As with the Internet, I think sex will be the driver of humanoid robot development, and I see a lot more challenges than this interview brought up. For example, wouldn’t it make the most economic sense to develop a robotic core that could fit into and drive any humanoid frame and then emulate whatever frame it was? Put it into a female frame, it starts being supportive, put it into a male, it’s forceful. Age too, you can have any age you want, and it will behave accordingly, modifiable to support your fantasies. So is it pedophilia if you turn your robot into an eight-year-old girl? Or boy? What if you’re a (human) kid and use the adult household robot as a way to experiment with sex? Is that a bad thing or good? Does it matter? What if your 11-year-old daughter loses her cherry to a robot and falls in love with him?

It seems implausible now, given our view of sex toys as blowup dolls, but I can foresee technology creating humanoid robots with skin that was so skin-like you couldn’t feel the difference and powered by eating the same food we do and shitting and pissing to pass its waste products the same way too. At that point the only way to tell whether your sex partner was a human or a robot might be whether it responded to wireless commands on your remote control.