Love and Sex With Robots

This is both funny and kind of intriguing. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to embed this clip (so how did Gizmodo do it?), so you have to click through to see this three minute interview by Steven Colbert with David Levy, author of the new book, Love and Sex With Robots. Apparently, the book is about what the title suggests - that in the not-too-distant future, robots will function as substitutes for human beings (specifically as romantic partners). Which is another way of saying, Levy thinks there is a segment of the population who, at the margin, would consider matching sexually or relationally with a robot if the price of matching with a human were to increase. He mentions who he has in mind - people in bad relationships or people who are alone. Both groups face a higher price for having sex or relating with humans (whether it's their spouse, their partner or they don't have anyone), and therefore might be willing to substitute towards sex with the robots.

If I had to guess, that margin currently is the "avid consumer of pornography" and the "prostitute consumer." He argues that the substitutability is along the dimensions of love and sex, but it's really not difficult to imagine that if this market were to exist, it would probably be mainly along the latter dimension of sex and not love. I think we are a long way from convincing Artificial Intelligence in even basic things, let alone something as complex as human emotion. So, Sex With Robots is the part I'd bet on. If robots are substitutes for sex, then they are mainly affecting the threat position of males who now can privately have sex with a robot. Probably, the ethics of this are unclear to us now, but one can imagine that on the continuum of infidelity, this is somewhere between watching pornography and paying for a prostitute, but not quite either one either. So, maybe some people in marriages would consider sex with a robot, because the costs of doing so are lower than visiting a prostitute (no risk of STD, for instance). But, I bet for most people, since there already are several substitutes for sex with one's partner or spouse, this won't have that big of an effect on their threat position and thus not move anyone out of the monogamous pairings.

On the other hand, it might move people out of the market for a prostitute, if the price was right. I'm guessing sex with robots is a pretty pricey exchange, though - the marginal costs of each encounter are not trivial, I'm guessing, but the fixed costs of each machine are huge. So do the people who currently have sex with prostitutes have the income to afford such a machine? I doubt it. So we're back to wondering just who this market would exist for. Because, if a man is wealthy enough to be able to purchase one of these machines, then I suspect he could've had a real-life person at such prices. I've seen a study that shows a man who is several deviations below what is considered handsome on average has to make several hundreds of thousands of dollars a year more than the average male to be coupled with an attractive woman (also measured as a woman a certain number of SD above the mean). So, if we're talking about such men who are unattractive and can afford a sex machine, then can't they afford a real life woman too? Certainly for those men, such women are preferred - unless I really don't know anything about the male species, I'm going to say that's a no brainer.

So I see the real challenge in this as the fixed costs of producing such robots, which will ultimately limit the market because the people who need them won't be able to afford them, and the people who can afford them probably don't need them. It's an interesting thought experiment to say the least.