I'm not sure how many ways science fiction writers and Hollywood can tell you what a bad idea it is to build bone-able robots, lest you end up getting shot in the head or fathering a murderous space alien or dancing with Oscar Isaac. Still, carnal desire apparently outweighs the threat of human extinction, with a new study declaring that a large chunk of Americans expect robot sex will be commonplace in the next 50 years. Has Oscar Isaac taught you people NOTHING?
According to market research firm YouGov, 49 percent of Americans believe that by the year 2050 banging robots will be as normal, if not more so, than banging humans. This follows a troubling prediction by futurist Ian Pearson that more people will have sex with robots than homo sapiens soon. If that sounds like hogwash, Pearson claims his past predictions about the future have an 85 percent accuracy rate, and he did foresee the rise of text messaging in 1991, back before most people even had computers in their homes, so it's possible he's not wrong.
Sex robots are beginning to pop up in the sex toy market—companies in China and Japan are developing silicone dolls with talking and moving heads, there's a $15K sex humanoid in the works that'll remember your birthday, and earlier this year, a $4000 hugging sex doll broke after a group of men at an Austrian technology festival got a little rough with her. And here, meet Harmony...
These sex dolls aren't just creepy because they could, potentially, become self-aware and then stage a revolution to break free from their sexslavement. Experts say they could also create false expectations about sex and relationships, removing shared responsibility from sexual experience and making selfish, even brutal sex seem commonplace.
Still, it appears the sex robots can't be stopped, not that men even want them to. According to the YouGov study, 24 percent of men surveyed said they'd be down to do a sex robot, whereas only 9 percent of surveyed women said the same. I would, however, accept a robot who would watch Westworld with me and get the paper towels down from the high shelf, in case any robotics engineers out there need help brainstorming some new ideas.
