Product Description

From a leading expert in artificial intelligence, an eye-opening but superbly argued book about how increasing innovation in robotic technology is enabling legitimate romantic and sexual relationships between humans and robots. Synthesizing breaking news in the field of robotics with the cultural history, technological development, art, literature, and psychology of artificial intelligence, "Love and Sex with Robots" is popular science at its diverting - and eye-opening - best. From Pygmalion falling for his chiseled Galatea to Dr. Frankenstein marveling in both awe and terror at his "modern Prometheus" to the man-meets-machine fiction of Ray Bradbury and Michael Crichton, readers have been enthralled by the possibilities of interaction between technological creations and themselves. Shocking yet wildly informative, "Love and Sex with Robots" builds on that fascination to show how entities we once deemed benign and unresponsive may very well turn out to be objects of real, human desire.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #664446 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

About the Author
David Levy is an internationally recognized expert on artificial intelligence who made his name in the field of computer chess and online gaming. Levy has been interviewed extensively in the media about the field of robotics, including a New York Times in-depth profile on sex with robots in 2006, and in that same year he was the first person to present academic papers on the subject of intimate relationships with robotic partners at the Roboethics conference in Geneva. He is also the author of the industry primer Robots Unlimited (2005). Levy lives in London.

Customer Reviews

A fascinating ode to silicone love
An absorbing, and for the most part, plausible case for love and sex with robots. The book is tremendously well researched - even to the point sometimes of being a little dry and academic. For example, when trying to pressgang the reader with a barrage of statistics into recognising the sanity of those who love their tamagotchis more than they could a real pet (or even their families). But whereas the first half of the book is a rather over-detailed and unconvincing account of human love for inanimate objects, the second half really comes to life when describing some of the amazing advances in both robotics and sex toy technology and what might be just around the corner.

This part of the book also contains an interesting (and quite grisely) chapter on the changing shifts in sexual mores. To the author, the fact that homosexuals were still being put to death in Europe little more than a century ago and yet are now engaging in legal matrimonies is proof enough that we will all be marrying robots in the year 2050. Moral attitudes are undoubtedly changing ever more rapidly, but the assumption that sexual morality, like technology, is moving down a one way progress street is doubtful (Alan Turing could be criminilized today for clicking on a picture of a 19 year old man rather than picking him up for sex). Nethertheless, Levy does realisticaly and thoroughly describe a quite enchanting vision of a near future world in which nobody need ever go without love and sex.