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Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots Paperback – October 20, 2020

by Kate Devlin (Author)

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An exploration of sexuality, technology, and humanity through the promises of artificial intelligence.

The idea of the seductive sex robot is the stuff of myth, legend and science fiction. But beyond the fantasies there are real and fundamental questions about our relationship with technology as it moves into the realm of robotics. Artificial intelligence raises very real concerns. Sexual activity is central to our very existence; it shapes how we think, how we act and how we live. With advances in technology come machines that may one day think independently. What will happen to us when we form close relationships with these intelligent systems?

Chapter by chapter, this book builds on the science and the philosophy surrounding our most intimate relationship with technology. The scene is set with the history of the artificial sexual companion, then goes on to explore the "modern" robot and the twentieth century sci-fi that promised us our own robot slaves. An explanation of artificial intelligence and the urge to create sentient machines delves into our own psychology: how does desire affect our own behavior, and can we become attached to an inanimate object? Can robots make society a better place? And what can go wrong?

Sex robots are here, and here to stay--and more are coming. This book explores how the emerging and future development of sexual companion robots might affect us, and our society. It explores the social changes arising from emerging technologies, and our relationships with the machines that may someday care for us and about us.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Bloomsbury Sigma
Publication date

October 20, 2020
Dimensions

5.63 x 0.71 x 8.01 inches
ISBN-10

1472950909
ISBN-13

978-1472950901
See all details

Editorial Reviews

Review

“An immensely absorbing and provocative book on the past, present, and future of robosexuality . . . A curiously fascinating study.” ―Kirkus

“Illuminating, witty and written with a wide open mind.” ―Sunday Times

“A lively, waggish guide to these uncharted waters, tracing ethics, sexuality, intimacy and the uncanny.” ―Tatler

“A highly readable romp through the history of computers, robots and sex toys [...] A fascinating introduction to the state of sex-tech.” ―Science

“For fans of Humans, Westworld and I, Robot. Or anyone who's ever enjoyed a flirtation with Alexa. Devlin takes us right through the AI revolution and its potential impact on our relationships [with] a relaxed and chatty tone.” ―Cosmopolitan

“An engaging survey of the history of humanoids.” ―Financial Times

“A timely, vital treatise [...] With charm and wit she tackles thorny issues.” ―Wired

“An unusually cool-headed tour of the current sexbot terrain. [...] Devlin's calmer, more evidence-based middle path seems appealing, especially in an area where so much polemic has already risked deadening the nerves.” ―Harper's Magazine

“One of Devlin's achievements is to humanise the sex robot makers and users – we are invited not to laugh at them, but to understand them.” ―The Times

“Big on breadth and charm ... loaded with facts and anecdotes.” ―The Saturday Paper

“This brilliant book is an intelligent, clear-eyed and often very funny deep dive into the history and future of love and machinery.” ―Warren Ellis, author of Transmetropolitan

“After millennia of fornicating with foreign objects, the ultimate sex toy has finally arrived. Kate Devlin unpacks the very long, very dense history of the sex robot with style and wit. Spoiler alert: we haven't reached Westworld ... yet.” ―Christopher Trout, Editor-in-Chief, Engadget

“In Turned On, Kate Devlin – the thinking person's navigator to the complex and potentially life-enhancing terrain of the sex robot – looks at the history of AI-enhanced erotic toys, then ventures far beyond our wildest imaginings.” ―Rowan Pelling, Editor of The Amorist

About the Author

Kate Devlin is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London. Having begun her career as an archaeologist before moving into computer science, Devlin's research is in the fields of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), investigating how people interact with and react to technology in order to understand how emerging and future technologies will affect us and the society in which we live.

A few years ago, Kate began to explore the particular ways in which sex, gender and sexuality might be incorporated into cognitive systems such as sexual companion robots; since then she has become a driving force in the field of intimacy and technology. In short, Kate has become the face of sex robots – quite literally in the case of one mis-captioned tabloid photograph. She has written articles on the subject for New Scientist, Prospect and i, appeared on BBC Radios 1–5, and made a number of TV appearances, along with TEDx talks and numerous other tech and philosophy events, receiving significant media coverage on the way. She was probably the first person to say 'sex robots' in the House of Lords – in an official capacity, at least.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Sigma; Reprint edition (October 20, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1472950909
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1472950901
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.63 x 0.71 x 8.01 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,809,831 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #537 in Human Sexuality Studies
- #886 in Robotics (Books)
- #1,550 in Robotics & Automation (Books)

