Love and Sex with Robots

Talk about an awkward train read. We found ourselves the object of numerous sidelong glances on our morning commutes, with Levy’s Day-Glo green cover broadcasting the fact that we were reading about some human-on-humanoid action. If we had to guess why those brows were furrowed, we’d say it was 50-50 curiosity and disgust.

In his new book, Levy exploits the curiosity and does his damnedest to dampen the disgust. An artificial-intelligence expert who clearly isn’t afraid of artificial whoopie, Levy predicts that by the year 2050, “robots will be hugely attractive to humans as companions,” and “the number of sexual acts and lovemaking positions commonly practiced between humans will be extended, as robots teach more than is in all of the world’s publishing sex manuals combined.” Yeah, he’s into it.

Unfortunately, too much of this book is devoted to Levy’s amateur psychoanalysis of interpersonal and sexual relationships. There’s a chapter on falling in love, a chapter on loving pets and a slew of other unnecessary tangents. Get to the droid shtupping already. He makes a good case for the inevitability of an “evolution” into sex with mechanical creatures: People already have sex with all sorts of devices; there’s no reason to think that as those devices become more human people will become less interested. As Levy says, “The sexual possibilities that have been created by the teledildonic age are mind-boggling.” It’s about twice as long as needs to be, and not nearly as fun as it could be, but this book will always have a special place in our heart for bringing us the word teledildonic.