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Do the robot

by | 123 Comments

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I’m watching “The View” with my parents, and there’s segment coming up about….robot prostitutes. I guess we are all Glenn Reynolds now.

“Love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans,” Levy writes, “while the number of sexual acts and lovemaking positions commonly practiced between humans will be extended, as robots teach us more than is in all of the world’s published sex manuals combined.”

Levy goes on to imagine a world of robot prostitutes, or “sexbots,” which would offer people a chance to practice their technique before entering a human relationship. “With a robot prostitute,” he writes, “the control of disease is implicit — simply remove the active parts and put them in the disinfecting machine.”

(quote actually just from a book Reynolds heh-indeeded, not Reynolds himself)

Reader Interactions

123Comments

  1. 1.

    kyle

    … robot prostitutes, or “sexbots,” which would offer people a chance to practice their technique before entering a human relationship.

    Yeah right, “practice.” Bio-engineered sex substitutes will put regular sex out of business. Fifty years from now we’ll be growing specially designed sex holes just to stick our dicks in them.

  6. 6.

    JGabriel

    “Love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans,” Levy writes …

    Didn’t Spike say something exactly like that on BtVS or Angel?

    Joss Whedon: ahead of the curve once again.

    .

  9. 9.

    Corner Stone

    Levy goes on to imagine a world of robot prostitutes, or “sexbots,” which would offer people a chance to practice their technique before entering a human relationship.

    Hmmm, let’s see. A human being who has needs and desires and deserves respect, attention and reciprocity.
    Or, a sex slave who never complains and happily serves to fulfill any selfish desire.
    Mankind is doomed.

  12. 12.

    Culture of Truth

    “I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly. Take a stress pill and think things over.”

  15. 15.

    Culture of Truth

    “I enjoy working with people. I have a stimulating relationship with Dr. Poole and Dr. Bowman.”

  16. 16.

    Derelict

    Hopefully, Reynolds’ dreambot/sexbot will run on WinDoze. Then it will be an open question of who’s getting fucked.

    At least between update downloads.

    And viruses.

    And it kinda gives new meaning to the term “trojan.”

  18. 18.

    JGabriel

    __
    __
    Corner Stone:

    Mankind is doomed.

    Nah. We’ll always have artificial insemination.

    I, for one, welcome our new ho’bot overlords.

    .

  19. 19.

    Quicksand

    If you want a really good one, you’ll have to learn a foreign language – German for instance.

  20. 20.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Why has nobody yet posted one of the best limericks ever written?

    There was a young man from Racine
    Who invented a fucking machine:
    Concave and convex,
    It could serve either sex,
    Entertaining itself in between.

  21. 21.

    r€nato

    well this certainly raises an interesting question:

    would it be legal to make a sexbot which resembles a child? (eeewwwww I know)

    and if it is determined illegal… how does one decide that an ageless (in the conventional sense) sexbot is a child? Or what about a pre-teen-ish sexbot? Some 18 and 19 year olds can easily look much younger than their age…

    i suspect that most if not all jurisdictions would rush to pass laws against this, but that doesn’t mean those laws would necessarily stand.

    I forget how the case law has turned out with regard to whether graphically sexual cartoon depictions of children are legal to possess, or if it is even settled yet. I would suspect that legal arguments against them would also be employed against child sexbots (eeewwwww).

  22. 22.

    KG

    @JGabriel: Don’t remember that, but I know Futurama had a whole episode about robosexuals

    ETA: and another about a robot girlfriend

  23. 23.

    Hunter Gathers

    Can’t wait for the film strips about Electro-Gonorrhea: The Noisy Killer to start showing up in high school health classes.

  24. 24.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Corner Stone:
    Exactly why it’s not going anywhere anytime soon, in my opinion, and is never likely to replace regular sex. Despite stereotypes to the contrary, people really like a lover with personality, and consistently prefer that to other kinds of sexual pleasure.

  26. 26.

    eric

    it can be programmed with: “My, my David, that is the biggest 4 inches I have ever seen. Dont go too fast.” or perhaps “Mr. Brooks, I will succumb to your wishes and make myself submissive to you.” good times.

  28. 28.

    JGabriel

    @Hunter Gathers:

    Can’t wait for the film strips about Electro-Gonorrhea: The Noisy Killer to start showing up in high school health classes.

    Keep you ho’bot clean, or your dick will turn green!

    .

  30. 30.