Customer Reviews:
59 ratings

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2 star		6%
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Top reviews from the United States

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Peyton Moran

Science, Sex, and Robots

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 14, 2019

Verified Purchase

Phenomenal. I was introduced to this subject & niche topic a few years ago by a pastor of a church in the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as two friends attending seminary. This book has allowed me to think more deeply about the topic, whether that be the ethics, regulations, implications, and effects that technology and sex have on society at large. I would recommend this book to practically anyone interested in the following subjects: bioethics, HCI/UX, the history of sex, and technological development.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

RAmazon Customer

robots making love

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 9, 2019

Verified Purchase

hilarious book on robots and robots that make love. The author is well trained and takes it seriously, and especially she has an open mind to it, which is very important in these things. I am too old to experiment on them, bu I can see her point..... and the inevitabiity of robots and AI.

3 people found this helpful

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Echo

Well-written, but too much irrelevant information

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 19, 2019

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This is a thorough and mostly readable account of sex robots of the past, present, and future. My one complaint is that the author devotes so many pages to what she considers important background material. In reading the book my frequent thought was "Bring on the sex robots -- please!"

5 people found this helpful

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Wayne

Most interesting read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 13, 2019

Verified Purchase

Like most I have read news stories on line and watch a few shows on TV. Nice to have a book that tells what is going on now and the history of "devices" a good read well worth your time and money.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 27, 2019

Verified Purchase

Great book at a great price

Helpful

Gail Cornwall

Fascinating read, but not quite the winner it could have been

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 15, 2019

“Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots” explains how a “centuries-long fascination with the artificial lover endures today,” describing in thoughtful, relatable prose everything from Greek sexual practices (apparently when it came to homoerotic love, “intercrural sex—where one man pushes his penis between the recipient’s thighs—was the preferred form”) to the basics of machine learning to research showing how sex benefits the brain (“They found this out by making male rats have one-night stands. Those rats got a bit anxious but they still reaped the benefits of having sex by showing signs of neural growth. Some male rats got to have long-term relationships with lovely lady rats. These committed rats became less anxious over time and showed even greater neural growth.”). Devlin is always interesting and occasionally quite funny as she muses “about intimacy and technology, computers and psychology” plus “history and archaeology, love and biology” and “the future, both near and distant: science-fiction utopias and dystopias, loneliness and companionship, law and ethics, privacy and community.”

Here are a few representative excerpts:

“I am conflicted: as a woman I want to rail against the perpetuation of objectification—my own work on sex robots is about moving away from idealised human forms—but I am not threatened by these dolls. I’m seeing them as works of art, collectibles, each one carefully crafted, resulting in an artefact that exists not as a human surrogate but as an entity in its own right…. Each individual doll takes up to 18 weeks to make. Everything is done by hand: the colour mixing, the silicone casting, the painting, the finishing … At the end of the production process the dolls are packed into large wooden crates. The crates are unlabelled. ‘I sometimes help the customers with a story to explain the crates to their neighbours,’ says Annette. ‘Usually I suggest they say it’s a grandfather clock.’ …”

“‘What do you know about me?’ McMullen asks [the sex robot]. ‘me is the Internet country code top-level domain for Montenegro.’ True, Harmony. True….”

“I watch a video of Samantha’s booting process. She is literally being turned on.”

Devlin has a clear vision of a future “where the two separate paths of sex toys and sex dolls converge,” moving “away from the idea of the pornified fembot” and toward abstraction that focuses on “giving people a chance at pleasure and happiness where previously they had none” (such as “[t]he couple with mismatching desires, the grieving lover and bereaved father, the spouse with dementia”).

