Computer scientist and author of ‘Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots’ Kate Devlin argues that we should give up on the robots inspired by sex dolls and let our imagination run wild.
“I look at how people can be intimate using technology; whether it’s through sex toys, connecting to other people online, or sex robots. What happens when we live in a world with increasing amounts of technology, artificial intelligence and robots?
There are two aspects of this, there’s the aspect of sex toys that have been around for many for millennia and then there’s the idea of the sex robot that comes from the sex doll and I think we can do much better that the sex doll aspect of sex robots. I think we should be making really interesting forms of sexuality and intimacy with the technology we have.
We have so much interesting material that we can use today. We have got fitness trackers, we can read people’s brains waves, we can take that information and feed it into smart fabrics, conductive paint, into all kinds of vibrating motors, we can make something really cool.
So perhaps you want a sex duvet? We can do that for you. Perhaps you have a piece of fabric that wraps around you and purrs or growls? Perhaps you have a bed made of breasts. Perhaps you have some kind of device with interchangeable attachments that we can use? The thing is we have got all this technology we just have to think of different way to piece it together.
Now there are lots of ethical issues around sex robots. They do exist but they are currently just these sex dolls with a bit of animatronics, and a bit of AI in them. They are really just pornified, hyper sexualised mannequins of women and i think that really dangerous to use as it increases objectification and it’s also built for a very male, straight audience, so it’s not that diverse. So why don't we just break out of that idea of creating humanoid robots, and that goes for really any humanoid robots, let’s get out of that idea. We are very rubbish at building humanoid robots, so let’s build something more interesting.
So a lot of people are concerned that there has to be a lot of secrets or purity to sex and I can see how sex can be a really lovely thing between two or more people, but masturbation is also an everyday part of life and 95 per cent of people will admit to that if you ask them. We can use this technology to facilitate and enhance relationships.
So I’m not worried about machines coming in to replace humans. I think it’s something we can use to enhance our live instead. One of the things that people are concerned about is privacy and security, and rightly so, as we have seen in the past couple of years smart sex toys that have been hacked.
So the data has been leaked or perhaps data has been recorded and it hasn't been stored properly and that is dangerous and when you are dealing with someone’s sensitive data, particularly sexual data, that has the potential to ruin someone’s life. That has the potential to kill in some parts of the world, so we do have to be really cautious.
I think in the next five years we are going to see some interesting developments in sex toys, we are certainly getting reports that more of these sex robots will be released. So far it has only been in the past month that they have been commercially available. There is talk of bringing out a male version from the same company that brought out the female version. I don't think that market is going to go all that well. I think that’s a really, really niche market that is predominantly for people with either fetishes or people looking for the companionship that a sex doll brings to them now...“
