Book Review: Robots Unlimited

Reviewed: Levy, David. Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age. Wellesley: AK Peters Ltd., 2006.

Like most people, I know very little about computing technology or artificial intelligence (AI). I’ve seen at least one of the movies in the past ten years about AI (I think it was the one with Robin Williams) and I assume that really understanding AI would require at least a seven year Ph.D. or some sort of brain-meld process that I think only happens in sci-fi films (usually ones starring Robin Williams). But like most people, I can be easily drawn into talk of robots and AI when it’s combined with sex.

Which is precisely how I ended up with a copy of David Levy’s fascinating book Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age, and later found myself engrossed in an email conversation with the author about sexbots and the future of human robot sexual interactions.

Robots Unlimited offers a surprisingly accessible history of artificial intelligence (AI). It details the work that’s been done in the field over the past fifty years and then offers a thoughtful and thorough contemplation of the future of AI. Levy devotes the three final chapters to discussing robot love, robot sex and reproduction, and robot ethics.

Levy is meticulous in his explanations and references, and despite the controversial nature of some of his assertions (including the future of robot reproduction, robot consciousness, and the role robots will play in the sex lives of humans) none of what he writes feels glib or inflammatory. While I disagree with his conceptualization of the role of sexuality in people’s lives, I am drawn in by the possibilities he offers, and encouraged by his collaborative and participatory tone.

Levy describes research (that’s already done) to develop skin that “feels” and can apply and perceive tactile pressure. He explains the current and past development software programs that can evolve and get better. He imagines robots that will have these kinds of programs that can not only access the information from all the world’s sex manuals, but will create better and more intuitive programs to develop new sexual techniques and possibilities. Robots that will look no different than humans, and in fact could be programmed to look like any human we like (a possibility that’s both frightening and exciting all at once).

But Robots Unlimited isn’t simply a book of predictions, and the reader is rewarded with much more than a vivid picture of what the future will look like (although as far as vivid pictures go, it’s pretty cool). We can also begin to imagine what living will be like, and the moral and ethical sexual issues that will be raised by the existence of robots that are so like humans, and have been designed to be integrated into our daily sexual lives. These issues will inevitably force us to question the nature of our own sexual experience, which from my perspective can only be a good thing.

Read an Interview with David Levy, author of Robots Unlimited