But the road there is rather winding, with a good deal of repetition, a trailing off as the book goes on, and a general disjointedness, all of which can be explained by Devlin’s twin revelations about her process: she wrote an article in 2015 entitled “In defence of sex machines” that went viral, and then, “in the time it took to write this book, sex robot development had a horrible habit of advancing.” In other words, there was a bit of a mad scramble to get all the interesting things she knew about sex machines, as well as the ones she didn’t know, onto paper. The result is four stars for content, a mind, and a personality that clearly could have produced five.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Robots

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 23, 2018

Robots. Yes. How do I love robots? Let’s count the ways. Well, for the sake of brevity, maybe not, but let’s just say I really, really love robots…although not in the way some of the denizens of this book do. So while I’d love a robot best friend, a robot romantic and/or sexual partner isn’t something that spins my dreams around. In fact once I watched a program about men (and it’s nearly always men) who were trying to find (ok, buy) their perfect robotic mate and they were exactly the sad sack can’t make it with a real woman stereotypes you’d think they’d be. But in whatever way you want to utilize them, let’s face it, robots are the future. They are already all around us (Hi, Alexa) and are getting smarter every day, but they still haven’t nearly reached that level of autonomy and sentience that makes us think of singularity event, terminators and apocalypses. Frankly…I say bring it on. And not just because I’ve just listened to Robots of Gotham on audio, the book where robots did take over. But seriously in this day and age it might be an improvement. The thought of being governed by an artificial intelligence seems infinitely preferable to the inverse of that. But anyway…this book is all about robots and sex, often together, sometimes separately. It gives a comprehensive historical overview of how technology got to where it is now, ponders what’s next, considers sexuality as it evolved over time to be a much more complex multilayered thing than past models, but mainly it contemplates the ethics of robot/person involvements. After all, there are situations and jobs you’d be glad to turn over to robots right now, very practical things like caretaking, assembly, etc. But however lonely the world gets, however much time is spent playing games, interacting via social media or in virtual reality…or not interacting at all and shutting the world out Japanese style…there’s still a significant taboo about having a robot mate. Possibly because technology is as of yet far from perfect, still talking a semiautonomous preprogrammed cranium upon a blow up doll body more often than not. Possibly because such a union would usher in a brave new world not everyone’s quite ready to contemplate yet. For me robots…whether it’s to eradicate loneliness, provide essential assistance or even just to hang out…bring it on. Can’t be nearly as disappointing as the flesh bags (or whatever derogatory moniker the robots use to discuss us) and probably definitely smarter than most. But it was still very interesting to read about all the psychological, ethical and social implications of such an evolution. And the book was very entertaining, the author’s funny, erudite, very feminist, opinionated and clever…so that should give you an idea of what sort of perspective you’re getting here. Very enjoyable read, not so much educating (knew a lot of it already and also really wish there were photos) as enlightening and tons of food for thought. Science, sex and robots…how can you not love that combination. And now back to dreaming of technology finally matching up to my imagination.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Jon A. Crowcroft

robot for intimacy or just zipless sex?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 15, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book is a survey of the current work on robots being proposed, developed and deployed in intimate settings with humans. I found it an interesting read - while there are quite a few plausible settings for caring robots, the risks of fooling people that a robot actually feels anything (at least for the foreseeable future) is also discussed in depth here.

I was a bit disappointed that the use of robots as part of reproduction (e.g. AI as in Artificial insemination, but also robot carried artificial wombs) wasn't on the menu - after all, sex is not just about fun - there's a serious goal some of the time and technology is already in use to help people that have problems with that side of the story of life.

I like the author's refusal to avoid terrible jokes - it lightened up the book without trivialising the more important aspects. Note she is a serious academic researcher in this area, so this is very well informed technically, as well as having excellent up-to-date and realistic industry survey material.

I'd recommend this book for people that think AI (as in General Artificial Intelligence) is anywhere near:
To Be a Machine: by Mark O'Connell.

One person found this helpful

Just Another Customer

An intelligent, funny, sexy joy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 13, 2020

Verified Purchase

This is an excellent, excellent book - intelligent, easy-to-read and very funny.

Devlin has a real fluency with a very complex subject - covering technological, cultural and ethical advances in the use of tech in sex.

The book is very visual - it’s so well written that I could picture it all in my mind like it was a documentary. Why hasn’t this been made into a 3-part TV documentary series yet? It’s perfect. Devlin - a regular on podcasts, radio and TV - would be the perfect guide through this world.

We are introduced to key players - human and technological - and locations like a broad, sweeping novel.

The threads of the analysis run effortlessly through all of this - learning has never been so much fun. Chapters hand over nearly to one another. And the jokes - of which there are a good few - are very funny.

lol no

Insightful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 17, 2019

Verified Purchase

Really interesting and worthwhile read on a topic we don’t talk enough about

One person found this helpful

AvidJosh

Turned on

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 26, 2019

Verified Purchase