In Spielberg's futuristic film, Al, Jude Law plays Gigolo Joe, an android that's virtually indistinguishable from a human that has been designed to pleasure women like no real man could. After watching the film, the first question most women should be asking is 'Will there be a Gigolo Joe that looks like Jude Law anytime soon?' The short answer is no.

Current robot and Al technology are nowhere near what would be required. We still don't know how to make robots that won't bump into the furniture if you move it. There is steady progress, but the public needs to be aware that it is very, very difficult - harder than space exploration for example. At least in space exploration the scientists know what the problems are. We are constantly discovering new problems.

In the 1950s, mathematical genius Alan Turing invented the first computer and laid down the Turing Test. The Turing Test is a measure of a computer's ability to think. If a computer can fool a human into believing that it (the computer) is human and not machine, then the computer has passed the Turing Test. No one has yet created an artificial intelligence with the ability to pass this test. Nevertheless, the scientists are trying to make this happen.

Artificial Intelligence N.V, for example, has developed Hal, an 18-month-old toddler machine that's learning to talk and develop just like a human child (but without the burps and throwing up. The company hopes Hal will pass the Turing Test in the next ten years. Nevertheless, passing the Turing Test is a world away from displaying the type of consciousness that makes us human. It's an awareness of self and something deeper that gives rise to inexplicable emotions such as love. We still don't understand it.

Indeed, as Whitby points out, we shouldn't, for the most part, want machines to imitate humans. ‘There are six billion humans in the world - no shortage,' he says. ‘We want useful machines that are not like us.' That's the stance he normally takes on the academic circuit. ‘But,' he says, ‘human imitation may be the way forward for the sex industry.'

A love machine like Gigolo Joe doesn't necessarily need to have that deeper level of humanness to be effective, but building a humanoid like Joe requires tremendous advances in computing, robotics, and bio-engineering. That doesn't mean to say that some in the sex industry aren't trying to advance towards this holy grail. The makers of Real Doll a life-size, 'realistic', sex doll that retails for $5,000, have expressed a desire to build interaction and animation into their product one day.

Love machines like Gigolo Joe are still a few years away It's not going to be easy though. ‘The problem is that the real world is a fast-changing and complex environment for robots to handle,' concludes Whitby. ‘I can't see Gigolo Joe being built in the foreseeable future.' Back to reality then, and the pub...

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