Sex With Robots

Can a robot consent to having sex? 

Will an operating system replace your girlfriend?


Will we able to sync to our partners' vibrators just by using our brain waves? 


In HuffPost's first ever Love+Sex Podcast, hosts Carina Kolodny, Senior Editor For Special Projects, and Noah Michelson, Executive Editor, take up the challenge and explore how new and emerging technologies could radically revolutionize all forms of intimacy -- and in many cases, how technology is already well on its way to doing just that.

In a world that offers no shortage of real, pressing problems, we spend an awful lot of time worrying about robots and what threat they might pose to our society. 

Although A.I. researchers assure us that technology is a long way away from this being remotely legitimate, we also worry quite a bit about robots taking humans’ place in everyday society, from the workforce to our bedrooms.

As it turns out, we probably don’t have to worry about the former issue, but the latter might actually be a source of some concern. In a recent Pew report on robots, “A.I., Robotics, and the Future of Jobs,” it’s suggested that while it might be some time before we see a robot takeover of our workforce, we’ll be bumping uglies with them on the reg sooner than we think.

In the report, which polled nearly 1,900 experts on the future of robotics and labor, Stowe Boyd, the lead researcher for Gigaom Research, writes that by 2025, “Robotic sex partners will be commonplace, although the source of scorn and division.”

He also predicts that sex robots will likely be viewed by detractors the same way that we currently “bemoan selfies as an indicator of all that’s wrong with the world.”

As for whether robots will displace human labor in other sectors, the consensus seems pretty split on that one: While 48 percent of the experts polled agreed that robots would replace many blue and white-collar workers by 2025, 52 percent said they didn’t expect technology would become advanced enough for such a scenario to unfold by that time.

Boyd is not the first person to speculate that sex with robots may one day be preferable to having intercourse with flesh-and-blood partners, nor is it that far off from becoming a reality: Back in 2010, the world’s first sex robot Roxxxy premiered at the AVN Expo, and this year, the Japanese sex toy company Tenga created a robotic device that stimulates users while they have sex with a virtual avatar.