Customer Reviews

Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships

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Books like Levy's and others such as Raymond Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines seem to portray a future where humans are obsolete and of little use, yet this is despicted as a good rather than a bad thing, because robots can do whatever it is faster, cheaper, and better, and humans will finally be able to pursue a life of ease and leisure. Futurists like Levy and Kurzweil have even been accused of disliking and having no use for humans, but this is going too far; like the great Arthur C. Clarke's book, Profiles of the Future, written 40 years earlier, Levy and Kurzweil are simply taking current trends and technology and extrapolating plausible futures from that.

As described by Levy an Age of Robots would seem to have certain advantages. Our stewardship of this beleaguered planet has been flawed at best: it has been massively destructive to its environment, perhaps beyond repair; humans claim great religions and spiritual beliefs but then we kill and make war when it's convenient and expedient; we are the most intelligent species but lack wisdom; humans are industrious but we often lack any constructive purpose; and rarely seem to learn from our mistakes, despite our supposed "intelligence." In short, humans haven't done very well on this planet and perhaps it's time for another better race, whether biological or robotic or android, to have a go at running things for a while.

The book is filled with odd but plausible devices such as robot v_ginas and robotic p_nis strokers that will have capabilities far beyond any human's. A robotic partner and lover will always be the perfect mate and will never get bored or inattentive. You will be the entire focus and centerpiece of their existence and you will never have to worry about their being unfaithful or going astray, because these qualities will be programmed into them, rather than having to rely on the uncertainties of human upbringing and morals. Certainly these qualities seem to have advantages over their potentially unreliable human counterparts.

Whether the future envisioned is ultimately for good or bad, it seems inevitable that some day the things imagined by Levy will come to pass. Unfortunately, humans have a tragic history of using technology for evil as much as good--consider what has happened to the "art of war" over the last 100 years--so I don't have much faith that this world will be any better than the present. But who knows; we'll see--and sooner than later--if writers like Levy and Kurzweil are right.

David Levy's book is divided into two and unequal parts, both in length and in interest. Most readers, I would imagine, if told that a book was divided into a longer section about future emotional relations between humans and robots and a shorter section on sex with robots would guess that the more interesting would be the latter. For me, at least, the opposite was the case. I was barely able to stay awake while reading the sex chapters, while I found the chapters dealing with potential emotional connections with robots to be fascinating. Levy makes, I believe, a convincing case that robots will play an increasingly important and essential role in human social life. If nothing else, the comparison between pets and robots is telling. There is no question that millions of humans treat pet animals as friends and have strong emotional connections with them. That we will feel similar ties to robots when the A.I. has developed to an extent to make genuine interaction possible seems to me to be impossible to debate. Or, rather, some may debate it, but many others will nonetheless employ robots as companions or more.

Much of the book is dedicated to detailing the reasons why humans and robots will before the end of the 21st century - indeed, Levy believes it will be around the midpoint of the century - humans will fall in love with and have sex with robots. He addresses issues such as the grounds for attachment, the technological hurdles that remain to be overcome, and the status of work on artificial intelligence. The sex portion of the book is a rather dull catalog of the use of inanimate objects to achieve sexual climax. After all these chapters I can't believe that many would have many doubts THAT these things will happen, quite apart from any issues of whether they SHOULD happen.

Curiously and sadly, Levy ducks all the tough issues and questions. In a way, he almost acts as an apologist for human on robot love. But he persistently and doggedly refused to deal with the many troubling moral issues that attach to his subject. This makes what could have been very good book a marginally useful one.

Let me give some examples of the issues Levy simply ignores. In a very few years we will be able to make amazingly complex robots with whom humans can fall in love and even have relationships with. They will be objects of sexual desire. But what of someone who wants a robot made in the image of a 12-year-old girl? Or a 9-year-old boy? Is this something that we as a society will in any way want to permit or tolerate? Will we want to prohibit the manufacture of robots that look like and behave like young children? What kinds of limits will we wish to place on the treatment of robots? What if someone wants to beat and batter their robot? What if part of their sexual desire involves the willful destruction of one? Will we make such things illegal? If so, what will be the punishment? Will it be treated as a misdemeanor or a felony? Will it be treated primarily as an offense towards the robot or as a kind of behavior that could provide a transition to abuse of humans? Levy seems to assume that relations between humans and robots will be unproblematic. It seems to me that they will be enormously problematic and that our interaction with robots - especially if the A.I. gets to the point where robots can be said to be self-aware or autonomous - will generate a host of new and major moral and legal issues. And I think it is a major flaw in any book purporting to deal with love and sex between humans and robots to ignore these tremendously important moral issues.