    NonyNony

    @Corner Stone:

    Hmmm, let’s see. A human being who has needs and desires and deserves respect, attention and reciprocity. Or, a sex slave who never complains and happily serves to fulfill any selfish desire. Mankind is doomed.

    Hm. Possibly.

    On the other hand, think about the people who would choose answer b instead of answer a when given the option. Now imagine a world where those folks never reproduced and never raised any children because they had all of their sexual needs fulfilled by a sexbot.

    Imagine a generation or two after those folks had died off.

    I’m seeing a definite upside to sexbot research. And once they exist, I see a definite upside towards subsidizing the hell out of their purchase for a few generations.

    Obligatory link to a public service announcement from the Space Pope.

  31. 31.

    eric

    Think of the names the machines will get: The Travolta, for highly conflicted and passive sex; or The Anna Nicole, for the 90 year old that has everything else (a gift from his heirs); the McMegan, for …um….um…er….uh…..nevermind

  34. 34.

    Corner Stone

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Despite stereotypes to the contrary, people really like a lover with personality, and consistently prefer that to other kinds of sexual pleasure.

    Are you kidding me? You take a teenage male and give him a sensual device that will give him a sense of being a MoTU? Shit, he’d never be with a real woman, ever. And if he did, how do you think he’d treat her?

  36. 36.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    “…to practice their technique before entering a human relationship.”

    Is that what you bots are calling it these days.

  40. 40.

    scav

    I don’t think they’ve thought this through. To really improve their technique, that means the hobot (!) is going to have to provide accurate feedback (in real-time?) to the user. Right. What the average nervous guy is looking for is an honest evaluation of technique. Things better come with a mute button. “Turn slightly left at the next copulation. Harder. Harder. You have missed your turn. Recalculating. . . . “

  41. 41.

    August Pollak

    Laugh if you want, but i actually have a friend at MIT who is writing an entire thesis on the ethics of stuff like this in the 21st century. The example mentioned in comment #20- creating “fake” children that you can legally have sex with- if among the topics. Another example is–I kid you not–“celebrity sex robots.” These are actually things porn companies are ALREADY INVESTING in patents and possibility of– and with it comes a whole host of rights and ethics issues. For example, if you made a robot clone of a celebrity, is that a “likeness use?” and so forth.

    She’s a law student and essentially her study is “cyber ethics” which yeah is a thing to joke about now but is likely going to be a realistic and tricky issue as technology advances.

  42. 42.

    different-church-lady

    Well, I suppose this could explain what Ann sees in Mitt.

    (Sorry, couldn’t help myself…)

  43. 43.

    shortstop

    @scav:

    You have missed your turn. Recalculating. . . .

    That Garmin chick’s voice would be a major cold shower for me. Does anyone like it?

  46. 46.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    I’m watching “The View” with my parents

    __
    Did it strike anyone else that this quote is quite possibly the most perveted part of the entire post?

  48. 48.

    Ivan Ivanovich Renko

    Really, thinking someone would be “hooked” on a “ho’bot” (DAYUM, I like that one!) is as foolish as assuming women become addicted to vibrators.

    And what would this ho’bot be, anyway, but a bigger, more expensive vibe? (I doubt many women are falling in love with the Sybian, even if they just love the thing.)

  49. 49.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    By coincidence I had dinner with a friend last night who works in a robotics company, and he brought this up. They’re not making business plans, but he reckoned that it’s just a matter of time before someone does. Nothing far fetched about it in the least.

  50. 50.

    Ken

    simply remove the active parts and put them in the disinfecting machine.

    Coming soon, from the writers of Saw and the director of Silence of the Lambs…

  53. 53.

    Corner Stone

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Not really. That particular quirk is like how other writers casually name drop.
    There’s no reason to include it. It doesn’t give the reader any more information or significant context about the post. And it doesn’t add any flair that strengthens the writing style.
    IOW, pure DougJ.

  54. 54.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Corner Stone: To be fair though, the goal of name-dropping is to impress people, and I can’t imagine that anyone in the universe would choose “watching The View with my parents” for that particular purpose.

    Unless you know it was a “The View” in another solar system that was actually high art and the person’s parents were the Andy Warhol of Omicron Persei Eight and his wife Ndndn Warhol. Or whatever.

  55. 55.

    scav

    @Bill E Pilgrim: Finding it gut-wrenchingly funny isn’t exactly the same as finding it far-fetched. Well, emphasizing the educational end of it might manage a bit of far-fetchedness. Be a hell of a lot of practicing and a reduced rate of graduation is my assumption.

  56. 56.

