By Don Oldenburg, Special for USA TODAY
I've seen the future of sex, and its name is Robot — as in humanoids designed and programmed to satisfy our every psychological and sexual need, want and desire. At least that's what artificial-intelligence expert David Levy contends in his controversial and troublingly arousing book about sexuality 50 years hence.
His prediction: Falling in love with and making love to artificial but remarkably human-like robots will become a socially accepted alternative.
Never thought of C-3PO as a sex slave? A roll in the hay with Arnold's ripped T-850 Terminator bot?
Hints of Stepford-wife lusting are foreplay in an overly researched thesis that argues plausibly but way too enthusiastically for stranger-than-fiction bedfellows. And you thought Furby was just for fun?
The London-based author of the robot-industry primer Robots Unlimited, Levy insists this isn't sci-fi. He started this book as an oh-wow academic conference paper, which explains why the first two-thirds reads like an academic conference paper. He builds his argument laboriously, citing endless psychological studies as evidence that future humans and robots will find genuine companionship leading to bliss between the sheets.
The book's smart look at the evolution of robotics over the past century, arriving at today's lovable robot toys and humanish servants, is fascinating, but Levy requires large leaps of logic as he progresses through each step of his attraction-desire-love-sex continuum.
Starting with the basic truth that people fall in love with people, he moves to why people fall in love online, to why people love their pets, to why people love inanimate objects, etc. Then, why not people falling in love with robots? And, logically for Levy, why not people having carnal knowledge of their robot — and vice versa?
Whether you think that idea is creepy, amoral or aesthetically icky, or you think it sounds like a rollicking good time, if you don't buy it as the inevitable future, Levy considers you a flat-Earther standing in the way of progress. After all, he suggests, wouldn't an emotion-enabled, lovemaking robot programmed with the sexual know-how of the Kama Sutra be the most sophisticated sex doll ever?
Think robo-ho. Levy does. His argument for robot sex goes way beyond the "dream girl" relationship Ryan Gosling's character has with a blow-up sex doll in Lars and the Real Girl. More like Jude Law's automaton gigolo in A.I., only better.
But look, some people are willing to boink anything. Is that a good thing? Levy predicts with tomorrow's sensual robots it will be.
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