by David Levy
When we combine significant change in our social and cultural thinking with massive advances in technology, one result is the creation of entire new product categories, products that take advantage of new technologies to implement the ideas that make social change possible. When we have the technology, when we are receptive to the social change, society will move forward in that new direction. Robots as dance partners, for example—in 2005, Tohoku University in Japan demonstrated a dancing robot that can predict the movements of its dance partner, enabling it to follow its partner’s lead and to avoid treading on any toes. Another example is robots as university lecturers and public speakers—Hiroshi Ishiguro, from Osaka University’s Intelligent Robotics laboratory, has made casts of himself that form the basis for clones that he sends to deliver lectures in his stead. Then there is the robot sales assistant, developed by Fujitsu, that works in a Japanese department store, guiding customers around the store and carrying their shopping. And a receptionist, only twenty inches tall, manufactured by the Business Design laboratory in Nagoya, Japan, that asks visitors their name, can recognize as many as ten different faces, and tells visitors when the person they have come to see is ready to meet them. The examples go on and on, every year coming with its own crop of new applications for robots.* Robot jockeys that ride camels in races, robot butlers…And most of them, as you will have realized by now, are developed in Japan.
One non-Japanese product that has been a big commercial hit is the Robosapien android robot, a Chinese-American coproduction. Robosapien was the first affordable humanoid to come on the market. It was a toy designed by Mark Tilden, a former NASA scientist, manufactured in China and incorporating simple forms of some of the tech nologies described in this book. It could exhibit several movement-related capabilities, including using its articulated arms to pick up objects such as cups, socks, pencils, and other small light objects; throwing, dancing, and effecting a few karate moves. The toy reacted to touch and sound signals and had sensors in its feet to enable it to detect and avoid obstacles. It could also walk at two different speeds. Robosapien had personality as well—if it wasn’t given any commands for a while, it would go to sleep and start to snore! At the price, around eighty-nine dollars in the United States, Robosapien was a sensation. The first of its kind.
The commercial success of the Robosapien during the second half of 2004, when in Britain alone some 160,000 were sold, was perhaps the first stage of the assimilation process for robots. Robosapien was remarkable mainly for its ability to perambulate, albeit in a typically deliberate and robotic manner. When vision technology is added to enable this toy and others to recognize people and objects, when natural-language-processing and speech-synthesis technologies understand what people say to them and to reply sensibly, when cognitive technologies learn and are able to plan how to solve problems, then robot toys will become part of the family, rather like a new breed of family pet. But instead of requiring feeding, vet bills, and expensive places to stay when you take your vacation, these electronic pets will carry a once-in-a-lifetime cost of a hundred bucks or thereabouts, rechargeable batteries included. In the meantime humanoid robots are somewhat more expensive. Mitsubishi’s Wakumaru will look after your house while the family is absent, monitor the health of a sick relative, connect itself to the Internet and sort your e-mails, recognize up to ten faces, understand some ten thousand spoken words (in Japanese), encourage you to visit the gym, and be “convenient for the life of family members.”16 A real deal, at around $14,300.
In concluding the first part of this book, I very much hope that any readers whom I have failed to convince as to the viability of emotional relationships between humans and robots will not close their minds to the possibility but at least be willing to observe without prejudice as advances in robotics and AI arrive thick and fast during the coming years. Deb Levine’s stimulating turn-of-the-milennium article “Virtual Attraction: What Rocks Your Boat,” makes an excellent case for at least remaining open-minded:
As time goes on, it will be important for society to recognize the various ways people are interacting intimately as valid and equal. Right now, some relationships, specifically marriage between heterosexual couples, are valued more than others are. As technology enters more people’s lives, and we are exposed to a variety of different attractions and relationships, it will be important to recognize and equalize virtual forms of attraction and communication with more traditional face-to-face interactions.17
PART TWO
Sex with Robots
Best sex I ever had! I swear to God! This RealDoll feels better than a real woman! She’s fantastic! I love her! This RealDoll is for real, I swear! Better than a woman! My wife isn’t as good as that! May God take away all my ratings if I’m lying! I’ll take a lie detector test! I swear on the life of my children! I did it and it was fulfilling! I did it and I’m proud of it!
It was great! It was the best sex I ever had!…It was fabulous!
I could fall in love with that thing!
—Howard Stern
Introduction to Part Two
Sex with humanlike artifacts is by no means a twenty-first-century concept—in fact, its foundations lie in the myths of ancient Greece. A Cypriot sculptor, King Pygmalion I, made an ivory statue in the form of a woman that was so beautiful he fell in love with it, gave it a name—Galatea—and desired it. So he prayed to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and one day while Pygmalion was kissing the statue, Aphrodite brought it to life. Pygmalion’s kisses were suddenly being reciprocated, and finally he married Galatea. The myth of Pygmalion thus led to the name tag “pygmalionism,” for the fetish of sexual attraction to statues.*
In his authoritative 1909 tome The Sexual Life of Our Time, Iwan Bloch explains one of the oldest of religiosexual phenomena, the act of “religious prostitution,” as a form of pygmalionism. This is an act of sacrifice, made to a deity, most often taking the form of a sacrifice by a woman of her virginity shortly before giving herself to her husband for the first time. The defloration process would sometimes be accomplished with a penis made of ivory, stone, wood, or even iron and sometimes by a form of pygmalionism—intercourse with a statue of the god. As an example of this practice, Bloch describes how a bride at a religious shrine near Goa would be assisted by her friends and relatives in mounting the stone penis of an image of a god, thereby destroying her hymen.
