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Voodoo
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WEB + INFO > An Interesting Read

Post by Voodoo » Wed Sep 04, 2002 6:59 am

I can't remember where I came across this article, so if the author ever reads this post, please don't sue me....the credit is still yours!! (See author's name below!!).

I am sure that you will all find this article a fascinating read. Enjoy :

Sexbots
Posted by JonKatz on Wednesday March 10, @05:00AM
from the stop-reading-if-you-are-super-moral dept.
Engineers, programmers and futurists believe that programmable robots that provide sexual companionship are likely to be commonplace in the 21st century, at more or less the same time as computers become able to process information as quickly as the human brain. The implications of tactile sexbots, likely to contain vibrators, sound systems and other equipment, are as significant as they are unexamined. If you thought the fight over the CDA was bad, wait till Rev. Falwell and his many pious friends in Congress discover Sexbots. For better or worse, computing might be breaking down another big wall.

Techno-futurists have a sorry record when it comes to predicting technology and the future. Remember the intergalactic travel that was the centerpiece of Disney's Tomorrowland? The magnetic hover cars, cancer cures, and climate-control systems that were supposed to have been long in place by the Millenium? And only a handful of technologists imagined how big the Net would get.

But here's a futuristic vision that's a far surer and troubling bet than e-sex: sexbots.

For several years now, engineers and futurists have been writing (quietly) in academic journals and other venues about the intuitive computer-programmed robots - sexual companions that contain vibrators to provide tactile stimulation and sounds systems to provide love talk - that some researchers believe are likely to become commonplace in the next century.

A few years ago, these predictions could have been brushed off as more digital hype, but computers are obviously becoming more intelligent and intuitive, and are fast processing information as rapidly as the human brain. Inventors and futurists like Ray Kurzweil (author of The Age of Spiritual Machines), are guaranteeing that computers will equal or surpass human intelligence early in the 21st century.

So sexbots not only don't seem far-fetched, they seem likely.

The contemporary news media, odd in many ways, are never more so than when it comes to their reticence to talk openly about sex (unless it's Presidential). They talk about sex scandals and Viagra, but the ordinary experience of sexuality is almost a taboo. The Net has liberated sex from XXX-rated movie theaters and porn parlors - it's the third biggest money-maker online, after e-trading and shopping.

For better or worse, it's hard to think of a bigger killer app for computing and software than sexbots. According to a computing engineer who asked not to be quoted, prototypes of sexbots already exist in Japan.

"I guarantee you," he e-mailed me, "that within 25 years, programmable, digital sexbots will be in many, if not most, American homes and apartments."

The idea of sexbots will be horrifying to many, for whom the very idea of mechanized, roboticized human passion is beyond any Orwellian nightmare. Mary Shelley, who warned in the novel "Frankenstein" about scientists playing God, and the horrors of unthinking technology, would have flipped-out over the very idea of sexbots. Yet for some people - the lonely, the severely handicapped, the isolated - sexbots could be a great relief and release. And for others - unhappy spouses, troubled adolescents - digitalized, mechanized sexuality is an open invitation to addiction or to avoiding problems of face-to-face human contact. Robotic sex would also eliminate the emotional component of sex.

Like fertility drugs and cloning, this is the kind of technological issue in urgent need of discussion and consideration, even though history suggests it won't be thought about much at all in advance. Like the drugs that give couples the option of having seven or eight children at once, or the medical technology that prolongs life sometimes beyond reason, sexbots, will simply be here one day, and we'll be on our own when they appear.

But sexbots are a techno-prediction that has the ring of truth. Writer Joel Snell predicted in l997 (he's quoted in Richard Rhodes new book Visions of Technology) that robots providing sexual companionship were likely to see widespread use in the future.

Snell could foresee the problems. Marriages might be damaged or destroyed if spouses choose sex with sexbots over making love with their mates. Jealous lovers might destroy sexbot rivals, or sue manufacturers for emotional damage.

On the other hand, Snell pointed out, people seeking clarity about their sexual identities would have a safe, reliable way to experiment. Heterosexuals might use same-sex sexbots to experiment with homosexuality or bi-sexuality. Gay people might use other-sex sexbots to try out heterosexuality. Predators with sexual addictions might no longer prey on human beings.

Given that people become addicted to all sorts of pleasures from slot machines to e-mail, sexbot addiction might be inevitable. Users could become obsessed by their ever-faithful, willing-to-please sexbot lovers that never say no or get headaches, and rearrange their lives to accommodate their addictions. Support groups are inevitable.

Or perhaps, Snell speculates, a new category of sexuality might emerge among humans - the technovirgin, people who find it simpler, perhaps even preferable, to have sex exclusively with sexbots. This would avoid all the emotional and physical complications of having sex with people. Like wondering if it was as good for them as it was for you. Or as bad.

