Having previously written on Wall-E and sexuality for my assignment in the Contemporary Literature module last year, I had prepared myself for the barren wasteland of relevant research that would greet me in writing my Imaginary Worlds research proposal on AI and sex. After a quick Google, I discovered I had miscalculated the world’s interest in sex and robots massively. It turns out just about everyone is either terrified, or terrifyingly horny.
Science Fiction is populated with “sexy” robots we think little of. But why can we acceptably be sexually attracted to robots? Usually, because their metal scaffolding is hidden beneath the flesh of a pretty celebrity. See Michael Fassbender (Prometheus) or Kristanna Loken (Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines). In video games AIs are often presented in sexualised human forms, too. Need proof? Ask Cortana to show you other Cortana. You know, the pretty one from the Halo games. Trust me, she looks slightly more explicit than your laptop mic.
I find the sexualisation of AIs a bit uncomfortable, despite their fictionality. This is mainly because it is difficult to tell whether the desire to have sex with an AI is repugnant, or is as meaningless as buying certain products from Anne Summers.
Notably, Realdoll are working on incorporating AI in their hyper-realistic sex dolls. Their founder, Matt McMullen, has stated that ‘It’s far more than sexual entertainment. People really zero in on, “Oh, you’re making a sex robot.” I’d say we’re making a robot that can have sex.’ Given the prerequisites of programming required for a robot to perform intercourse, I’d argue that there is surely little difference.
People seem to feel more comfortable with the idea of having sex with a machine if it isn’t sentient – but I still wouldn’t make out with a glorified toaster, even if it did have Scarlett Johansson’s face. I know for a fact that the toaster also doesn’t want to make out with me – it’s more into Hovis and Warburtons.
But let’s say we provide the toaster with sexual faucets and desires, as is bizarrely the case with the AIs in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina. Now does it want to make out with you? The short answer: No. It is likely that the toaster wants nothing at all. Although it may be wired to warm you up as well as bread, it still has no desire – only functionality.
What will this do to the human mind? When Realdolls come walking and talking their way into Argos, will we do away with the (already fairly disconnected) hookup apps like tinder and grindr? Perhaps we will avoid intimacy between humans altogether.
Whilst this may do wonders for overpopulation and the spread of STIs, it may encourage some strange mindset changes. If dangerous kinks, such as the likes of violent Chemsex (cn: abuse), can be performed on a robot without ethical implications, will they become a normalised pattern of human behavior? Since robots, as Bryson states, are first and foremost ‘slaves’, does this mean that non-consensual sex with them is acceptable? In the world as we know it, non-consensual sex with a person results in imprisonment for the culprit, and years of mental recovery and fear for the victim. In the world to come, non-consensual sex with a robot could result in nothing but a trip to the AI repair shop.
The future is always a daunting thought. But retrospectively, consider the amusing convenience of the USB ports written into Independence Day’s spaceships, and the Floppy Disks that upload Karate to Keanu Reeves’ strange mind in the Matrix. I wouldn’t be surprised if our current science fiction becomes somewhat laughable in the future. But it is hard to decipher whether we will laugh because of our preoccupation with sex, or look back and laugh at our outdated, clunky prototypes compared to our brand new ISex7s. As Rainbird chairman James Duez suggests, the ‘most progressive tech companies accept that if a bot is doing its job properly then there is no need to sell it as a blonde, smiling woman’.
Whilst researching I discovered a quotation from Angela Carter’s short story, ‘The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman’ (1986), The story intriguingly dissects gender in a brothel peopled by “female” automata:
‘They had been reduced by the rigorous discipline of their vocation to the undifferentiated essence of the idea of female. This ideational femaleness took amazingly different shapes though its nature was not that of Woman.’
Here, Carter suggests that it is the ‘vocation’ of these automata that enables them to be categorized in the female gender role. A vocation, in this case, concerned predominantly with sexualisation.
To model machinery designed for household chores and sex on women is hardly revolutionary. How far can we truly progress whilst it is the sex market that is at the forefront technological advancement? If, as The Young Turk’s Cenk Uygur suggests, the strive for sex-bots is ‘the most unstoppable force in human history’, what does this say about humanity?
I would like to end this post another of many questions. In the year 3000, will your great, great, great-granddaughter be pretty fine? Or non-existent, since no one wants the baggage of intercourse with something that has opinions and non-programmed thought?
If you want to read more about creepy robots, check out these articles:
Attractive, Slavish and at your command: Is AI sexist?
Does rampant AI threaten humanity?
Why an AI-Judged beauty contest picked nearly all white winners
Is it ethical to have sex with robots?
Is realdoll a step closer to delivering its promised AI Sex robots?