Sex Robots will Replace Women?

This was a question that was asked by The Young Turks in a recent video that they released.  It seems that there is an effort to expand the technology of sex into the robotics field.  Not a surprise, really.  We all saw the film AI and thought to ourselves – yeah, I would fuck her, or him.  The idea of a robot who you can share intimacy with and not have to worry about rejection.

It’s not easy to look for a relationship.  For most nice guys like myself, we are often too rejected and too ignored that it gets to the point where we don’t even care anymore, that trying seems like a waste of time.  Finding love is not something that just anybody can do, and do well.  For the nice romantic who isn’t the David statue, this is even worse.  I have known woman after woman who was very attractive and has told me that looks aren’t about everything.  Care to guess what they were all dating?  Hot guys.  Yeah, I haven’t seen a hot girl who was with an average joe.  It is an incredibly shallow culture.  Now, both sides are guilty of this, but I see it a lot more with women than I do men.

For me, looks aren’t terribly important, so long as they aren’t to the point where it is ridiculous.  I actually am not into really stick-figure women, but I don’t go for the ones who weight is such an issue that I know it’s unhealthy.  I am working to keep my own shape in perspective, I don’t need a constant reminder of what can go wrong.  I feel bad for them because they get the worst of what society has to offer in terms of being teased and insulted, but I’m just not attracted to it.  For me, it is the mind that is the most attractive part.  I couldn’t date some dim-witted airhead.  I need to be mentally intrigued, I need to feel like I am actually talking to somebody and it is worth something.  I hate small talk, and I can’t talk about nothing.  Ironically, that is what small-talk is.

But back to the issue at hand – will robots replace women?  So many guys give up, it is easy to understand why.  But this is going to be a rather short post – no, they won’t.  The reason why is simple – because underneath all of the physical, we will still realize that they are machines.  For me, I am a romantic.  I want a relationship that gives me all the intimacy of a real person.  The tender moments where you are holding somebody after they had a hard day, telling them that you are there.  The nights where you go to sleep talking and you look up six hours later and see the sun coming up and you wonder where the time went.  Those looks that tell you how much you care about the person and how much they care about you.  That is what I want.

I genuinely don’t believe that they could recreate that with a machine.  There is something about the human condition that is tied in to how great a romance feels, and how much the two of you can get such enjoyment out of one-another’s company.  Could such a thing be recreated?  Is it possible to simulate the passion and the connection that a relationship has?

What is most likely is that scientists aren’t going to try and do that.  The smart idea is to make a machine that is able to function like a prostitute, giving you sexual release, and feigning intimacy so long as the interaction happens, and then moving on.  While on the short term, many men will find that enjoyable and probably seek it out, after a while, I think most guys, especially those like me, would realize that it was just a machine that they were being intimate with, and the enjoyment would quickly fade.  You can only get so much from sex.

The truth is that a great relationship comes not from the physical, but from the emotional.  I believe that there are three kinds of intimacy – physical, mental and emotional.  You need two of the three at any given time for the relationship to work, and there always has to be two for it to last.  I just don’t see a robot being able to fulfill that need in a way that makes sense.  You could always tell that it was a machine.

Though, maybe I’m wrong.  There could come a day when they create a robot like they did in AI, only with a fully-grown person rather than a kid, able to love you and cherish you.  A robot that could be the person that you wished to have with you for all of your life.  Still, there is something that I just can’t put my finger on that tells me that I would always know it was a machine, and could almost see the gears and whatnot working underneath of it that make it run.

So, that’s my opinion.  The host of the Young Turks made a good point that a lot of guys would go to the robot instead of trying a normal relationship, but I disagree to the point that I think that a lot of the more shallow guys will, while the romantics will still be out there, trying to find the real kind of love.  If anything, this will sort out the garbage from the true hearts.  And a lot of the more shallow women will probably be the same as the shallow guys.

Where do you stand?

Until next time, a quote,

“But you haven’t answered my question. If a robot could genuinely love a person what responsibility does that person hold toward that Mecha in return? It’s a moral question, isn’t it?”  -Colleague
“The oldest one of all.”  -Professor Hobby, Artificial Intelligence

Peace out,

Maverick