If you go What: “Sex with Robots: What’s Not to Like?” When: 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Thursday Where: University Memorial Center Ballroom Cost: Free More info: colorado.edu/cwa/

It’s an eye-catching name for a panel discussion at the Conference on World Affairs — “Sex with Robots: What’s Not to Like?”

Panel member Dr. Seth Shostak said the technology is already coming to fruition, although humans have yet to create a fully functioning sex robot.

“There is a love jacket that you can put on and cuddle with someone, even though they are halfway around the world,” Shostak said. “I don’t think you can buy it on Amazon yet, but it’s been demonstrated.”

He added that sex robots would be commercially attractive in the same way that pornography has powered much of the internet over the years.

The concept of robot/human sex is nothing new and has been thoroughly pondered in books and film, with varying degrees of quality. Rick Deckard cheats on his wife with a “replicant” in Philip K. Dick’s classic dystopian novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

One of the most memorable ruminations on the question is the 1986 film “Cherry 2000,” during which a man ventures into a lawless wasteland to replace his namesake love machine. (He falls in love with Melanie Griffith and ditches the robot.)

A quick Google search for sex with robots yields a plethora of results — most of them not recommended for workplace viewing.

Fellow panel member Karuna Jaggar, the executive director of advocacy organization Breast Cancer Action, said that if someone is turned on by the thought of robot sex, then there is not an inherent problem.

However, the person needs to understand that a meaningful relationship with a robot is impossible, she added.

“In the case of robots, we are talking about physical pleasure,” she said. “It’s a sex toy, and everyone would be helped if we cannot get that confused with romance and intimacy and reproduction (assuming that reproduction with a machine doesn’t become a technological reality).”

Although she has been invited to participate in the panel, Jaggar admits that she has not put a great deal of thought into sex and robots, so she is curious to find out what the other panelists have to say on the subject.

For Shostak, an astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, Calif., the question goes beyond human/robot sex and is more about the leaps and bounds made with artificial intelligence and what that means for humanity.

That includes, he said, robots that will likely be able to write the Great American Novel within the next few decades, further diminishing the need for actual writers.

“It’s going to obliterate the need for a writing staff at the Daily Camera,” he said. “There are already computers that can write short stories.”

More important than pesky writers, however, are computers that Shostak said are already in existence and can recognize cats in videos better than their human counterparts.

It’s likely, he added, that most of the intelligence in the universe is machines, because once a race of beings creates artificial intelligence, that technology advances rapidly. So humans — in our quest for faster and faster computers — are essentially inventing our successors. (Whether they destroy humanity or keep us as pets remains to be seen.)

“In a way, it’s already happening,” he said. “From what I’ve read about millennials, they don’t meet. They text. They are already dealing with robots.”

“Sex with Robots: What’s Not to Like?” happens at 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Thursday at the University Memorial Center Ballroom.

John Bear: 303-473-1355, bearj@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/jonbearwithme