    JGabriel

    “the control of disease is implicit — simply remove the active parts and put them in the disinfecting machine.”

    I can’t OK Go! video depicting this.

    .

  57. 57.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @scav: Oh I think it’s hilarious. But sort of a yeah, humans, whaddya gonna do sort of hilarious, rather than an oh my god, really??? kind of hilarious.

  58. 58.

    Todd

    @Corner Stone:

    Or, a sex slave who never complains and happily serves to fulfill any selfish desire.

    I always wondered why people ever left the holodeck on ST:TNG….

  60. 60.

    jibeaux

    @August Pollak: That actually sounds really interesting. The SCOTUS did find that virtual kiddie porn was constitutional. Best argument against it, in my opinion, is that it could be used in some way against actual kids, as in to show them and try to convince them it’s normal, or something along those lines; and the court didn’t think much of that. In the absence of a compelling argument that a child sexbot could cause some harm to children, I would think the rationale would have to be similar. Personally, while I of course find it completely repulsive, it’s conceivable that it might channel impulses away from actual pedophilia and save kids from harm.

  62. 62.

    eric

    How about how much it would cost to fix them and phoning ina repair order because you met the 1700 hour check up time in 3 months.

  63. 63.

    Steve in DC

    These guys are behind, Japan has been working on the sex bot for some time and I have seen how this senario pans out in multiple anime movies and series. Eventually the doll will become self aware and develop a sense of self worth and then we are doomed! A legion of sexbots all shaped like 16 year old girls will rampage through our major cities slaughtering us all… except for the one true nerd who is somehow a martial arts expert and a psychic who actually loves his robot, or some shit like that.

    Either that or someone will hack them.

  65. 65.

    scav

    @Bill E Pilgrim: I don’t think I’ve managed my find my way out of low-hanging puns and SatNav territory. “You are too close. Unwanted Item in the Scanning Area. Please Scan Again.”

  66. 66.

    slag

    @Corner Stone:

    It doesn’t give the reader any more information or significant context about the post. And it doesn’t add any flair that strengthens the writing style.

    I disagree. It evokes setting and authorial mood. Without it, I might be wondering why the hell I’m reading about robot sex on Balloon Juice. OK, technically, I’m still wondering that–in vaguely existential terms–but I at least now know why DougJ is writing about it. He’s miserable and wants us to share in his misery.

  68. 68.

    mapaghimagsik

    Practicing technique requires critical feedback.

    Although I could see the new games that would come out that would be like ‘dance dance revolution’…*shudder*

  69. 69.

    shortstop

    I picture all three Js in a row on the couch, Doug in the middle, all staring solemnly at the TV. Occasionally someone takes a sip of Diet Coke, no ice, and recrosses his or her legs.

  70. 70.

    JGabriel

    __
    __
    slag:

    Without it, I might be wondering why the hell I’m reading about robot sex on Balloon Juice.

    Like we need a reason to mock robot sex.

    .

  71. 71.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @scav: Oh that’s good though.

    I liked the “entering a human relationship” part and was working on “He lowered the relationship to the couch. Having been plied with wine all through dinner, no doubt about it, this relationship was feeling good. He slowly removed its boundaries, and even more slowly, began to…”

    I got that far, gave up, and posted the shorter comment instead.

  72. 72.

    Steve in DC

    @JGabriel:

    Yeah that’s one of the cute ones, not my taste in anime. If we are going to have robot sex I want a robot massacre out of it at minimum. Awaking an elder horror and his legions of tentacled rape demons preferably.

    Gotta have standards damn it!

  73. 73.

    JGabriel

    __
    __
    mapaghimagsik:

    I could see the new games that would come out that would be like ‘dance dance revolution’…

    [Concerned pause.]

    We’re gonna need a bigger Wii.

    .

  75. 75.

    Steve in DC

    @JGabriel:

    Oh you laugh now, but how little do you know. Furries are now starting to speak out that furry sex can’t be mocked and to do so makes you part of a hate group and no different than a homophobe. Japanese doll sex fetishists (and those are moving to robots) have also complained that people who mock them are simply being intolerant and evil.

    And I’ve left out yiffing, which is it’s own ball of wax, but yes it is wrong to make fun of a man who fucked a chicken now, because “you’re being intolerant that’s why”.

  78. 78.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @shortstop: I know I actually felt profoundly sorry for Doug at the moment I read that. Not because I haven’t been there, but because I have.

  79. 79.

