The Nuts and Bolts of Robotic Sex

By Coleen Singer at Sssh.com, the web's destination for Porn For Women

While the classic image of R2-D2, the robot star of “Star Wars,” does look a bit like a squat little dildo, few of us may have ever considered having sex with it — but if researchers are correct, we’ll all soon be banging robots — and no, I don’t mean our spouses…

In fact, 20 percent of people would currently get it on with a non-human automaton, according to a recent survey of around 2,000 U.K. residents that seeks to understand the public’s feelings about robots. “While many of us worry about the role of technology and machines in modern society,” says study lead Professor Martin Smith of Middlesex University, “Robots are increasingly being developed for important roles that will help protect and improve our lives.”

Smith found that 46 percent of survey respondents believe that technology is progressing too rapidly, with a third fearing robots as threat to humanity — a figure balanced by another third that is willing to give robots important jobs — including making them into police officers, soldiers and teachers.Likewise, 46 percent claim they would either have sex with a robot, or not judge someone who did — providing a worrisome statistic for some observers who cite a lack of intimacy with robotic sex as one important social factor.

The professor notes that robots will someday possess emotional intelligence, narrowing the gap between emotions and expressions.“The robots will not feel,” Smith says, “but like actors they will be able to show emotional intelligence.” “It seems to have got to the stage where people would rather have sex with something that knows exactly what it’s doing, where we know exactly how it will react, and how long it will take, and how good it will be,” reveals teacher Anna Hughes. “But this obliterates the excitement of the uncertainty of being with a living person and the risk of it all going wrong, which is big part of having sex with someone in the first place.

News Alert: Sex With Robots Has Heath Benefits!

I’m just glad I got into a relationship before sleeping with C-3PO became the norm.”While this process gives new meaning to the phrase “online dating,” it brings many serious questions up for discussion, with some of the answers pointing the way to potential problems from people preferring mechanical mating to the real thing. This is playing out now in Japan, where the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare found that 36 percent of 16-19 year old Japanese males had no interest in sex. Known as otaku, these tech-savvy teens have chosen to live in a fantasy world, rather than continue their parent’s pursuit of material possessions and financial gain.

As part of this delusional existence, the boys often have virtual girlfriends created by apps and video games, to take the place of human companionship.Do not feel bad for Japanese women however, as more than half have no interest in having sex, either.Despite the otaku movement, some observers feel that robotics and other technological advancements could actually lead to more sex, as the “once employed but now displaced by robots” look for something else to do with their time — or seek to make money in a hyper-competitive job market where their skills are not sufficient to garner alternative employment.

John Danaher at Ireland’s NUI Galway has an interesting outlook on the rise of robots in the workforce, which suggests that displacement of human labor by robots in other industries may force people to look for work in industries in which there is “a human advantage” — with sex work, specifically prostitution, cited as an area where such an advantage exists.  “Several authors claim that the advent of sophisticated sexual robots will lead to the displacement of human prostitutes, just as, say, the advent of sophisticated manufacturing robots have displaced many traditional forms of factory labor,” Danaher explains, noting that prostitution is resilient to technological unemployment. “I argue that increasing levels of technological unemployment in other fields may well drive more people into the sex work industry.”

For his part, Stowe Boyd of Gigaom Research believes that by 2025, robotic sex will shame us all.“Robotic sex partners will be commonplace, although the source of scorn and division,” Boyd says, adding that sex robots will be scoffed at with the same righteous indignation that some people use to “bemoan selfies as an indicator of all that’s wrong with the world.”Whether it is because of robots or with robots, within a decade or two, automatons may redefine sex and society in ways that author Isaac Asimov never envisioned in his futuristic “I, Robot” story series.

During the meantime, however, unless a sex robot can also rub my feet and then bring me my breakfast in bed, I think I will stick to my husband... 

About Coleen Singer:
Coleen Singer is a writer, photographer, film editor and all-around geeky gal at Sssh.com (@ssshforwomen), where she often waxes eloquent about Female Friendly Porn, sex, pleasure products, censorship, the literary and pandering evils of Fifty Shades of Grey and other topics not likely to be found on the Pulitzer Prize shortlist. She is also the editor and curator of EroticScribes.com. When she is not doing all of the above, Singer is an amateur stock-car racer and enjoys modifying vintage 1970s cars for the racetrack. Oh, she also likes porn.

Visit Coleen at Sssh.com for more sex news, commentary and hot entertainment for women and couples!