Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Last week, Wired reported that the National Security Agency is building a computer that might be able to autonomously launch cyber attacks on U.S. enemies, according to NSA leaker Edward Snowden. People immediately began imagining SkyNet, the autonomous computer of the Terminator movies that decided to wipe out humanity. More traditionally, folks worry that robots will take our jobs.

But maybe there is a more plausible scenario where robots and human nature combine to take us down without a shot being fired. In a report released this month, Pew Research Center experts project we'll see robot prostitutes by 2025.

Terminator robots won't stalk the earth massacring humans; they'll slink into our bedrooms and hijack the drive that keeps humanity growing.

Japan's cutting edge

Japanese scientists claim to have developed a sex doll that is amazingly lifelike. Advertisements for the dolls in Japan say anybody who buys one will never want a real girlfriend again.

That's probably an exaggeration, but the thing is, just as robot workers are getting better while human workers stay the same, so robot women are getting better all the time, too. And smarter: Siri's inventors are working on a new artificial intelligence program called Viv that will do "anything you ask." Put that together with the fancy sex dolls, and you've got a true fembot.

We've already been warned about what comes next by Matt Groening's Futurama series, in which an episode warned of humanity's extinction as illustrated by a boy who was more interested in making out with his "Marilyn Monroebot" than in school, work or dating. The moral was don't date robots, lest society lose its reason for existence: "All civilization was just an effort to impress the opposite sex. And sometimes the same sex." And, of course, sex with robots doesn't produce children, eventually causing the entire species to die out.

Which leads me to think: A hostile artificial intelligence such as SkyNet would be better off making super sexy robots than Terminators.

We're already doing it. In Brazil, a factory produces millions of fluorescent mosquitoes each week designed to mate with natural mosquitoes, but produce glowing infertile offspring. The plan is to wipe out the bugs spreading dengue fever.

Alice Sheldon's famous science fiction storyThe Screwfly Solution noted the same thing, humans controlling insects by interfering with mating. For screwflies, we eradicate them by releasing large numbers of sterile males: The females mate with them but aren't fertilized. The insects are vanquished.

In Sheldon's story, alien invaders mess with human reproduction in a similar (though more frightening) fashion.

George Clooneybot

Marilyn Monroebots, and George Clooneybots, would accomplish the same thing for humans. John Connor might be too busy making out with one to try to stop it.

Is this silly? Maybe. After all, we've had a highly efficient form of sexbot, the vibrator, for more than a century, but though vibrators are popular and advancing technologically, people are still doing it the old-fashioned way.

Even so, technology continues to evolve, and the human response remains mostly the same. Just as we've developed snack foods that appeal to us more than real food, perhaps we'll see robots that appeal to us more than real people. As we redefine "sex" away from reproduction, perhaps robosexuality will just be seen as another preference. Already, one in five people in the United Kingdom say they'd be willing to get down and "dirty with a droid." Presumably, as the sexbots get sexier, and the idea less unfamiliar, the numbers will go up.

Will humanity die out, though? Probably not. Katy Perry offers the path to human salvation. Although the singer has gotten flak for saying she doesn't need a man to have a baby, the fact is that new reproductive technologies make that largely true. By the time robot prostitutes are a going concern, it's likely that men won't need women to have babies, either. While some futurists are predicting robot prostitutes by 2025, artificial wombs may arrive at the same time.

So you may or may not like the new world of sex robots, but at least they probably won't wipe out humanity. And we can have robot nannies to raise the kids, too. But if we combine the two roles in one machine, would that be creepy? Or just "Mom"? Welcome to the 21st century.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is author ofThe New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.

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