No one who has seen any of the current robots, in all their stumbling whirring glory, can be too terrified that they are about to break free, or take over, or even successfully make some tea. In the main, these prototype humanoids tottering about their labs are highly expensive idiots who fall over all the time.
Most chores, like washing up, are sadly still beyond most robots. Anyone seeking to employ current modern-day robot helpers for such purposes would face a great many chipped cafetière pots. (Is a dishwasher a robot, though? This is the sort of question we must get our heads around.)
But we do have robot hoovers: for £200, you can now buy the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, a large disc which scoots around the floor sucking up dirt, produced by pioneering US company iRobot. iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner recalled people’s preconceptions before the product launch: ‘Focus groups imagined it would look like the Terminator pushing a vacuum cleaner and told us they would not accept such machines in their homes.’ Which seems a fair judgement. Who wants the Terminator crashing round their house?
In Germany, they have robots maintaining the sewers. This seems like tempting fate. If robots are going to take over then coming up out of the sewers is exactly the sort of dramatic touch they’ll be looking for. They’re called Autonomous Sewer Robots. Perhaps the word autonomous worries you? It should: it means they can do whatever the hell they fucking well like down there.
In a similarly worrying move, the University of the West of England has produced a ‘release and forget’ bot that powers itself by ‘eating’ flies. It’s called Lord of the Flies. No it isn’t. It’s called EcoBot II. It ‘shits’ little waste pellets. Then there’s the so-called Vampire Bot, a tiny fuel cell that powers itself on blood. It’s based in Texas, but a team of Japanese scientists is working on a similar project. For fuck’s sake – don’t help them drink our blood!
Anyway, out in the real world the cost of robot workers has fallen sharply against the cost of actual worker workers. Amazon’s warehouses are run by short orange robots designed by Kiva Systems – a bit like Ooompa Loompas, but robots (they don’t sing. Well, they might – I don’t actually know). Scientists are even looking at replacing migrant labour picking cauliflower crops in East Anglia. The economy has been relatively open to cheap migrant labour, but needs robots because they have all pissed off home. Maybe the robots will up sticks too. Leaving the cauliflowers to rot on the, er, vine.
Some believe robot labour will impact on some humans in quite a negative way: unemployment. Already robots are being developed for everything from construction to surgery to scientific experimentation. Marina Gorbis, head of Californian thinktank The Institute for the Future, reckons the coming decade will see fancy Dan intelligent robots coming for the white-collar jobs that can be automated (like clerical and admin work, and the law) and believes we should concentrate on training our children for only the non-codifiable, non-repetitive, non-routine jobs that require ‘higher-level thinking’. Which is, clearly, not many jobs. (Gorbis suggests training kids to make Internet videos or, er, robots. Great.)
A robot-led labour market could leave humans free to fulfil their potential as creative thinkers, inventors, philosophers, artists and artisans. (Which might not be so great: have you met most people?) Or it could leave everyone skint.
But hey, what are you going to do? Smash up the robots like the Lancashire spinners smashed up the Spinning Jenny? We could do that. But that would definitely be asking for some kind of robot uprising. Spinning Jennies could not fight back, not even by spinning. Could the robots? Of course they could. They’d bloody love it.
You’re so rubbery, you’re so rubbery
Repliee Q2, an uncannily life-like robot developed by roboticists at Osaka University, can mimic such human functions as blinking, breathing and speaking. It also has skin sensors, so can respond to people’s touch. And okay, it’s not leaping about like Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner – it’s more sort of wobbling its head and blinking a lot – but still, the days when we thought of wobbling your head and blinking a lot as quintessentially human activities are clearly over.
Repliee Q2’s alarmingly realistic face is based on a famous newsreader, Ayako Fujii. So yes, imagine a Japanese Sophie Raworth, in robot form. It’s not a big leap. Just to be clear, this ‘actroid’ was not based on Fujii’s features because the Osaka roboticists really fancied her. Not at all. (It was really.)
Robots are getting more lifelike. They are not fooling anyone just yet. But that will come. We are looking at the dawn of the squishybot. Squishybots, the name of which clearly needs some work, are robots constructed from bendy materials, so bringing their appearance closer to organic life-forms. Then there’s Frubber, a lightweight elastic polymer that allows realistic movement and has been used to make a robot with the head of Einstein. The name, which clearly needs some work, is a contraction of face and rubber.
Robots with squishy Einstein heads are all good fun. But this push for lifelike robots does, of course, bring up questions of a sexual, sexy nature.
According to futurologist David Levy – author of Love and Sex with Robots – the sexbot revolution is on its way. Given the advances, ‘love and sex with robots on a grand scale’ is not just desirable but inevitable: ‘My thesis is this: Robots will be hugely attractive to humans as companions because of their many talents, senses and capabilities.’
By ‘talents’ he is talking about doing mucky stuff. Robots doing mucky stuff on a grand scale. That is the future.
A 2012 report from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, predicts robot red light districts by 2050 and claims this would cut down on sex slavery and also cut down on infections. And what did they call these prostitute robots? They called them ‘hoe-bots’. For real.
Meanwhile, a US producer of cutting-edge sex bots, Douglas Hines, has produced Roxxxy, who can do pelvic thrusts and even simulate orgasm. Of course, to some degree, all robot orgasms are simulated. Which would at least remove any uncertainty. ‘Were you faking?’ ‘Yes, I am a robot.’
Roxxxy, who has an enormous tongue, can be programmed with different personalities such as Wild Wendy, S&M Susan, Young Yoko and Frigid Farrah. Quite why anyone who goes to the trouble of getting a sex robot would then want them to play hard to get is a real mystery – but then, human beings are mysterious. Roxxxy also has real human hair – which might be the freakiest bit about it/her.
Do you or do you not fancy the idea of fucking with a robot? This is the sort of question humanity needs to be asking itself.
It won’t just stop with sex, of course. Some will prefer to see sexual intercourse with robots as ‘making love’. Levy even expects marriage with robots to be legalised by the middle of the century. Would the Church allow such ceremonies to occur in places of worship? (Will there even be places of worship? Yes, there will.)
Even if humans do for some reason decide to just stick with human spouses, there is great potential for a robot bit on the side. Levy believes that while some will see robo-affairs as a form of adultery, some more forgiving spouses will see robo-affairs as essentially meaningless. As long it stays out of sight of the kids, figuratively as well as also literally.
If we are entering a more narcissistic, impatient world of instant gratification – and we are – of course you’re going to prefer going out with a robot. A robot won’t have an hour-long argument about where to go for dinner: robots don’t even eat dinner. (Which represents quite a potential saving.) Equally, you can come home at two stinking of booze and pestering your robot for sex, and you won’t even be pestering it because it’s a robot. It’ll be like: ‘Yeah, knock yourself out, you pissed twat.’
War robots: what are they good for?
But it’s not just sex, it’s also death. According to one of the famous Three Laws of Robotics, drawn up by SF pioneer Isaac Asimov as a preparatory guide for decent relations between robot and human: