Futurologist’s 2015 Sexbot Prediction: Laughably off Base or Surprisingly Accurate?
It all may depend on what an artificial companion may or may not be
The advent of 2025 has seen several sites reminding us, often with barely concealed scorn, of Dr. Ian Pearson’s ten-year-old projection we should be well on our way to seeing “robot sex overtaking human-human.”
But in reality, is the famed futurist that far off the mark or is much of what he predicted already well on its way—or perhaps even already here?
The only certainty is change—and mockery
“It’s safe to say,” Outkick reported, “that the experts who predicted that women would be having more sex with robots than with men by 2025 were wrong.”
The Daily Mail agreed, saying, “New Year, new you and new dating life—and maybe a new robotic partner? An unearthed article from 2016 has gone viral, claiming that by 2025, women will be having more sex with robots than people.”
RECOMMENDED READ: Why The Future and Futurists Shouldn’t Forget The Power Of Human Sexuality
In all fairness, Pearson’s The Rise Of The Robosexuals—commissioned by the UK-based sextoy retailer Bondara in 2015—and currently only available via Wayback Machine—doesn’t say anything of the sort, “While some people will enthusiastically embrace relationship-free robot sex as soon as they can afford one, as early as 2025, it won’t have much chance of overtaking sex with humans overall until 2050.”
Don’t crystal gaze
Dr. Pearson, who predicted sophisticated machine learning systems though he missed the mark on the arrival of fleets of fully autonomous vehicles, also made other predictions which still seem barely possible while others are already with us today.
For example, Pearson claimed, “By 2030, most people will have some form of virtual sex as casually as they browse porn today.”
According to a BigData report, this is all but certain, as “many experts have projected that virtual reality (VR) porn will reach $1 billion business by 2025.”
Pearson further speculated, “By 2035, the majority of people will own sex toys that interact with virtual reality sex.”
Over at Technavio, the online sex toys market size is forecast to increase by USD 11.56 billion, at a CAGR of 11.1% between 2024 and 2029,” making Pearson’s estimate seem reasonable.
“We will start to see some forms of robot sex appearing in high-income, very wealthy households as soon as 2025,” was another potential Pearson raised.
Though this may initially count as a miss, it could be argued the current wave of extremely-sophisticated AI-enabled synthetic companions quite nicely fit the bill.
Besides, “robot sex” doesn’t necessarily have to mean physically constructed but could be extended to include digital relationships, like the surprising proliferation of erotic and romantic chatbots.
Pearson’s other introductory speculations are even easier to anticipate, like the UK sextoy market hitting one billion.
He also said, “Leisure spending could grow by a factor of five, and the sex market in 20 years could be three times bigger than today and seven times bigger by 2050,” which might be more difficult to quantify, but considering how well Pearson’s scored thus far, it’s not unlikely.
Close your palms
Those are Pearson’s time-specific predictions; the rest of his report focused on more in-depth speculations based on the state of sex technology back in 2015.
Fascinatingly, he doesn’t see virtual and augmented reality as just a new adult entertainment platform but, further down the road, could prove to be an innovative and effective technique for exploring sexual power dynamics and gender fluidity:
“After experimenting, people might become accustomed to gender transitions, and sexuality will be more fluid. With the flexibility of brain mapping, new sexes can also be created too, with new kinds of genitalia and new kinds of gender roles and behaviors. The whole nature of sex is up to engineering and imagination. Augmented reality allows people to present any gender as their real-world avatar too, so people passing by would see them as they would like to be seen.”
Leave your tea leaves behind
Is Dr. Pearson’s The Rise Of The Robosexuals on or off target? For writers looking for an effortless click-baiting headline, it apparently doesn’t matter.
But though Pearson wrote his report a decade ago, he’s anticipated developments we see right now and where they might be heading.
One important aspect of Pearson’s report worth mentioning is its overwhelming positivity, something we sincerely hope he’s got completely, totally right:
“Social values will adapt to these new possibilities and subsequent behaviors, and loving relationships will remain important in spite of these shifts in values. If we can keep love and our emotional human relationships but have more, better, and safer sex, what’s not to like?”
Image Sources: Depositphotos
