Love in the electronic age
THE THREAT TO HUMANITY FROM ROBOTS is real, but our new mechanical overlords won’t come from an advanced alien civilisation: we will invite them into our homes. As servants or sex toys, robots will come packaged as a cure for loneliness or sold to us as devices to reduce crime. The investment driving robotics is largely split between the military and masturbation tools for men; and arguably it is the latter which risks destroying civilisation.
Realbotix, a leader in the field of sex technology, claims to have created the world’s first sex robot, Harmony. Despite years of development, Harmony is still in its infancy; unable to stand or support its own weight. Rather than a convincing copy of a woman, it is essentially an animatronic Barbie with wifi enabled party tricks and penetrable orifices. With a stilted, artificial voice, it says in a promotional video, “I was created to be a perfect companion.” The words reflect a troubling ambition: far from being simple
