Robot Girlfriends Aren't Just for Sex Anymore

As History has shown, the pornographic think tanks have been responsible for nearly every invention and innovation since the wheel. When you think about it, some are more obvious than others: Gutenberg had a thing for she-male bondage, the Wright Brothers were voyeuristic swingers, and the Internet would implode if porn was abolished. We owe these captains of smut a great deal of gratitude, and shouldn't be surprised to discover they have forged a new era in robotics. Many presumed the Japanese or perhaps the US government would be the first to make a breakthrough in android technology, but neither has the funding nor the drive of adult entertainment.

A Canadian software engineer named Le Trung has developed Project Aiko, the sexiest and arguably most advanced robot ever created. Le Trung lives in his mother's basement, a damp dungeon with cages suspended from the ceiling, discarded Sunny D jugs littering the floor, and the pungent odor of burnt hair and spermicidal rubber wafting through the air.

Aiko has the ability to recognize faces, read the newspaper, and have unique conversations. She also comes equipped with a host of gimmicks, including live weather reports, text messages, a tip calculator, Sara Palin impressions, funny Bible quotations, and a stainless steel apple peeler/corer/slicer. Aiko is wheelchair bound, allegedly due to a career ending ACL injury after a drunken prom night twenty-six car pile-up (although it might be because Trung blew his budget on the best silicon breasts on the market, or the robotics industry’s inability to create a robot that can walk and climb stairs without toppling over like a rusty trash can). Aiko also comes equipped with a watchdog program, using her face recognition software to identify unknown intruders, alert the police, and use her superhuman strength to pacify the intruder with a firm grasp on their skull. After an incident with a nine year old Girl Scout peddling Thin Mints, the Watchdog program has been shut down until a non-lethal upgrade is developed.

Aiko's nubile body is also filled with hundred of "pain" sensors. If you grab her arm (or her breast as the video demonstration shows you), she coldly expresses how much it hurts, and wishes you would stop molesting her in an inappropriate fashion. Trung claims that he does not sleep with his robot, but is unable to answer to why she has sesnors in her "swimsuit area," and why she often asks strangers if she can massage their monster cocks with robotic precision. Clearly a 42 year old living in his mother’s basement designs robots so he can have sex with them. Men have often shown their willingness to use technology to pleasure their insatiable sex cravings, and usually end up having to act nonchalant as a paramedic and plumber try and disengage their unit from a hot tub water jet.

More disturbing than Aiko's Myspace page is Trung's assertion that he is on a quest to create the perfect woman. If the perfect woman is a wheelchair bound rubber doll that shoots lasers from her eyes and yells at you when you grab her breasts, than I am clearly with the wrong girl. Aiko sounds more like the perfect receptionist, and Trung has admitted she could be marketed as such (especially with her love for sexual harassment). But the idea that his concept of female perfection is a mechanical slave worries me, and unless preemptive nuclear strikes are unleashed upon Canada soon, Trung and his fellow puck-slingers will surely unleash their fembot hordes on us all.

Countless films have made it more than clear the inevitably grim outcome of developing artificial intelligence, so why do we foolishly keep trying to create it?. Hollywood hasn’t been wrong yet, and the Oracle in Tinseltown assures us that robots will enslave and then destroy humankind. I just pray I never live to see the day I wash my overlord toaster’s dishes and get unceremoniously raped by the horny hair dryer.