Sex, prostitution, robots and relationships.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeN5sPMhW9k[/youtube]
Probably the least biased/agendered/insane tedtalk on sexbots.

Personally I’ve never been anti-prostitution, and never really understood society’s knee-jerk denigration of the profession or of sex-workers in general. What shame, exploitation and tawdriness that is (and always has been generally) involved is wholly a symptom of society trying to repress something that has always been irrepressable, rather than just attempt to regulate and protect all parties involved.

When I say “never really understood” I mean, sure, I can see why religions, social groups, governments et al have repressed it throughout history, but never been convinced by any of their reasons. All of the reasons essentially distort a definition of ‘sexual activity’ into whatever convenient strawman suits their purpose, then go on to persecute the people who don’t adhere to it.

Anyway, moving on. There was a piece on the BBC newsite today that I look at over breakfast about “sexbots and psychological damage” which led me to check out how the whole sexbot industry is coming along. And whoo, it’s getting sophisticated. Both the female and male dolls are amazingly realistic, and they talk now too, using (probably a very dumb) AI neural net to pop up canned responses to verbal cues.

Like Siri but with genitals.

If you watch that tedtalk, there are some worrying statistics about the newer generations relationships - I may be remembering wrong - but something like 51% of people in the 18-25 age bracket have never had a relationship. Or sex.

Which is to me, sad.

The instant parallel for me between sexbot and prostitute is that when you pay a human prostitute, part of what you are doing is giving them money to temporarily shut down part of their humanity. The part that has its own drives, wishes, and judgement. The agreement is basically “here’s some money, become an object.”

If you accept this then a sexbot is more suited to the role of prostitute than a human, simply because it has no humanity to shut down. And by the way, there are brothels operating right now, where all the ‘girls’ are sexdolls. Profitable, clean, safe etc. Who knew lol…?

Much as the sexbot industry wants to portray itself as ‘equal opportunity’ let’s face it, it’s men driving this. We like our toys, and we’re sexually more suited to empty, unemotional sex than women. And the internet version of the age-old sexually-frustrated male just makes me want to buy a machine gun and kill them all. So much whinging.

“Incell”. Wow. That is an absolute masterpiece of political nicety. ‘Involuntarily celebate’. So much whine packed into such a small buzzword. When I were a lad, the phrase ‘can’t get laid’ was in vogue, which to me is at least honest. Implying that it’s the guy who has to take at least some responsibility for his ‘unlaid’ condition.

I’m bad at football. When it comes to picking teams, pick me last and put me in goal, I’m broad, I will block shots completely by accident. But I’m not ‘involuntarily’ bad at football. I’ve just never bothered to learn how to play very well.

These incell guys sound like they think it’s a woman’s duty somehow, to put out for allcomers. Like all that a guy should need to do is walk into a public place wearing a placade with “Hey ladies, I volunteer to have sex with you.”

Basically, I think sexbots would at least shut these guys the hell up. Which cannot be anything but good news.

youtu.be/JiTw1Ji9-cY

Succinct. For those that seek relevance here’s the lyrics.

“I got a girl with a little rubber head
Rinse her out every night just before I go to bed
She never talked back like a lady might do
And she looks like she loves it every time I get through
And her name is P-I-N-K-Y
P-I-N no lie
K-Y me-oh-my
She’s 69 - 95, give her a try
P-I-N-K-Y
P-I-N I cry
K-Y don’t be shy
69 - 95 boy, give her a try
Her eyes 's all shut in an ecstasy face
You can cram it down her throat, people, any old place
Throw a little switch on her battery pack
You can poot it, you can shoot it till your wife gets back
And her name is P-I-N-K-Y”

There is literally a song about everything. Though I doubt Adele is rushing to do a cover.

These days, however, and frequently it seems, there is no wife coming back. Pinky has ambitions to become the missus. Mr Zappa might wanna do a quick update from beyond the grave.

What is “amazing realistic” though? Like realistically lying still, or does she have like, muscle-work?
Look at me I’m calling it a “she”.

And, how about the moral issue of putting girls out work work who have no other recourse to get to a decent wage?
I dont think I have a position on this either way, but it would seem as annoying for prostitutes to get the robotic competition as it is for dockworkers.

She’s very “lie back and think of england” apparantly at the moment, but that’s just an engineering problem. There are advances in artificial muscles - basically strings of small balloons that inflate and cause contractions, so only a matter of time tbh.

All down to how much the dear public is willing to spend. I think the models in the news article were about 10 thousand dollars. But then I guess if you are the kinda person who blows 1000 a shot on the friendly neighborhood lady of negotiable virtue… it’s a cheaper option in the long run.