    Steve in DC

    @Roger Moore:

    It’s been years since I’ve kept up to date on anime. I’ve still got a few tb’s of it on my home server, just been slacking. Though I prefer the gorier, coarser, overly violent and brutal anime to the lolicon sort.

    Looking forward to the new Berserk though!

  89. 89.

    slag

    @JGabriel: Like democracy, torture, and the GW Bush Administration, isn’t the subject of robot sex better canvassed in hushed tones behind closed doors? I hear from Nooners that it’s much kinkier that way.

  91. 91.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @shortstop: If someone was kind of digging that particular moment then I would feel even more sorry for him.

    I’m kidding. By the way.

    I’ve watched endless hours, well half-hours, of Jeopardy over the years, and despite thinking “Oy” the entire time – – well actually more like “Rogers and Hart. Oy. 30 deg centigrade. Oy. Er, dunno. Oy. The Crimea. I mean, what is the Crimea. Oy.” I enjoyed it also, just to be hanging out with Mom and doing something she liked.

  92. 92.

    Roger Moore

    @Steve in DC:

    Looking forward to the new Berserk though!

    I haven’t been watching for a while, so I didn’t even know there was going to be one. Are they starting over from the beginning, or making a new season to carry on from the previous one?

  93. 93.

    JGabriel

    @slag:

    … isn’t the subject of robot sex better canvassed in hushed tones behind closed doors? I hear from Nooners that it’s much kinkier that way.

    I’m guessing Peggy Noonan would know.

    .

  94. 94.

    Jamie

    I don’t understand why people want to spend absurd amounts of money inventing new ways to masturbate.

    I mean, sure, come the singularity, machines of loving grace will be smarter than we are, whatever. I prefer my girlfriend. Why is this complicated?

    Is there a name for this fetish? Maybe Glennism?

  95. 95.

    JGabriel

    __
    __
    Jamie:

    Is there a name for this fetish?

    Eros Ex Machina.

    ETA: You know, I make this stuff up for shits & giggles, then I google and find out there is actually a book with that title.

    [headdesk]

    .

  96. 96.

    roc

    A decent ho’bot is going to need to be capable of responding in context and executing complex commands in a human environment: following conversation to gather and execute commands, fetching objects, walking between rooms, tracking objects, using ::ahem:: tools designed for human hands, etc. (To the point that Levy undersells how hygienic ho’bots will be. You won’t remove and clean a part. They’ll do it themselves. Properly. Every time.)

    So the moment someone invents a plausible ho’bot, will be the moment someone has invented a plausible generalized robot housemaid/cook/driver/caretaker/handyperson/assistant. And vice-versa.

    Thus desire for such a unit and ownership of one will be nearly universal and socially normalized from day one. And no-one will look at a 20-something going to the movies with their ho’bot any differently than they look at an 80-year old playing chess in the park with their ‘medical’ robot or even a young family out for the afternoon with their ‘nanny’ robot in tow.

    Even if every adult is having dirty, filthy sexy time with their robots, with varying degrees of emotional attachment, we’ll just all choose not to think about it. At least, not any more than we think about the ‘normalcy’ of the emotional or sexual relationship of any other people we encounter in our daily life.

    The notion that every robot is a ho’bot when the lights go out will be as universally true and just as uncouth to state or admit, as the notion that everyone masturbates.

  99. 99.

    The Other Chuck

    @shortstop:

    @JGabriel: Head home right now and call it a week. You’ve done the work of 10 men and it’s only Thursday.

    I read this reply immediately after another post that concluded with “everyone masturbates” and lemme tell you, on the first reading I got a very different impression of what you were saying.

  100. 100.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @roc:

    “Even if every adult is having dirty, filthy sexy time with their robots, with varying degrees of emotional attachment, we’ll just all choose not to think about it. At least, not any more than we think about the ‘normalcy’ of the emotional or sexual relationship of any other people we encounter in our daily life.”

    Yep.

    I was walking by a cyber cafe just yesterday and thinking about when there were only two in the entire city and it was all so new and exciting- and it was, definitely. But I also knew even then from what I’d already seen that it would become as humdrum as a laundromat, and that’s exactly what this place seems like now.

    My first and sort of prototypical experience of all this was answering machines. It always goes from some newfangled and terribly controversial thing to eh, whatever, fine. Telephones were the same way. They become invisible. Aristotle thought books were the downfall of all human knowledge, but before too long they were the very symbol of it. A lot of the controversy comes from fear. With many of these things however it’s about as useful as being afraid of toasters.

