Robot Sex: The Good, And The Bad+Ugly
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Friday, 7 of December , 2007 at 7:01 am
Here at BotJunkie, we don’t shy away from robot sex. That said, some of you may be a bit leery about our past coverage, so let me assure you that this post is purely satirical and literary in nature and is SFW.
The Good
WIRED Sex Drive columnist Regina Lynn has made up a list of “10 Reasons I’d Rather Marry a Robot” after reading David Levy’s new book, Love + Sex With Robots, which I am currently in the middle of and highly recommend. Here are her first two reasons:
1. Robots are more than sex machines.
Levy gives an example of a robot that can predict human movement well enough to dance without stepping on its partner’s feet. Fancy footwork might even be the top reason women will choose robotic partners: Sex is easy to find, but dancing? Good luck finding a man who is both a) available and b) willing to try.
2. Artificial intelligence is still intelligence.
While a robot partner would never be my equal in a relationship — it can’t be, as long as I control the on-off switch — it could still challenge me intellectually. According to Levy, romantic robot AI will include emotional and social intelligence as well as analytical smarts. And if AI advances so much that robots develop self-will? The whole “could a human love a robot?” question becomes moot, as the robot is now officially a person. Either that or the roles will reverse, and the robots will use us as sex slaves.
Click here to read the other eight reasons over at WIRED.
After the jump, we get to bad+ugly (and hilarious, if you ask me).
The Bad+Ugly
One of the nominees (but not the winner) for the 2007 Bad Sex In Fiction Award (given out yearly by the Literary Review) was a sex scene between a woman and a robot, from The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson. I’ve reproduced most of the SFW but truly, awesomely bad scene here:
Spike doesn’t say anything, but she looks at me, and I know she’ll be reading my data-chip implant. Everything about me is stored just above my wrist.
‘I can’t read your data,’ she says, reading my mind instead. ‘That function is passive while I’m draining.’
‘How long will the draining take?’
‘A few hours, including questions, then I’m done.’
‘You were built entirely for the space mission, right?’
She nods and smiles. She is absurdly beautiful. I start to slip off my jeans and I feel her gaze as I stand in my bra and pants. Why am I embarrassed about taking off my clothes right in front of a robot? I pull the dress over my head like a schoolgirl, untie my hair, and sit down. She is smiling, just a little bit, as though she knows her effect.
To calm myself down and appear in control I reverse the problem. ‘Spike, you’re a robot, but why are you such a drop-dead gorgeous robot? I mean, is it necessary to be the most sophisticated machine ever built and to look like a movie star?’
She answers simply: ‘They thought I would be good for the boys on the mission.’
I am pondering the implications of this. Like a wartime pin-up? Like a live anti-depressant? Like truth is beauty, beauty truth? ‘How good? I mean, I’m assuming you’re not talking sexual services here.’
‘What else is there to do in space for three years?’
‘But inter-species sex is illegal.’
‘Not on another planet it isn’t. Not in space it isn’t.’ …
You can read the rest of it, if you really want to, over at New Scientist.
Category: Pop Culture
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