I was thinking on my walk today, about how they might make them cheaper. Especially now the bots will start to incorporate interactive features.

When you get some freebie apps/games they have the “may include ads and in-app purchases” warning. Lol, imagine if your talking sexbot followed the same monitization process.

“Hey big boy” [runs emotional state facial recognition software] "you look glum - why don’t you buy me a new face from sexbotface.com…?

Or like my vapestick needs new atomizers every month.

“Hey big boy” [runs diagnostics] “my vagina needs replacing”.

Im sure it’ll take a millennium before they’ll get in the vicinity of a girl who knows salsa.

But then, I don’t suppose many prositutes put in such an effort.

I edited while you were posting lol.

Salsa. That would be a schlep, even for AIs running a fully human-equivalent functional body. I had lessons for a month and still salsa like an elephant seal on epilepsy medication.

Just to think , for decades blow up dolls did the ticket, in fact when drunk, coming home from a long, dreary night out in pickup bars empty handed, those guys may not desire exact copies matching their infinitesimal requirements.

Such techno-advances may lead to the evolution of characteristics of desire-body/mind requirements akin to latest auto-version on the market.

Auto mate ion may minimize such heady problems as auto-erotic strangulation, in young boys.

But will they ever be able to afford them, after all, getting the latest real car, to get the real thing may avoid such early and spurious outlays of money’s better spent. Anyway, even if the object bought by their McDonalds’ hard earned loot raise alarming red flags with concerned parents?
Even if, their control has diminished over their progeny where taking back the laptop has become a non issue of a disconcerted waste of effort.

i just want to say that quoting the lyrics to this masterpiece has won you a special place in my heart, tab. arminius is the only other resident of ILP that’s ever done so (if my memory doesn’t fail me), and for that he will always be remembered. see zappa isn’t just something you listen to when you want to offend your friends and/or family. this man was a demigod, a seer not unlike that nostradamus dude. he saw ms. pinky comin decades before she’d ever get here, did he not? and it’s not everyday that they name a planet after a ‘rock-star’, ya know.

when 3834 passes through the sky, know that frank is still with us… watching, waiting, criticizing, laughing.

Hey Prom, listening to FZ on deezer as I type.

Meno:

With these sexbots, it’s the hardware that’s expensive atm. The software running the onboard AI is just an app. The developer has given the doll a scottish accent “because it seemed the most suited” or something to that effect. What that says about Scottish women I don’t know, never went out with a scot, though my friend did, and I remember her being nice.

As you say, ‘infinitesimal requirements’ what constitutes a meaningful relationship, or a satisfying sexual experience…? How much hardware do you need…? Even these top-end sexbots are only the equivalent of dating a very pretty but retarded quadraplegic. With cheap augumented reality around the corner, how much would a virtual companion cost really…? Haptic gloves, which create the sense of touching a virtual object in realspace, are again, only an engineering problem.

It’s not much of a stretch to imagine - lol, I googled - no need to imagine youtu.be/T1AM-9Xv33g - already here. Very rudimentary looking. But imagine one in 3d, projected onto your glasses with film-quality resolution, able to follow you seemlessly through your house, or as you walk in the park, wear your gloves and you could even hold her hand. Speak to you through your bluetooth earbuds via your ubiquitous cellphone. Able to access the net and tell you interesting things all chosen by an algorithm attuned to your likes and dislikes. Someone to listen to your bullshit and agree with you. Dress in anything, look like anyone. As for the physical side, a body shaped pillow in greenscreen green, with her image projected over it and a handy fleshlight.

I dunno. Enough…?

Think of the amount of bullshit people project onto their pets. The depth of belief in the authenticity of feeling they attribute to an animal with a wallnut sized brain, which is really only in it for the catfood and a place to sleep. How much more would they invest over time in a personal walking talking sex goddess who seems, very convincingly, to love them…? However ephemerally…?

Jesus christ, you could bring back the dead. Black mirror has never been closer.

Or how about a multiplayer version. Two real people, linked through the net, each seeing augumented reality versions of themselves. The ultimate in safe sex…? Lol, that’s already here too. Cardboard vr set and a lovesense thingamajig. Looks like the population problem is going to, pardon the double entendre, ‘take care of itself’.

Thats just terrible.

Lol. Yes.

Thats terrible.

A long time ago I broke into nonwhite dance capacities. I think it had something to do with very intensively training Tai Chi at the height of which I went 6 months of full celibacy.
Still, some lines of mating dance seem to go somewhat in the direction of imitating robots. Maybe the tech and the style will develop towards a point of compromise.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kthVpBVVXZc[/youtube]

Sex robots are simply the three dimensional version of internet porn that will represent the next obvious stage in artificial sex interaction
In the future lonely men will not be masturbating to a flat screen like they are now but something much more realistic with actual curves
However the psychological problems will still exist with regard to why they have to find comfort with something other than a real woman

When the robots claim to be real women, then society will be obligated to accept them as real women by the same premise that real men are real women.

