Today, we live in the era of ordering UberEats and having candid, monotone conversations with Siri.
Tomorrow, we will live in days defined by driverless cars and credit card chips implanted in our arms – and so long as technology evolves, we will forever create things that cater to our laziness and desire to avoid human interaction by any means necessary. Therefore, it seemed like only a matter of time before scientists – very horny scientists – began exploring the idea of sex robots. We’re past the stages of custom-modelled fleshlights and shimmering buttplugs, and are currently producing human-like sex robots who will flirt, root and maybe even spoon afterwards.
If you’ve ever found yourself in a Netflix vortex, there’s a huge chance that you’ve watched a couple of documentaries about the sex robot phenomenon – driven by people who, for one reason or another, have given up on the possibility of maintaining a romantic relationship with a human. There are obviously plenty of ethical questions as we enter the domain of sex robots, but some academics are warning that the consequences could reach far further, resulting in life or death situations.
Cyber security lecturer Dr. Nick Patterson works out of Deakin University in Victoria, and has some grim predictions for a world filled with sex robots – namely, that hackers could program them to kill us. “Hackers can hack into a robot or a robotic device and have full control of the connections, arms, legs and other attached tools like in some cases knives or welding devices,” he said in an interview with Daily Star Online.
“Often these robots can be upwards of 200 pounds, and very strong. Once a robot is hacked, the hacker has full control and can issue instructions to the robot. The last thing you want is for a hacker to have control over one of these robots! Once hacked they could absolutely be used to perform physical actions for an advantageous scenario or to cause damage,” he continued.
Like many of his colleagues, Dr. Patterson predicts that sex robots will be replacing humans, but that security issues are still paramount as they’ll be connected to an interface – leaving the possibility of hacking wide open.
“Robots need an operating system to operate just like our phones, tablets and laptops. As we have seen, it’s popular to have everything connected to the internet these days – phones, fridges, surveillance cameras, smart homes… robots are no different,” he explained.
Can you think of anything more terrifying than a sex robot engaging in extreme face-sitting until you suffocate and die? How will the coroner explain this to your friends and family? The future is filled with more questions than answers, but we’d better think of something before the robots do.
