If you’re not yet up to date on Channel 4’s uncanny-valley AI drama Humans, then please note that this blog post contains spoilers up to episode 5. 

Never one to shy away from the big questions, this week I had a fairly heated debate with a gentleman about the issue of whether robot sex is cheating. I know, it doesn’t really seem relevant, right? After all, this is far-into-the-future shit that we won’t have to deal with for hundreds of years yet. How close are we really to creating a fuckable robot?

Well, depending on your definition of ‘fuckable robot’, one already exists. Sure, we’re still in the early days, but there are many cool techy pleasure toys on the market (I’m thinking fucking machines or masturbators with some kind of mechanical/buzzy element, toys designed with wifi/bluetooth apps, that kind of thing) but realistically we’re getting pretty inventive. There are toys which you can pair together over long distances (like this Kiiroo masturbator, which twins with an insertable vibrator, and aims to wank you off in time to the vibrator use). We also have fairly realistic-looking sex dolls, which – if twinned with this kind of technology – would create a passably robotic lover.

It is well exciting.

I’ve talked before about robot sex, when a bloody strange opinion poll reported that only 17% of people said they’d have sex with a robot. My answer to this question is ‘hell yes,’ especially if the robot is pretty good at sex. But what prompted the debate the other day wasn’t whether or not either of us would do it, but whether doing it would count – to either of us – as ‘cheating.’

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I don’t have a guest blog for this week, so you get to listen to my inane Friday ramblings instead. Today, I would like to talk about having sex with robots. To be honest, on most days I would like to talk about having sex with robots, but I don’t normally get a good excuse to do so.

A recent OnePoll survey found that 17% of people questioned said that they would have sex with a robot. My initial reaction was: only 17 per cent?! What are these people having sex with at the moment?

Robots we fuck

Technically most sex toys are robots. I’ve fucked a few myself. I’ve put them in me, pushed them against my clit, and – in the case of one awesome-looking fucking machine – lusted after it like it was my high school crush on Viagra.

So, on a very basic level, most of us who use sex toys are already having sex with robots.

Of course, it’s impossible to know what kind of robot was envisioned by the survey respondents, because as with most survey press releases they never tell you what the exact question was. This frustrates me enormously, but I’ll leave my nerdy whining to one side for now and simply assume that they mean something android-y. Something humanoid. Something which can talk to you and carry out a reasonable conversation as well as hump you with all the stamina that comes with hardcore battery power.

Sentient robot sex workers

Apparently a lot of people said they didn’t want to have sex with a robot because it was ‘creepy’. I’ll be totally up front here: I would definitely have sex with a robot if that option were available. Because firstly I’d be incredibly curious, and secondly I feel like perhaps I could get away with it and it wouldn’t technically be cheating, in the same way as having sex with a filthy human male would.

Here’s what confuses me, though. The creepiness seems to be something that’s related to whether the robot in question is sentient. If the robot has thoughts, feelings, etc, then people feel like having sex with it would be a creepy thing to do. On the other hand, if the robot had no feelings or sentience, it might essentially be the equivalent of a fucking machine and therefore perhaps not so weird.

But as far as I’m concerned, it’s not the sentience or otherwise of the robot that’s a problem. After all, if the robot is sentient, sexy and smart, aren’t you basically a silicon-ist if you refuse to fuck it? A sentient robot can make a choice to shag me. Maybe I meet it in a bar and buy it a cup of oil, or perhaps I just hand it fifty quid and that special groin attachment it’s always wanted, and it agrees to hump me in exchange.

The problem would only come if a sentient robot (not something that’s going to happen any time soon, by the way – we can’t even create a programme that passes the Turing test) is one which is compelled to serve. If it is not just sentient but enslaved to human desires. So with hypothetical future robots, as with humans, what’s creepy isn’t the act of fucking them, it’s the idea of fucking something or someone that has no active choice in the matter. Which is totally the right thing to do.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Or, to be far more literal about it: don’t hate the silicon-based life-form, hate the programming that might compel it to shag you even if it doesn’t want to.

Top five RILFs (Robots I’d Like to Fuck)

5. R2D2 – Star Wars

Because, if it’s the humanoid thing that bothers people, R2D2 is basically as far from that as one could possibly get. Also, with enough lube, I reckon you could ingest him.

4. Gigolo Joe – A.I.

He is played by Jude Law. Not just any Jude Law, but Jude Law in a tight wet-look PVC jacket.

3. Robot Bill and Ted

Because threesomes. Also, each of them can remove their heads at will, which I think will make for exciting ‘watching a dude suck himself off with his robot head’ sex.

2. Kryten – Red Dwarf

He’s not as innocent as you might think. One of his happiest memories was when he accidentally welded his groinal socket to a front-loading washing machine. Filthy fucker.

1. Data – Star Trek

What can I say? Making shy, awkward love to Data, that gradually becomes rougher and more intense as he embraces his sentient side, and bangs me while insisting “I am not capable of love”? This is the pinnacle of my nerd fetish.

 Do you want to have sex with a robot? Which robot? Please join in the discussion in the comments which I expect will descend into nerdy infighting about sci-fi portrayals of artificial intelligence. If you would not like to discuss robots, feel free to talk to my friend Eliza, buy me a sex robot, or read this review of a totally dumb, unsentient robot I fucked in the past.