David Levy's 'Love + Sex With Robots' is as unsettling as it is intelligent

Reviewed by Brian Alexander

As you read this, somewhere a man is purchasing the Chasey Lain Cyberskin ... well, I can't write the rest of the name of this device in the newspaper. Suffice to say that the object in question is molded directly from the naughty bits of a porn star named Chasey Lain for the purpose of sexual congress.

I know this is happening because I sold such devices while working in an adult store in Tempe, Ariz. – reportage, if you will, for an upcoming book, “America Unzipped.”

I also sold vibrators, dildos, foam breasts, dozens of different gizmos to many more people than you might think. So, when David Levy makes the case that sometime in the future (he thinks it'll be about 40 years from now) people will have sex with robots, I say you can bank on it.

In “Love + Sex With Robots,” Levy seems to expect lots of resistance to this idea, but we have been fantasizing about it at least since the days of “Pygmalion.” The robot in Fritz Lang's “Metropolis” is still one of the sexiest females in movie history. An artist named Hajime Sorayama has been creating fetishized renderings of “gynoids” for a while now, and if any one of them ever did come to “life” there'd be a line of eager devotees waving credit cards outside the gynoid factory. Web sites like The Fembot Chronicles already pant at the prospect. And, as was recently reported in these pages, San Marcos-based Abyss Creations has been providing silicone love for about a decade in the form of life-size dolls costing upward of $6,500.

Sex with robots is not a radical notion. Still, “Love + Sex With Robots” is profoundly insightful, disturbing and smart for the way it makes us think – not about robots, but ourselves.

Levy, an entrepreneur, chess master and artificial intelligence expert, has written what amounts to a very long argument that human beings will, and should, come to treat the robots of the future as objects of love and desire. Reflecting the book's origins as his Ph.D. thesis, he marshals his evidence methodically. This means we have to wade through some turgid reporting on how people interact with computers and pets (“The human tendency to project feelings and thoughts onto animals would seem to be a pervasive one. It is probably based on what developmental psychologists call ... ”), the quoting of experts and studies, and some optimistic futurism.

All that leads to this: “I submit that each and every one of the main factors that psychologists have found to cause humans to fall in love with humans can almost equally apply to cause humans to fall in love with robots.”

Whether you buy this or not, Levy is a successful provocateur. You may find yourself debating him. This is a good sign for such a book, because Levy forces us to defend our comfortable assumptions. We think we know what love is and what it means to be a human in love, but do we really?

Sex? Sure. Love? Can true love exist between human beings and a manufactured construct? Levy thinks so and declares it good. By 2050, he argues, people will be marrying robots.

The 2050 date is a throwaway. The fun part of writing about the future is that you can say any damn thing you want because nobody can refute you.

But the actual date is irrelevant. Levy makes a strong argument that someday we will think we are in love with machines. If this sounds too fantastic, consider that this happens now. I once wrote about a construction worker who fell in love with his earthmover, wrote it love poetry and finally died on it while engaged in autoerotic asphyxiation.

We crave love, empathy, loyalty, and we'll accept these from whatever source they are offered. Robots, especially when they start looking and moving more like us, will offer them in abundance. “And their capacity for serving as our companions, our lovers, and our life partners will in many ways be superior to those of mere mortals,” Levy writes. “I am convinced that this is how the world will be by the year 2050.”

Sounds crazy, right? You could argue forcefully that the besotted construction worker suffered from a pathology, that he was not feeling love at all, but suffering from mental illness. Maybe Levy's future will come true, maybe it won't.

But before you turn smug, think about our increasingly atomized, fractured, acquisitive, technological culture, where we often opt for a chip-driven multimedia illusion where information has become entertainment and reading headlines online is now considered reading the newspaper.

As Levy points out, the best prostitutes try to give “the girlfriend experience.” Customers buy into the pretense; it's far easier than the reality.

We already accept faux – faux patriotism, faux religion, faux music – because we can't tell the difference any more. Even if we have to program them to do it, robots, Levy argues, will appear to accept us, serve us, give us loyalty and trust. They will be real because we want them to be real and because what used to be real is too challenging to build and keep.

As far as I can tell, the word “romance” does not appear in Levy's text. On the other hand, he concludes by telling us that “people will want better robot sex, and even better robot sex, and better still robot sex, their sexual appetites becoming voracious as the technologies improve, bringing even higher levels of joy with each experience. And it is quite possible that the terms 'sex maniac' and 'nymphomaniac' will take on new meanings, or at least new dimensions, as what are perceived to be natural levels of human sexual desire change to conform to what is newly available – great sex on tap for everyone 24/7.”

Until I read that sentence, at the end of this very interesting book, I would not have imagined how depressing the prospect of great sex 24/7 could seem.

Brian Alexander's new book, “America Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction,” will be published Jan. 15 by Crown/Harmony Books.