In this religiosexual act, the statue is a representation of a deity, but in the far more common form of pygmalionism the statue substitutes not for a deity but for a living human being. In the brothels of late-nineteenth-century Paris, it was not uncommon for prostitutes to act out a variation on this theme, standing on suitable pedestals as though they were statues and being watched by their clients as they gradually appeared to come to life. Such a scene induced sexual enjoyment in the Parisian pygmalionists, often elderly patrons who no longer had the energy for sex. At about the same time, the French talent for inventing mechanical automata such as Vaucanson’s duck and Maillard’s swan,* when combined with the legendary French expertise in matters sexual, led to the invention of artificial devices, and even whole artificial bodies, designed to provide substitutes for human genitalia.
Bloch describes how these were employed, to act as surrogate sex partners.1
AN ARTIFICIAL VAGINA
…we may refer to fornicatory acts effected with artificial imitations of the human body, or of individual parts of that body. There exist true Vaucansons in this province of pornographic technology, clever mechanics who, from rubber and other plastic materials, prepare entire male or female bodies, which, as hommes or dames de voyage, subserve fornicatory purposes. More especially are the genital organs represented in a manner true to nature. Even the secretion of Bartholin’s glands* is imitated, by means of a “pneumatic tube” filled with oil. Similarly, by means of fluid and suitable apparatus, the ejaculation of the semen is imitated. Such artificial human beings are actually offered for sale in the catalogue of certai
n manufacturers of “Parisian rubber articles.” A more precise account of these “fornicatory dolls” is given by René Schwaeblé (“Les Détraqués de Paris,” pages 247–53).
From René Schwaeblé’s description of these fornicatory dolls, sold by a “Dr. P” for around three thousand francs, it would appear that they were extremely convincing replicas of the female form.† The doctor explained to Schwaeblé:
Every one of them takes at least three months of my work! There’s the inner framework which is carefully articulated, there’s the hair on the head, the body hair, the teeth, the nails! There’s the skin, which has to be given a certain tint, certain contours, a particular pattern of veins. There are the eyes, which need to be given some expression, there’s the tongue, and I don’t know what else. You won’t find a waxwork or a statue, not even the ones created by the greatest masters, that can be compared to my products. The only thing these haven’t got is the power of speech!…
Unfortunately I can’t advertise openly. The police keep interfering in my business, and I have to keep some weird rubber animals around the place, so that I can say I’m a maker of inflatable figures for funfairs!
Doctor P occasionally had customers who wanted a doll made in the likeness of someone they desired.
It quite often happens that one of those “mad women” falls for a man in the public eye—a politician, a jockey, some hammy actor, or whatever. As she doesn’t dare to become his mistress, or can’t, she applies to me and asks me to create a doll modelled on her idol.
…
Madame X——lost her husband last year. Two days after his death, she came to me and asked me to craft a doll in the image of the deceased. Didn’t she get on my nerves! Every afternoon she would settle herself in my studio and watch me at work, showering me with advice: “Skin more pink here! More hair there! Lip curling up a little! A more cheerful eye!” When the doll was finished she took it home with her. Since then she’s been living with it, she never leaves it. She dresses it in her husband’s own clothes, puts it to bed beside her at night, kisses it, caresses it and tells it all sorts of naughty things!2
With real products available for purchase in fin de siècle France, such as the one described here by Schwaeblé, it is hardly surprising that French fiction of that time made use of fornicatory dolls. Bloch wrote:
The most astonishing thing in this department is an erotic romance La Femme Endormie, by Madame B.; Paris, 1899, the love heroine of which is such an artificial doll, which, as the author in the introduction tells us, can be employed for all possible sexual artificialities, without, like a living woman, resisting them in any way. The book is an incredibly intricate and detailed exposition of this idea.3
So “shocking” was the content of La Femme Endormie that not only did the author feel the need for anonymity, but the book boldly displayed the misinformation that it was printed in Melbourne, in an attempt to throw off any straitlaced French authorities who might be seeking to take legal action against the printer or to prevent further copies from being distributed.
FORNICATORY DOLLS
Is it a far cry from titillating nineteenth-century French fiction to mid-twenty-first-century sexual robots? Part two of this book aims to convince any skeptics among you that this transition will indeed materialize.