Levy also ignores other important issues, such as the social and cultural effects of humans effectively replacing relationships with humans with robots. If humans - male and female - turn to robots because of their physical attractiveness, their sexual prowess, and their pre-programmed uncritical acceptance of their human partners, then how will this affect human-human relationships? And what does it say about society that human-human relationships are so unsatisfying that robots could fill a major need. There is a deep sadness to Levy's subject that he as apologist simply ignores.

In short, I feel that this book was a missed opportunity. Levy introduces an important subject, but does not address many of the most obvious and pressing issues surrounding it. The book is very thought provoking because it deals with many societal and technological inevitabilities, but it also skirts a host of issues that will unquestionably arise.

I can only imagine the amount of interesting research David Levy had to do for this book. The book started off good, but got better towards the latter chapters. I found the sections on sex dolls fascinating--these sections were sociological, yet written for the lay audience.

The sections on pets creeped me out some, as did some of the early chapters. The jump of logic was unsettling at times, since I felt that Levy was truly on to something.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and would suggest it to others. The audience for this book is wide--primarily a lay audience, but the sections of the book would be useful in undergraduate courses in humanities and social sciences.

Given the reported emotional attachments that some soldiers have with the machines that sometimes save their lives, or AIBO owners to their robot dogs, it is easy to accept a book that discusses the possibility of actual love affairs or even sex with humanoid-like machines. From a purely sexual standpoint, this would be a natural evolution, as the title of this book suggests, given the wide use of sexual devices throughout history. But to fall in love with a robot would require that this type of machine be responsive to the needs and personal idiosyncrasies of its human counterpart, as well as be convincing in its need for companionship and intimacy. Such a machine would require a technology that is way beyond current capabilities, but given the rapidity of technological advance at the present time, especially in artificial intelligence, it is very plausible to assume that it will be available in a very short time.

This of course is not the first book to elaborate on the possibility of love affairs or sex with robots. Science fiction has used this in its story lines for many decades now. And Hollywood has brought these stories to life on the big screen, along with others that give alternative, and very terrifying portrayals of human-machine interactions. The virtue of this book is not only its careful attention to history, but also its optimistic tone. The author is in no way intimidated by the possibility of love or sexual affairs with machines, and even embraces it as a desirable development. And of course it is, for it allows humans even more possibilities for exploration and future paths for the curious.

The book is also valuable solely for the history that it contains, and for the psychological insight on the nature of human love and sexual attraction. Its only minus is that the author does not give any hints on what it might take technologically to build machines that could not only respond to human emotions but also experience such emotions themselves. The author should have given a summary of the present status of machine intelligence and just what needs to be perfected or changed to bring about these kinds of machines.

The author makes it a point to inform the reader that he does not view such developments as far-fetched, and if one studies the growth of intelligent technology in the past two decades, ample support for his thesis can be readily obtained. Even more important is his notion that human sexual experiences or love affairs will be actually enhanced by machines. Or, even more interesting, is that the machines themselves will find such relationships with humans even more satisfying than those among themselves. Such a human/machine symbiosis seems not only possible but also desirable.

Very desirable.

Overall, this is a fairly thorough treatment on the subject. Mr. Levy provides a history of the use of artificial devices in human sexuality, some of the issues of sexuality in the law, and a quick glimpse at the state-of-the-art in attempts at believable computer interfaces to imitate human interaction. It's an interesting book, and delves into many of the questions that might arise with (as with any new technology) the use of robots for sexual purposes.

