What do sex dolls and porn site xHamster have in common with Facebook? One might not think they’d share much, since Facebook is notoriously terrified of all things sexual. But in fact, they’re all obsessed with artificial intelligence.
Look. I’m one of those people who took in a few too many dystopian novels and movies as a kid. The ones where robot overlords destroyed and/or “improved” humanity. So the prospect of human life being infiltrated by intelligent bots is pretty much my nightmare. And the idea of them getting their robo-fingers into my sex life? Freaking terrifying. I thought maybe Playboy, a publication I’ve always wanted to write for because of its delightfully analog sexual history, might agree.
So I spoke to the intelligentsia of the sex and robotics industries for Playboy.com. My mission: to discover if my fears of sex-crazed smart bots were justified. From the guy behind the RealDoll and its accompanying AI app, Harmony, to a spokesperson for xHamster, where AI agents are trying to decode “the language of love,” to the co-director of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, I got some really interesting answers.
A nibble:
“AI, whether installed into a sex robot or programmed into a porn site, could be the interlocutor between a human being and their own subconscious, providing a deeper understanding of what we really want and desires we’ve previously been unable to to admit to ourselves. ‘Being able to articulate desire, even privately, is the first step in being able to make it real,’ [says Mike Stabile, a spokesperson for xHamster]. ‘There’s so much about our sexuality that’s ineffable, and for too long we didn’t have the words or concepts to accurately express what turned us on.'”
Read the rest at Playboy.com!