Sex robots, according to breathless media reports, are coming. Or, if not, then they are certainly on their way. Robotic androids and gynoids, animated by the 21st Century sorcery of artificial intelligence, stand ready to slide between the sheets and make themselves a part of our lives.
Reality, as it so often does, proves far more mundane. The current state of the art involves sex dolls that move in a few simple ways and talk like a simple chatbot. I call them dollbots because, from what I can discern, they haven’t quite arrived at sexbot central yet. Every year, however, sees quantum improvement in each of their constituent technologies, from robotic movement and skin warmth to better speech recognition and generation. And — despite all their limitations — during the coronavirus lockdown, sex robot sales have apparently gone stratospheric.
The advancing sex robot hordes leave so many issues to unpack, so many questions to answer. Why do they so often resemble young women? Can a robot give consent? Will sex with robots cause men to objectify women more than they already do? For a cracking read on the topic, I recommend Dr. Kate Devlin’s book Turned On, but many wonderful authors pose and answer these 21st Century dilemmas.
The issue I want to explore in this story is jealousy. How does the very idea of sex robots make you feel? That includes the thought of your lover getting with a robot and the idea of getting with one yourself.
I have thought about this issue quite a bit lately while writing a book that involves several appearances by sex robots. Ever the scientist, I anticipated that robots would be perfect experimental apparatus with which to test a contentious idea about the origins of jealousy.
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