘A.I., Robotics, and the Future of Jobs’ lead researchers found that, while it will probably be a long time before robots take the place of humans in the workplace, a few of us might be welcoming them into our bedrooms sooner than we think.
Stowe Boyd, the lead researcher for Gigaom Research, explainsthat by 2025, ‘Robotic sex partners will be commonplace, although the source of scorn and division,’ being viewed in the same way that we currently ‘bemoan selfies as an indicator of all that’s wrong with the world’.
To some, the idea of letting a robot into your bedroom to simulate the most intimate and base of human acts might be anathema, but should we really be surprised that we’re heading that way? Sex and tech are now the two strongest forces in our world with the most financial backing and it’s no wonder that sex is the forefront of technological advancement because, frankly, that’s where the money is. And besides, we don’t need artificial intelligence – people our age have been fucking like robots for years.
Look at the way we go about having sex in the first place. Research showsus that women in their twenties are now more likely to be single than ever before and less of less of us are cohabiting or planning on getting married. That, in itself, doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re all having more casual sex, but it certainly shows that having sex outside the parameters of a committed relationship is no longer unusual – in fact it’s likely to be the norm for a lot of us. Anecdotally, whereas once we might of not had sex until we were sure we wanted to either be in a relationship or at least date someone, these days sex often (if not always) comes first and it’s only after we’ve already shagged someone that we begin to consider whether or not we want that relationship to develop into anything more emotionally enduring. And this ‘figuring it out’ period seems to now last longer than it ever has before and you can sleep with someone for months and months – years in some cases – only to discover that what you thought might be developing into a ‘proper relationship’ was only ever viewed as casual by the other person. It might seem like a mind-fuck, but it’s a landscape you have to learn to navigate, and quickly, if you want to date. Like it or lump it that, in a nutshell, is what has dubbed the (cringeingly Americanised) ‘hook-up culture’ and it’s what many people believe to have defined the way we date, have sex and, if we’re lucky, form relationships.
But one side effect of all this casual sex is that many of us now rarely have the type of sex you have when you’re actually going out with someone – you know, when you really get to know the other person’s body and their intimate sexual preferences on a really personal level. When you’re going out with someone, you get to know their bodies by way of trial and error and communication so you can say with some certainty what they do and don’t like in bed. When it’s casual, you don’t have that back catalogue of information and you’re forced to go in with a bit of guesswork and a catalogue of porny ‘tricks’– like deep throating – that have a built in kink factor and are a almost guaranteed way of making sure the guy you’re sleeping with has an orgasm. Basically, it’s reducing sex into the bare minimum of ‘tricks’ and you end up using a certain input to get a predictable output. It isn’t even really about the other person as it is about showing off your own sexual prowess and it’s as divorced from the idea of ‘lovemaking’ as it’s possible to get. Even the way we get to the hook up itself is now robotic – the reason why Tinder has become so popular is because their database-lead approach is a perfect bed partner (pardon the pun) to all the casual ways we do the dirty these days. If you think Tinder hook-ups seem machine like and robotic it’s because that’s exactly what they are in most cases.
READ MORE: The Casual Sex Project Forgets To Mention That Sometimes One Night Stands Are Crap
But the real crux of the problem is how readily we have taken away emotion from our sexual relationships. Something seems to have happened to us in recent years whereby the worst thing we could possibly be called these days is ‘too keen’. Aware that women are often accused of being a bit ‘bunny boilery’, many of us have responded by completely leaving any emotional chat or demands at the door when we get with guys to show just how un-keen we are. Not only are we now ‘completely cool’ with casual sex, a number of us guilty of completely emotionally shutting down and not demanding ANYTHING – not even a text during the week to say ‘cheers, that was lovely’ – from the guys we’re seeing. When it comes to letting our emotions get in the way of our relationships with men, a lot of us have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. I’m not saying all casual sex is bad and, of course, there are people we sleep with that we wouldn’t dream of having an actual relationship, but does that mean we want none of them to? I’m not so sure…
And of course if you give people an inch, many will take a mile. You don’t text them during the week, so they don’t text you. You don’t bother asking them for an actual date, so they don’t think anything of booty calling you after a night out with their mates. You say you’re not after anything serious, so you get something casual. Without any demand for emotional connections with the people we sleep with, emotional connections don’t have to develop so they simply don’t exist. And if you take away all of the emotion and feeling from sex, what’s the different between doing it with a robot than a living, sentient being? You might gawk at the idea of robots designed only for sex, but how different would it really be?
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.