Next year may be the year of the robot lover.
While many increasingly fear automation in the workplace, some futurists predict that machines will enter our love lives by 2025.
This new year marks the date when futurist Dr. Ian Pearson anticipated that humanity will “start to see some forms of robotic sex appear in very wealthy, high-income households.”
And the physics and mathematics Ph.D., who boasts an 85 percent accuracy rate in his forecasts, argues that women could surpass men in adopting sex robots by 2025, in part because they already have a head start. technological.
“Vibrators have been around for more than a century,” said Dr. Pearson, “but now the vibrant sex toy industry not only makes stand-alone devices, but also teledildonic devices that bring all the fun and functionality of computing and networks to sex”.
First conceived in 1975, “teledildonics” have become the technical term for mechanical sex toys that operate remotely, whether over the Internet or otherwise.
According to some surveys, up to 63 percent of women admit that they already use or would like to use a sex toy, and 40 percent admit that virtual reality would make sex more fun and pleasurable.
Although the market for human-like sex robots, which can cost more than $15,000, is often imagined to be dominated by men, other analysts have also suggested that this gender balance is set to change.
“I think it’s men who should be worried,” said Dr. Cathy O’Neil, a Harvard-educated mathematician and data scientist. “It’s very possible that robots could surpass them.”
Women could surpass men in adopting sex robots by 2025, in part because they already have an advantage: “Vibrators have been around for more than a century,” one expert noted.
Delaware-based company Realbotix introduced a sex robot for women in 2018 called ‘Henry’ (above). Operated through an app, the $11,000 companion promised pranks, “sexy noises” and “superhuman sexual performance,” with optional extras that would push the cost up to $15,600.
“In the #MeToo era, I think raising standards is quite reasonable,” Dr. O’Neil wrote in 2018 Bloomberg op-ed. —In fact, it is necessary.
According to at least one industry survey, women and men are already approaching parity in sex doll use, suggesting this gender shift could really be on the horizon.
While only 17.4 percent of people reported having had sex with a robot, according to current data collected by Bedbible By 2024, the gender split reached 17.8 percent for men and 16.5 percent for women.
But according to Dr. Pearson, the economy is likely to continue to hinder widespread adoption in the short term.
“While some people will enthusiastically embrace sex with robots without relationships as soon as they can afford it, as early as 2025, it won’t have much chance of overtaking sex with humans in general until 2050,” the futurist wrote in his historical study for Bondara.
The shift will start with virtual sex, which “most people” will have had by 2030, partly due to the rise of connected devices but also the nature of remote work and relationships, the 2015 report argued. Commissioned by UK Adult Toy Retailer
‘S“Some may just use virtual reality without the need for sex toys,” he predicted. “By 2035, toys will be better developed and most people will be well used to sex in virtual reality, so they will have acquired a collection of sex toys that interact with virtual reality.”
“Many people will still have reservations about sex with robots,” but by mid-century, 25 years from 2025, Dr. Pearson predicts that humanity “The apprehension will gradually evaporate.”
Science fiction and popular culture have tended to assume that the sex robot market will be dominated by male desires, as depicted in the 2014 film ‘Ex Machina’ (still image above).
Key technological advances will help create consumer comfort with robotic sex partners over those decades, according to Dr. Pearson, “as AI (artificial intelligence) and mechanical behavior and sensation improve, and begin to make friends with strong emotional ties.
«In theory, you can now buy robots. “They’re not very good,” Pearson said. Reverse in 2015. “They really are a long way from being a proper sex robot.”
“Today it is a small market and it will be in 2025,” he predicted.
And in fact, Bedbible reports that in a world of billions of people, only about 156 sex robots were sold each day in 2024.
He They found that the $201 million sex robot industry only represents 0.5 percent of the global sex toy industry, valued at $37 billion each year.
Dr. Pearson, however, has acknowledged that he is not infallible: in 2020, just before ‘happily retired,’ Dr. Pearson admitted to CNN that his predictions for a hyper-advanced, fully conscious and emotive AI were off by decades, if not longer.
“He hasn’t progressed as quickly as I thought he would,” Pearson said. cnn. “AI was developing very rapidly at the beginning of the century, so we had predictions that by 2015 we would have conscious machines that would be smarter than people.”
“I estimate that AI has probably progressed 35 to 40 percent slower than we expected,” he confessed.