A.I. AND THE RISE OF ROBOT LOVE
By James Adams and Richard Kletter
Artificial Intelligence is creating a new world of robots that will look, feel, walk and talk just like our best friend. Even better, unlike our best friend, we will be able to control our robot friends so that they don’t get drunk or stoned, will like us and love us and support us unconditionally.
An interesting consequence of this revolutionary advance in relationship management will be how we choose to relate sexually to our robot partners.
Already, brothels for both men and women which feature only robot partners have opened in a number of countries and business is booming. As robots improve in looks, feeling and cognition, so their popularity will rise as people seek and find the perfect compliant partner.
In the first of our two-part exploration of the new sexual revolution, we explore just how and why a sexualized robot may make the perfect partner.
Harriet was in love, completely, deliriously, happily in love. It was an unexpected joy and with Frank, a very unexpected man.
Looking at him across the restaurant table he, too, seemed happy. The familiar half smile, the perfect teeth, the ideal good looks, the stylish clothes were all in place. But he was so much more than that. He seemed to know, really know, just by looking at her, the level and direction of her mood. Happy, sad, depressed, anxious, he always got it right and could ask just the right sensitive question to draw her out. And then he listened — listened — to the answers and always had a helpful follow up question to allow her to gain perspective.
Her previous relationships had been frustrating — sexually, practically, intimately — but this was entirely different. The other men in her life had all been compromises of one kind or another. Sean might have been kind, but he seemed to think an orgasm was something that occurred as a result of him simply producing his penis to insert in her vagina. Then it was all over before she had even warmed to the task at hand — and it did always feel like a task.
Ben said he wanted to listen but then as she tried to explain something important, his arms would cross, he would look down and she just knew that, apart from the occasional grunt, he was tuning her out.
Mike was a cool guy but so vain that he spent more time in the bathroom than she did. He could never understand that vanity was a barrier to intimacy and the true expression of feelings. In the end, he was just so dull, all the preening and primping was a window into an empty mind and a seemingly non-existent soul.
She had turned to the BotBank in a final effort to discover a rewarding relationship with the man of her dreams. Aside from the drain on her bank
account, it had been a very user friendly experience: she had simply selected all the options that mattered to her: looks — tall, slim, dark. Check. Intelligent — match her IQ. Check. Intimate communicator — Experience of the Enneagram, self-help. Check. No obsessive watching football. Check. Well read — database of 5,000 books. Check. Lover — tender when required, adventurous when needed, considerate, always. Check. Penis size — variable on demand. Check.She would never have believed the reality if she had not experienced it for herself. To be seen and heard, not just once but every time; to have every mood understood and accepted; to have her needs met without question and usually without her having to ask. It could have been boring to have someone so passive, but Frank could be assertive and take charge as he saw the need. And that time in the line at the movie theater when that guy had been rude to her…Well, being trained in all the martial arts certainly dealt with that problem.
There had been a time when the skin looked fake and the voice intonations
seemed artificial with a limited range of emotion. But that was in the distant past of 10 years ago. Today, Frank’s look and feel was just exactly like every other man she had ever met, only better. And if he was cut, did he bleed? Of course.Inevitably, there were some challenges. If Frank was the perfect partner, what did it mean to be human? What purpose was to be served if humankind could be replicated and improved to such a degree that he or she was unrecognizable from the real thing?
She knew that the Supers had been forced to create a dumbed down version of themselves so that humans could actually communicate with them. That may have been kind of insulting but it was the new reality.
She had talked with other men and women in her life who had also checked in
with the BotBank and their experiences were identical with her own. Where there was dissatisfaction, a slight change in the algorithms could fix the problem. Bored with the hairy chest? A clean shaven chest would appear in minutes. A new interest in Tolstoy? The complete works, downloaded, read and digested in seconds.A more practical question was that of children. Women were supposed to be pre-programmed to propagate but the rise of the Bots, which lived forever, had made the need for propagation largely redundant. Even so, she did feel the urge on occasion to have children. She’d signed up to the gene pool and if she was chosen, Frank would deliver the goods and help her through to term. If not, well, she had made a bargain that meant a lifetime of joy and happiness and she was content with that.
There were some among friends and colleagues who debated endlessly about the morality of forming attachments with non-humans. It was the beginning of the end, they said, that raised fundamental questions about the future of humanity. But for Harriet, the questions were far simpler. Did she want to spend the rest of her life with an oaf she could barely tolerate or, even worse, alone? Instead, she had chosen to begin a new life with the perfect partner. A life filled with love, laughter and partnership. What more could life have to offer?
Still, in moments of agonizing doubt, she wondered how long this could last. All her other relationships had seemed to sour over time as the personal traits that had once seemed endearing became either boring or annoying or both. The folks at the BotBank had assured that Frank would remain faithful, fascinated and fulfilling. But Frank would never age. His body would remain strong, his mind would never dull; in fact, he would go on learning new things forever. Sometimes, she believed she saw a hint of something behind those baby blue eyes. Disdain? Superiority? And she couldn’t blame him for that. After all, she was just a human, frail, fallible, and short-lived. Would Frank tire of her and seek a robot mate?
Will robot love undermine the very fabric of our society? Will it force us to
reconsider not only who we love and how we love, but, also, what “family”
means, how we procreate and raise our children? Or, will we eventually navigate these changes so that in fifty or a hundred years no one will think twice about marrying a robot and raising a family with a robot partner. Should that, too, become commonplace, we can only struggle to imagine the next revolution that surely will come.
Extracted from:
Artificial Intelligence — Confronting the Revolution
by James Adams and Richard Kletter