Turning on the robots

Computer scientist Kate Devlin in her latest book about intimacy, technology, computers and psychology, Loneliness and companionship, law and ethics, privacy and community, explain how to be a human in the world of machines.

Devlin charts her survey of the history of humanoids with the Greek myth of Laodamia, who commissioned a bronze likeness of her husband Protesilaus, after he sacrificed himself in the Trojan war. When she takes the bronze to bed, her father orders that the effigy be burnt. Inconsolable Laodamia follows her bespoke beloved by throwing herself on the pyre,  an ancient tradition also followed by Indians called sati.

Ovid’s Pygmalion enjoys a more felicitous fate  when – by the grace of Venus – his sculpture springs to life, a theme later reinterpreted in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.

Automation, despite advances in animatronics and AI, prototypes still remain primitive. Devlin designates Roxy introduced as the world’s first sex robot in 2010, as a “1980s shop sale mannequin in a bad wig”. Retailing between $1000 to $10, 000 these dolls represent a small sliver of the sex tech market, (excluding pornography) which is forecast to generate $30bn by 2020.

Engineers are working hard to incorporate artificial intelligence to turn robots into realistic companions. Harmony a prototype by Abyss Creations, a California based leader in love doll market, is programmed to learn from the internet, and uses facts about her owner in conversation so that it feels like  “ she really cares”.

Research show that computers need only a small set of human-like characteristics for users to feel a bond with them, even when they are aware that they are interacting with a non-emotional machine. With the advent of companion robots which instil a fear that humans will be made redundant with users opting for submissive surrogate –complete with an off button over a real person.

The robots will never say no and can be ordered up blonde, busty and one can demand that she be docile. Abyss Creations’ RealDolls offers male,  transgender models, and of course female dolls with porn-star proportions are major sellers.

Devlin concedes that “ pronified fembots” propagate objectification, but believes the current anthropomorphic bots will remain niche  and hopes that robot design will converge with sex toys and evolve from emulating human features to offering embodied multi-sensory experiences.

Turned On covers other common concerns, like mistreatment of robots, the potential misuse of private data collected about usage.

Devlin also debates “does sex with a robot count as cheating, will it lead to violence and rape. What if some one makes a child version?”.

Perhaps the sexual companion robot could “offer us a chance to enhance our lives, to cure loneliness, to bring us pleasure to eradicate exploitative sexual offenders. May be this our future and instead of fearing the rise of the machines, we could, quite literally embrace them” suggests Devlin.

“ To build robots, we must first rebuild ourselves as people ready to be their companions.”

 

 

 

Turned ON: Science, Sex and Robots by Kate Devlin, Bloomsbury £16.99, 288 pages.