    Noam Chomsky (Corner Stone: now there’s name dropping!) said in a lecture I attended that all of this fuss about computer intelligence vs human was sort of silly, we invented submarines and didn’t obsess about whether it was “real swimming, like a fish”, or whether airplanes really flew like birds. They just fly, or swim. Who cares if it’s just like examples in nature.

  101. 101.

    JGabriel

    __
    __
    The Other Chuck:

    I read this reply immediately after another post that concluded with “everyone masturbates” and lemme tell you, on the first reading I got a very different impression of what you were saying.

    Ahem.

    Sitting right here, you know. I can read what you’re saying about me.

    .

  102. 102.

    different-church-lady

    @roc: The real question will be: how good will the ho’bot be at listening to the bio-john’s life story?

  104. 104.

    Marcellus Shale, Public Dick

    pop and lock it baby.

    eta, what if the robots develop daddy issues?

  105. 105.

    JGabriel

    @different-church-lady:

    The real question will be: how good will the ho’bot be at listening to the bio-john’s life story?

    Bio-John: Will you please stop interrupting me?

    Ho’bot: I’m sorry. I don’t mean to. I’m just programmed that way. Have I already told you about my programmer’s childhood sex confusion brought on by early exposure to an emasculated Ken doll?

    .

  106. 106.

    RSA

    @August Pollak:

    She’s a law student and essentially her study is “cyber ethics” which yeah is a thing to joke about now but is likely going to be a realistic and tricky issue as technology advances.

    David Levy, author of the book DougJ links to, has also written a paper titled “The Ethical Treatment of Artificially Conscious Robots”. My friends and I used to talk about this kind of thing, in an idle way, when I was in grad school studying AI.

  107. 107.

    SRW1

    Maybe to Glenn’s disappointment that neighbor’s daughter was naughty only in the sense of laughing at his efforts.

  109. 109.

    Jamie

    Bio-ethics were something I talked about back in school. I still say, this is all very complicated masturbation, no different than getting off on MUDs back in the day. Machine life will have to speak for itself, and, depressingly, yeah, it will probably come from porn. Charlie Stross sort of envisioned this bleak, horrible future.

  111. 111.

    Citizen_X

    @Steve in DC:

    A legion of sexbots all shaped like 16 year old girls will rampage through our major cities slaughtering us all

    I, for one, welcome our new teen sexbot overlords.

    [Somebody had to say it.]

  112. 112.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    I’m going to open a bar and have hooker bots there. Hooker bots and b1ack jack!

  115. 115.

    Richard Fox

    No big deal. As a member of GSGC (GaySUPERGENIUSClub) I have had one if these robot sex friends for years. Made him to fit my personal requirements. But have to admit, on some days.. Lord Aqua Buddha are my legs tired…

  116. 116.

    FlyingToaster

    I can’t believe it got to comment 116 before someone mentioned Cherry2000.

    Believe me, I’m ALL FOR producing these. I can’t think of a kinder, surer way of cleaning out the dross.

  117. 117.

    YoohooCthulhu

    @Todd:

    I always wondered why people ever left the holodeck on ST:TNG….

    If I remember correctly, there were a few episodes on ST:TNG that suggested that Reg Barclay bordered on holodeck addiction and played out in detail why that was a problem.

  118. 118.

    Brachiator

    @JGabriel:

    RE: “Love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans,” Levy writes …

    Didn’t Spike say something exactly like that on BtVS or Angel?
    __
    Joss Whedon: ahead of the curve once again.

    A number of people have worked this theme. On an episode of Futurama, the character Fry got addicted to his sexbot and angrily pushed real, human, demanding women away.

    Has anyone written a story about sexbot dens, like opium dens, catering to people who have become hooked on robot love?

    As an aside, the Star Trek producers steered clear of the seamier possibilities of holodeck technology, and the idea of someone like Quark operating as a kind of pimp, selling special fantasies.

  119. 119.

    Kane

    simply remove the active parts and put them in the disinfecting machine

    Dishwasher safe.

  120. 120.

    someofparts

    Well goodie. Vibrator technology is developing faster than new Apple products. Maybe this is the solution to our civility problems.

  122. 122.

    LanceThruster

    Can we at least legalize human prostitution in the meantime for us “purists?” And robotics usually comes in to play when the work is too hazardous or too low paying for the human workforce.

    This would be a good opportunity for a side-by-side showdown of talents.

  123. 123.

    LittlePig

    @Brachiator: On an episode of Futurama, the character Fry got addicted to his sexbot and angrily pushed real, human, demanding women away.

    DON’T DATE ROBOTS!

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