5 Why We Enjoy Sex
The idea of sex with robots affects different people in different ways. Some regard the concept as totally outlandish, arguing that only sex with another human being can be a meaningful and enjoyable experience. Some rely on religious objections based upon the idea of sex as being intended solely for procreation. Others are curious as to exactly how a robot would function sexually and how it would feel for the human. Some embrace the idea wholeheartedly and want to know, “Where can I buy one?”
In this and the following three chapters, I hope at least to dispel any suggestions of outlandishness and to present what I believe are compelling arguments to show that sex with robots will become the norm rather than being an oddity. We start by examining sexual relationships between humans. This we do from a graded perspective, though the gradation is not one whose range lies between lousy sex and great sex—rather it transcends a spectrum of categories of sexual partner. At one end of this spectrum is the passionate love of our life. At the other end lies someone whom we do not even know, have never met before the first sexual encounter (which might be the only encounter with this particular sex object), and who has little or no reason to offer any genuine affection before or during sex. I hope that by explaining why people have sex with people across this entire spectrum, even with those at the “bottom” end of the range, I will be able to convince those members of the “totally outlandish” persuasion that for many people sex can be an enjoyable experience even when the sex object is off the bottom of the range altogether, when instead of a human sex partner there is a sexual robot. We start by examining some fundamental aspects of human sexuality—what are our motives for having sex, and why do we enjoy it?
Why Do People Make Love (with People)?
Half a century after Freud’s 1938 proclamation that pleasure is the goal of sex, psychologists began to analyze methodically the most common reasons for making love. In some of the earliest of those studies, it was found that traditional stereotypes reflected the actuality of the different reasons men and women engage in sex. A study by John DeLamater in 1989 found that twice as many women as men claimed to have been in love with their first sexual partner, while another study found that 95 percent of college women but only 40 percent of college men responded that for them emotional involvement was “always” or “most of the time” a prerequisite for having sex. When researchers asked the specific question “What would be your motives for having sexual intercourse?” women typically gave reasons relating to love, while the answers from men focused much more on the physical pleasure. And when the question was even more focused, inquiring about the subject’s most recent sexual encounter, 51 percent of women and 24 percent of men gave reasons connected with love and emotion, while 9 percent of women and 51 percent of men gave answers relating to lust and physical pleasure. These results have generally been confirmed by subsequent research in experimental psychology.
The general drift of this research might seem to suggest that men will be more likely than women to be interested in participating in sex with robots, based on the assumption that men are more likely than women to be willing or indeed eager to satisfy their sexual desires, even without any emotional attachment to their chosen sex object. On the contrary, I believe that eventually women will exhibit every bit as much enthusiasm as men for sexual coupling with robots, but the women’s reasons will often be different—men will want the pure physical pleasure of intercourse and orgasm with robots, while most women will want not only a personal demonstration of the robot’s virtuoso lovemaking skills but also to feel the robot’s virtual love for them.
In 1989, Barbara Leigh used a survey among 580 people taken from 4,000 randomly chosen households in the San Francisco area as the basis for an analysis of seven reasons for having sex (Table 2). Heterosexual participants were asked to rank each of the seven reasons on a scale of 0 to 4, from “not at all important” (scoring 0) to “extremely important” (scoring 4). The highest score from the two groups was 3.7 out of a maximum of 4 for the “pure pleasure” motivation for men, supporting Freud’s belief in pleasure as the goal of sex.
FREQUENCY FOR
REASON
MEN
WOMEN
For pure pleasure
3.7
3.1
To express emotional closeness
3.5
3.6
To please your partner
3.2
2.7
Because your partner wants to
2.8
2.5
To relieve sexual tension
2.5
2.0
To reproduce
1.2
1.2
0.6
0.3
TABLE 2
A more recent study by Valerie Hoffman and Ralph Bolton expanded the above list from seven reasons to sixteen. In addition to the factors listed by Leigh in Table 2, they employed factors from two other studies, including one from 1984 of college students in which the participants revealed their reasons for deciding to have sex for the first time with a recent partner. The sixteen reasons in the Hoffman-Bolton study were put to 146 heterosexual men, generally well educated, who were asked to indicate how frequently each reason applied to their sexual encounters (the scale in Table 3 ranges from 0, meaning that it never applies, to 4, meaning it always applies*). Note that the Hoffman-Bolton list does not explicitly include “own pleasure” as a reason, but their published results make it clear that four of their reasons are highly correlated with obtaining pleasure: “to have fun,” “to please my partner,” “because I want new experiences,” and “to reduce tension.”
REASON
FREQUENCY
To please my partner
2.80
To express love
2.78
To have fun
2.77
To feel close emotionally
2.49
To feel loved
2.14
Because my partner wants me to
2.11
To reduce tension
2.10
Because I want new experiences
1.99
To avoid boredom
1.32
Because I feel I just have to
1.25
Even when I don’t want to
1.11
For conquest
0.92
Because I’m drunk
0.86
To express domination and power
0.85
Because I’m high