The line between human and machine will become more blurred over time so at some point we will give them rights just like we give to animals now
It will not be seen as anything other than the right and proper thing to do and while it might seem strange now it is just because it has yet to happen

Hey Fixed, re. teaching an AI to salsa.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhCzX0iLnOc[/youtube]
The AI would probably kill half the crowd just with its gyrating bum.

I watch things like this and don’t worry very much about the world being dominated by artificial intelligence anytime soon.

Hey Surr-75,

Why the automatic assumption of psychological problems…? You wouldn’t accuse a vegetarian of some kind of psychlogical eating disorder because they didn’t eat meat, you eat, they eat, just different means to the same end. But you would if they became anorexic, because then the end is different, and self-harming. Are homosexuals automatically psychologically dysfunctional because they choose their own gender…? The end is slightly different because of its lack of reproductive prospects, beyond adoption. Does the ‘dysfunction’ lie there…?

If you were to grow sterile humans in a bottle, away from current society and knowledge, you could reasonably expect those humans to seek sex and loving companionship. The big question is “Would they miss babies…?” I know that sounds insane, but the correlation between sex and babies is not instinctive. I remember reading a anthrop/sociology book and an anecdote about sex surveys out in some backwater third-world boonie, and some of the teens there didn’t know sex led to kids. There’s no reason why we should have instinctive knowledge about reproduction. A sex-drive is enough to ensure babies arrive. The rest is conjecture and inculturation.

The brain has no innate knowledge of reproduction, and cannot be ‘damaged’ by its absence, unless it is taught to do so by external conditions.

So, the only two things we are instinctively driven toward then is sex, and companionship. I say ‘companionship’, and not ‘relationship’ because the idea of exclusive relationships and fidelity and marriage and etc. are all cultural rather than natural norms. I think anyway. They obviously promote the wellfare of the child and the stability of society, but are not instinctive, nor evolutionarily necessary, as long as children flourish, and everyone doesn’t kill each other out of jealousy.

So, we are left just with the source of sexual fulfilment sought after, and the source of companionship sought as indicators of psychological health and of course the degree of consensuality and mutual benefit between the people involved. Paedophiles, rapists, are still monsters, as would be people who instead of going to the supermarket for some porkchops, were physically unable to eat unless they’d broken into a farm animal enclosure, tied up a pig and slowly tortured it to death before eating bits of it in front of its piglets.

The source, and its ability to successfully fulfil those needs for sex and companionship.

So, if a sexbot eventually becomes able to provide a sexual experience commensurate with human sexual relations, (something arguably it has achieved - some people are amazingly bad at sex lol), and a level of companionship to a degree that it at least compares to some kind of human interaction… then where is the “psychological problem”…?

Hey Wendy,

Yeah. That will be a watershed moment. But this…

…Is more impactful. Sentience is sentience. Human, non-human, artificial. Will the production-line welding robot ever join the union…?

Machine rights. It will be an interesting time. Making a human into a slave, or a sex-object, necessitates dehumanizing them. Removing something they always had. Choice, ownership of self etc. This must be removed, because you don’t get humans born naturally without them.

However, the same is not true of artificial ‘life’. If I construct a machine to do my dishes for eternity, or to warm my bed and talk to me, but in such a way that its only innate ‘desire’, its programing, right from its original conception on the blueprint, is to do so… Where is the violation of rights exactly…? What have I removed from it…?

I have chosen not to give it something. This is true. But is it the same…? Is that a violation…?

Perhaps, and he might even walk off the job.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=194714

Go to the second post in the thread. Let me explain. I went through a temporary stage of amateur short-story writing, and that thread is what happened.

It seems like we are trying to replace human relations and mediate any remaining human relations. That ‘face time’ would even be this specific activity. Why go to the trouble of anxiety producing social interactions when you can fuck not alive things. Digital media and devices are already making people less able to read the emotions of others - iow making people less social mammals. Then since they have less face time and are less capable in social interactions, actually being with people is more and more anxiety producing, so we give them machine replacments for face and love time. Create problems and then ‘solve’ them.

Even prostitutes are a shortcut.

youtu.be/zKkdgnDu3MA

Ahh, the 80s. When the shoulderpads were wide, and hair conditioner was as hard to find as a obsolete sexbot chasis.

C’mon then iam, gimme something to work with. I dare you to write a post without the words daesin or objectivist ok. I’ll answer.