The sexbots are coming, and they’re going to have mankind by the balls. Earlier this year, in an interview with British publication Daily Star Online, robotics expert Joe Snell forecasted that consumers could become addicted to the new wave of lifelike, robotic sex dolls.
“People may become obsessed by their ever faithful, ever pleasing sex robot lovers,” he said, further adding that: “Robotic sex may become better than human sex.”
It’s not exactly the bleakest portrait of the future, this world populated by “ever pleasing sex robot lovers”. But now, building on that model, Swiss researcher Oliver Bendel has expressed a slightly less enticing concern: namely, that these vigorous robotic fuck buddies might just end up loving us to death.
Taking to the soapbox at Goldsmith’s University’s recent Love and Sex and Robots conference, Bendel voiced a handful of concerns about a future in which sexy cyborgs are the norm. Many of his qualms were ethical– should these robots be allowed to “entice” the user for more like a sex-hungry pokie, for example– but Bendel’s gravest warning was concerned with the physical effect these machines could have on their user.
Since the performance capabilities of sexbots will likely exceed the physical limits of humans, Bendel worries that users might exert themselves to the point of bodily harm. In other words, the fear is that we insatiable, super horny humans will be powerless to resist the offer of endless intercourse with these tireless, robotic sex gods, and so end up buggering ’til breaking point. Or just stop having sex with humans altogether.
On that model, things start looking a bit more Ridley Scott.
Look after yourselves, sex fiends– and each other.
Feature image: The New York Times
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