Interview with David Levy, author of Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age

You write that many people may feel threatened by the possibilities of human robot sexual interactions. This response reminds me of the very common response many people still have to sex toys and vibrators in particular. Many straight men feel that a vibrator is a “threat” to them, believing it could replace them. Many straight women will say they don’t “need” a vibrator because they have a partner. You write about how robots could provide sexual contact for people who may feel unable to have it with another human. To what extent do you think sexual interactions between humans and robots would replace sex between two people?

I think it is a natural reaction for many heterosexual men to feel threatened by vibrators, and therefore by robots, especially in contemporary sexual culture in which the need to be able to sexually please and satisfy your woman is promoted so widely in books and other media, and is often the subject of boastful conversation. Most men would feel inadequate if they believed that their woman enjoyed better orgasms courtesy of a vibrator or a robot, than those that the men themselves could provide on a regular basis. But I hope and believe that one of the great benefits of sexual robots will be their ability to teach lovemaking skills, so that men who do feel inadequate will be able to take unlimited lessons, in private, from robot lovers who possess an unrivalled level of knowledge of sexual techniques and psycho-sexual problems, combined with great skills as sensitive, patient teachers. And of course, some women will also wish to avail themselves of the sexual teaching skills of robots.

You are quite right that many straight women will deny any need for a vibrator because they already feel completely sexually satisfied by their regular sex partner(s), and for those women it might be the case that whatever additional sexual pleasures robots could offer them, they are not of sufficient interest to encourage them to try robot sex on a regular basis. But the sales figures for vibrators, and the psychology literature, both popular and academic, are sufficiently replete with data on sexually frustrated women, that one cannot doubt the enormous popularity of robot lovers when they become commercially available.

None of this is intended to suggest that sex between two people will become outmoded, because I do not believe for one moment that it will. What I am convinced of is that robot sex will become the only sexual outlet for a few sectors of the population: the misfits, the very shy, the sexually inadequate and uneducable, . . .; and that for different sectors of the population robot sex will vary between something to be indulged in occasionally, and only when one's partner is away from home on a long trip, to an activity that supplements one's regular sex life, perhaps when one's partner is not feeling well, or not feeling like sex for some other reason.

Here’s where I start to get worried. I’m afraid that rather than enhancing a social experience (such as sex), technology will allow us as humans to avoid evolving socially by using technology to mimic social interaction rather than add to it. Currently the biggest problem for people who are socially marginalized (which is what I’m assuming you meant by “misfit”) is not that they aren’t able to have sex, or make meaningful connections with others, it’s that our society functions in a way to systemically keep them isolated. As the disability activist and academic Tom Shakespeare says "the trouble is not how can we have sex, it's who can we have sex with". And while there is no doubt that people who are socially marginalized want to have casual rollicking sex, just as often they report that what they long for is the intimacy, human contact, and human connections, that come with sexual intimacy and exploration. If these robots are intended in any way to increase the opportunity and potential of human sexuality, using them in this way would be seriously counterproductive. What are your thoughts on this?

I do not see why using robots to satisfy the sexual and intimacy needs of the socially marginalized is likely to be counterproductive. If you mean that providing robots to satisfy needs that the socially marginalized would prefer to be satisfied by humans, will make it less likely that the socially marginalized will want or be able to find suitable human partners, then you might be right, but I would still argue that the benefits to the socially marginalized far outweigh the negatives. Tom Shakespeare's words ring true - the socially marginalized do experience much more difficulty than others in finding human contact, intimacy and sex.