Intuitive and recognotion technologies are already changing computing, from search engines to recognition software to voice recognition. Sexbots would almost surely be programmed to be highly intuitive, keeping track of what worked and what didn't. They would become better sexual partners as they learned more about their human counterparts, storing everything from gasps of pleasure to frequency of orgasm in their memory banks. Every time they had sex with a human, it might get better.

Meanwhile, sexually- transmitted diseases might fall, along with teen pregnancy, abortions, pedophilia, prostitution and Viagra prescriptions. The divorce rate might plummet as well, since Sexbots could keep marital partners happy. The affair itself might become outmoded. Why take the risk when your sexbot is waiting to meet your needs?

Technology never works in predictable ways. The idea that computing machines could take over the function of human passion is as chilling as it is fascinating. But it's also almost totally unexplored. Neo-Luddites will have a field day with the advent of digital or robotic sex, as will parents, politicians, teachers, moral guardians. If local communities flip out whenever Johnny logs onto the Playboy website, and Congress twice passed blatantly unconstitutional Communications Decency Acts to regulate "decent" speech online, how might they respond to the idea of sexbots sold next to Imacs at Compusa?

Sex is a hair-trigger issue in American politics, and the idea of machines performing it round-the-clock will rock some of the most powerful elements in society. From information to MP3's and Open Source software, computing and the Internet is about freeing up ideas and information and giving individual people more control over their own lives. It's logical that this relentless empowerment would extend to experiences like sexuality.

Sexbots seem inevitable. But in a culture that refuses to think much about either technology or sex, the one thing we do know is that we won't be ready when they get here.
____________________________________________________________


Food for thought, eh??

I am sure you lot will all be ready when they get here though, eh??!! LOL!!

Voodoo. :lol:

Voodoo
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Re: An Interesting Read

Post by Voodoo » Wed Sep 04, 2002 7:04 am

[quote="Voodoo"]
Snell could foresee the problems. Marriages might be damaged or destroyed if spouses choose sex with sexbots over making love with their mates. Jealous lovers might destroy sexbot rivals, or sue manufacturers for emotional damage. [quote]

You have been warned, href!! LOL!!! :P

Voodoo. X

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Miss Silver Karakuri
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Post by Miss Silver Karakuri » Wed Sep 04, 2002 7:34 am

I am surprised that they seem to equate the idea that a computers intelligence has to be about the same processing power as a human brain in order for this to happen, yet give no reasoning as to WHY this would be. I mean I am sure there would need to be some bit of processing power just to get a robot to move appropriately and responsively, not to mention just normal internal power. But having to equate the level of human processing power at the same time?

While I am all for a robot companion that is able to have a decent conversation with me, about say the cause and effect of the fall of roman empire on contemporary politics, but a roll in the hay? I wonder if thats a stretch... yes at the moment we can have slightly self powered mannequin sex, it shouldn't be THAT hard to apply newer low powered small motor technology to the whole of the chassis and simply house a small computer within to co-ordintate it all. She/He might not at first be able to stand up, but perhaps just writhe on the bed and move around appropo. But everything in time...

We all hope for a fully interactive intelligent robot to fall for but you wonder whats exactly being done in the meantime to make this a reality...
Miss Silver Karakuri

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Post by kb7rky » Thu Sep 05, 2002 4:55 pm

silverkarakuri wrote:I am surprised that they seem to equate the idea that a computers intelligence has to be about the same processing power as a human brain in order for this to happen, yet give no reasoning as to WHY this would be. I mean I am sure there would need to be some bit of processing power just to get a robot to move appropriately and responsively, not to mention just normal internal power. But having to equate the level of human processing power at the same time?

While I am all for a robot companion that is able to have a decent conversation with me, about say the cause and effect of the fall of roman empire on contemporary politics, but a roll in the hay? I wonder if thats a stretch... yes at the moment we can have slightly self powered mannequin sex, it shouldn't be THAT hard to apply newer low powered small motor technology to the whole of the chassis and simply house a small computer within to co-ordintate it all. She/He might not at first be able to stand up, but perhaps just writhe on the bed and move around appropo. But everything in time...

We all hope for a fully interactive intelligent robot to fall for but you wonder whats exactly being done in the meantime to make this a reality...
That's all true, but it did say "within the next century."

