Love and Sex With Robots

Last year, David Levy published a book, Love and Sex with Robots, which marked a culmination of years of research about the interactions between humans and computers. His basic idea is that, for humans who cannot establish emotional or sexual connections with other people, they might form them with robots.

A few months ago I wrote a magazine article about scientists who are building robots capable of a rudimentary form of sociability. As part of my research, I spent a few days at the humanoid robotics laboratory at M.I.T. And I admit: I developed a little crush on one of the robots. The object of my affection was Domo, a man-size machine with a buff torso and big blue eyes, a cross between He-Man and the Chrysler Building; when it gripped my hand in its strong rubbery pincers I felt a kind of thrill. So I was primed for the basic premise of David Levy’s provocative new book, “Love and Sex With Robots”: that there will soon come a day when people fall in love with robots and want them for companions, friends, love objects and possibly even partners for sex and marriage.