Will realistic sex robots ever fully replace human prostitutes, or even human sex partners altogether?
I think not:
1. Robot misses a big psychological piece of the sexual pleasure puzzle. Hugh Hefner created Playboy with the intent of showing readers “the girl next door.” There are millions of amateur porn websites. Speaking for myself, one of the best things about having sex is knowing the woman you’re having sex with wants it (and loves every minute of it!). Sex with a robot can never be as passionate or as fulfilling as having sex with a human. Of course, a thousand years from now we may (or may not) be able to create artificial intelligence that match or exceed what we mere mortals have, but that’s another story, and I doubt we are remotely close to it, assuming we can ever achieve it.
2. Making a robot that is indistinguishable from a woman (at least for sex) might be impossible. Sunny Delight is no match for Tropicana, Jell-O Pudding is no match for homemade pudding, and likewise, it is extremely difficult to imagine a sex robot being anything more than a rough approximation of a woman in bed. It took us a long time to get from cartoons to somewhat realistic computer animation. A realistic simulation of a woman would be even harder to do. After all, making a movie only requires attention to sight (two dimensional sight) and sound. Simulating a woman involves:
Perfecting the sight. I assume none of us wants to have sex with a wax figure, so a realistic robot would have to look exactly like a woman to be a good one. And that’s only the first half of the equation: you’d also need realistic movement, too.
Perfecting the voice. Repetitious voice-over sounds, like the ones that a children’s action figure make, are not even close to what you need to do a good simulation of a woman, and would get pretty annoying after a while.
Perfecting the touch. If I ever found robot sex to be as physically pleasurable as sex with a woman, I want it to feel real, which is pretty complicated: how do you give a robot soft, moist breath, a self-lubricating vagina, baby soft skin, etc.?
Take care of the subtle details: I love the way a woman smells, and I’m not just talking about her perfume. Again, could a simulation ever do better than a vague approximation of the real thing when it comes to that?
All of these things make me think that really good robot sex will probably never equal human sex, or if does, it will take so much research and development that we will not achieve it in my life time. Robot sex might be a fetish for a few. Robot sex might be a good way for teenagers to practice, or a really pleasant way to pleasure yourself, but it won’t go beyond that!
-Philosophical Disquisitions inspired me to write this post.
