VI The Future of Robot Sex

What does the future hold for robot sex? The chapters in this section attempt to offer some predictions, with the authors drawing where they can on available empirical data. Scheutz and Arnold kick things off in chapter 13 by describing the results of their recent survey on attitudes toward sex robots. They argue that future discussions about the ethics of sexbots need to move beyond sexuality to intimacy. Carpenter takes a more expansive view in chapter 14, exploring how people may become attached to robot sex workers (her preferred terminology), how we may come to accept them in society, and explicitly contrasting Mori's Uncanny Valley with her own Robot Accommodation Process Theory. Finally, in chapter 15, Adshade closes out the book as whole by looking at the topic of robot-induced social change. She predicts that the introduction of sex robots will have significant impacts upon marriage and human intimacy. She makes her case by using lessons from previous advances in the technology of sex.