No need to fear rise of sexbots, says Robert Brooks

Silicone sexbots and sordid love dolls are on the march, but evolutionary biologist and author Robert Brooks says it’s not all doom and gloom.

Evolutionary biologist and author Robert Brooks. Picture: Jane Dempster

“It’s tempting when you write about modern sex, technology and human nature to think we’re all going to hell in a handbasket,” says evolutionary biologist and author Robert Brooks. “But there are profound positives to observe, including in the rise of artificial intimacy.”

Faced by an army of silicone sexbots and sordid love dolls, Professor Brooks is a glass-half-full man, taking a leaf out of Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, arguing that we have what it takes to use artificial intimacy in nonviolent and beneficial ways.

As an evolutionary biologist who first began studying the sex lives of guppies and crickets before working his way up to humans, Brooks’s instinct is to take the long view.

“We should always bear in mind the Pinker argument that we live in the most peaceful times in human history and these new intimacy technologies, on balance, will probably make us better off,” he said.

In his book, Artificial Intimacy, Brooks suggests new technologies can extend and defend the gains of the sexual revolution “which helped to unshackle sex from love and marriage” and engineer more open and less violent societies.

Whether it’s algorithmic matchmakers such as Tinder or Bumble or salacious dollbots like “Mature Martha” or “Raunchy Roger”, Brooks said “it’s down to us to develop and integrate them in ways that are the least harmful to humanity and can even help us flourish as individuals”.

After a year of plague and lockdown, Brooks said these changes had become not only more conspicuous but faster.

“2020 showed us the changing nature of sexual transactions and their turn to artificial intimacies,” he said. “Sex work rapidly moved online, so that direct contact was replaced by sharing platforms for videos or pictures, allowing sex workers to appear virtually and even operate people’s teledildonic sex toys remotely.”

Brooks suggested we should cast aside our prurient fixations and consider how it could reduce sexual violence in the long run.

“We need not fear the march of the sexbots just yet,” he said.

“But the world of artificial intimacy is advancing at a rate that its effects will be scarcely imaginable in the next thirty years.

“In the end we need to think about what we can do to use it for the best possible outcomes.”