So, folks, unless you plan to freeze yourself for later, we probably ain't gonna see sexbots any more complex than RealDoll or CybOrgasMatrix (ecch!) in OUR lifetimes.
C'mon over & check out my other webpage:

The First Church Of Buster

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Mythbusters Fan Club.com

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tectile
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Post by tectile » Fri Sep 06, 2002 5:37 am

I think most if not all of the technology to create a realistic humanoid robot is available now or will be available in the next 20 to 40 years.
The problem is that there is no strong motivation for a corporation or group of scientists to devote the millions of dollars and thousands of hours of R&D work to put all the technology together in the way we all would like.

If you invent a great little electronic gizmo that can be stuck in a cell phone you can probably sell thousands of them tomorow because there is a huge demand for this sort of thing rite now.

Now let's say that some horible disease that only kills females were to spread throughout the world, you would now have a huge demand for companion/sex robots and fembot development would go into hyperdrive and Nancy 4000 would be the hotest selling product in 2010.

Make no mistake about it kids, It's all about the Benjamins.

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Post by Videodrome » Fri Sep 06, 2002 6:57 am

Here is the first step, and they're aren't even using computers:

www.realdoll.com

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Miss Silver Karakuri
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Post by Miss Silver Karakuri » Fri Sep 06, 2002 1:16 pm

True and honestly its a great product (never seen one up close, but the images weird me out with their realism) imagine one that had detachable arms and legs... or for Kishin a detachable faceplate. One can apply motor like work to something like this and achieve an animatronic like device, its finding a way to integrate a computer within the body to help co-ordinate it all.

It takes a lot of work to do some tasks, I was at our local art gallery here in Vancouver when they had a show all dedicated to cyborg culture, and one of the pieces was this 'Face Robot' from Japan, which was a processing unit and an animatronic head that looked pretty real when the skin and everything was on it. It could react in a similar fashion to you, it wasn't a working model, but they did have a video of it in action which was pretty cool. They are slowly making things work with processing the world around us... honda has its new walking robot capable of navigating stairs and stuff, you have other pieces also being worked on as well.

Most people when it comes to the sexual side just well need something animatronic which was my comment on the above article. Its a start making an autonomous animatronic robot capable of moving around acting sexy like and being interesting in that fashion. Soon when closer to fooling people type of simulated AI is developed these two things can then be combined to create more of what we are actually looking for.

I've always seen my interests in robots and AI as possible companions rather than sexual objects, so its going to be quite sometime before I am at all pleased but getting something that most people here would be at least mildly interested in is doable with technology we have now.

Show me a chatbot that can fool someone its a real person as opposed to a program, and I will be happy... then when such technology is applied to an avatar which I can first chat with in type, then later in speech, I will be Very Happy. Apply that to something outside of the computer.... I will be bringing one home and calling it my partner.

Yes Im weird.
Miss Silver Karakuri

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Post by 1024 » Fri Sep 06, 2002 1:41 pm

I suppose we're all a bit wierd or we wouldn't be here.

The animatronic sex toy doesn't really interest me, other than as a technological step towards the real thing: the fully aware artificial being. I don't expect we'll see those within our lifetimes though, or for a long time after, there's probably even less commercial incentive for pursuing that goal :(

Oh well, no harm in dreaming. Perhaps it would lose the attraction if it became real anyway :?

IK

Be seeing you...

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Post by tectile » Sat Sep 07, 2002 5:34 am

In response to silverkarakuri's point about getting the processing power into the sexbot,

There isn't any reason the processing power needs to be onboard the bot. All you need are the mechanical parts to give the bot moovement and the visual, audio and tactile sensors to transmit information via a wirles link to a computer or an entire room full of computers that would handle the number crunching.
An example of this kind of technology would be the Huble space telescope. It does have some computer power onboard but it is almost completly controlled from the ground.

Ofcourse, things could get wierd if your neighbors sexbot happened to be on the same frequency as yours.

Hey! I was making love to my new robot and just when things were getting interesting she suddenly jumped up and started running the vacuum. L.

In response to 1K,

I agree the idea of an anamatronic sort of sexbot would not be very apealing. I would imagine that you would get bored with such a thing prety quick.

I do however think we are going to see sentient machines in our lifetime.

Think about this. The rate of technological change is increasing every year.
Who would have thought 50 years ago that we would be able to buy a microwave oven or a VCR for under 50 dollars and that a person would be able to talk to, send pictures/video and sound to someone on the other side of the plannet with just a few key strokes or that your car would be able to tell you where you are anywhere in the world within a hundred feet.

I remember getting our first color TV way back in 66 now I got 500 channels. Amazing!

Who knows what mite be just around the corner.

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Post by 1024 » Sat Sep 07, 2002 7:59 am

Perhaps I was a bit pessimistic there, 20 years ago the ZX81 seemed pretty smart and things have certainly changed a bit since then. With developments like quantum computing and the like who knows where things will go in the future...

Be seeing you...

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