Mr. Levy did a lot of research on the history of changes in sexuality and the acceptance thereof, but he definitely views things through a prism of his own biases. For example, he cites the increasing acceptance of "buggery" in England through the 17th and 18th centuries, but dismisses the sharp rise in its prosecution during the 19th century. He writes about the legal issues involved with the use of robots for prostitution, replacements for human sexual partners, and human-robot marriage, and always mentions that there are ethical issues involved, but discusses none of the ethical issues in-depth. He has a very optimistic view of both how quickly and how cheaply robot sex will become; given the history of advancements in computers, this makes sense...given the history of mechanical devices (especially of such complexity and subtlety) it does not. Mr. Levy does not even mention the effect that the Uncanny Valley might have; the fact that at a certain point, anything simulating a human will become noticed not for its similarity, but the sharp contrast that its difference bring to mind.

In summary, this book is a thorough argument for Love and Sex with Robots, but it is not a deep discussion of the more fundamental arguments for why there might not be FemBots in everybody's future.

The ideas are interesting ones. I think its important for people to realize how ubiquitous technology has become in every area of our lives, including love and sex. This wasn't as shocking as I originally thought, but I am a researcher in the field (AI and HCI), so I have some experience and know about how people react to robots and AI software.

While I liked the book, the editing was pretty bad. A number of sentences were obviously ungrammatical (most likely typos), and I found a number of misspelling of people's names, and incorrect citations. Perhaps the upcoming paperback will fix some of these problems?

I read this book after reading about it on a blog www.lostandloster.blogspot.com .

At first I thought this was a joke but as I read more into it I could see this as our future and maybe it could be good. Think of the men who visit prostitutes or join gangs for companionship etc. So if robots could be used to fill a basic human need for people who have a hard time getting that from other people would that be so bad.

I have relatives with autism and Aspergers and there lives are made harder because of their inablility to form human contact. So this might be a good thing.

I love psychology. It somehow worked its way into my studies as my minor (My major is marketing and advertising). Ethos aside, I love machines. Robots right now are lacking compaired to the fictional machines of science fiction films and authors.

This book's thesis is NOT propaganda suggesting machine love is superior to human on human love. Instead, it gives brief insight on how and why humans love things (specifically humans). Later it expands into a psychological, philosophical, and (lol) mechanical look at what mankind is capable of loving and fornicating.

It doesn't try to pitch an agenda, rather Levy sincerely invites those with an open mind to analyze his thesis, which is backed by research and sources. To me, the rational is, if you actively searched for this book, there's no need to put a machine-love agenda in the book.

I simply appreciate the format this book takes. A simple thesis that gives an expansive explaination of it's premise. It's logical, like a robot. Also, it's an actual book in the sense that it's not a textbook, a picture book, childrens book, or fictional. Therefore, if you pull this book out to describe your robo-lust to friends, then you have a shred of credibility...

It's pretty straight forward. If there's a reason why this title intrests you, then you have a reason to purchase or borrow this book. If you're reading my review, then read this book. robots are just sexy like that.

It's been a few months since I finished this book, so I'll just write a very general review.

The book is divided into two halves, the first dealing with love with robots and the second dealing with sex with robots.

He builds his case for robot love very slowly (too slowly IMO), working from pets and cars to robots. It's a fairly sound argument for loving robots, but requires some suspension of disbelief for the reverse. His basic premise is that if something behaves as if it loves you, we should accept that it does. Maybe. But some people won't be able to fool themselves so easily. On the other hand, it's not hard to imagine loving a robot. There is already an entire subculture of people who are in love with high-end sex dolls, and lots of people have a borderline romantic relationship with their pet or car. If that's still a little weird, imagine falling in love with a super advanced cyborg, such as Cameron from The Sarah Connor Chronicles. That's a little easier to swallow. He doesn't discuss cybernetic technologies, but the assumption is that the androids we will see in the coming century will be every bit as lifelike. So I can see people loving a robot, but I don't know how many will honestly believe it loves them back.

The second section gets into sex technologies, but ultimately doesn't make any important points. We already know people will have sex with anything, so there's no need to make that argument. It serves as a good sex history lesson though.

At the end of the day, I have no doubt that this technology will arrive, and I have no doubt that many will embrace it (and of course many will freak out and try to get it outlawed). In the mean time though, this book is little more than speculation and a long argument for loving robots. But it's still interesting and I'm glad I read it.

Suggested (not recommended) to me by a brother. An interesting read with an interesting outlook. Reminds me of Sean Young as the exceptional replicant in Blade Runner.