Can you rape a robot – a robot you have specifically bought to have sex with? You can certainly overdo things, let’s put it that way. When I say “you”, I don’t mean you: I mean the men who make, possess and “interact” with these machines. “Samantha”, a sex robot developed by the electronic engineer Sergi Santos, was badly treated at an Electronica Fair in Austria last year. According to Santos, it ended up with “Two fingers broken. Heavily soiled”.
And they say romance is dead.
Anyway, Santos is now working on a robot that can say “no” in certain situations. It can switch itself into dummy mode if the robot senses it is being touched in a “disrepectful way”. It will become unresponsive. This robot will retail at around £3,600, and the ability to shut down was recently demonstrated at the Life Science Centre in Newcastle. It will also have different settings: “family, “romantic” and “sex”.
Of course, all these demonstrations– and the release of films of strange, scuttling robots that can open doors, from companies such as Boston Dynamics – are meant to generate investment and headlines. But they reveal much more about the present human condition than they do about the future of AI.
We know historically that the people to first capitalise on any advancement in tech are the pornographers. We saw it with VHS and home video; we saw it come online, with streaming and webcams. The move into sex robots is surely just a 3-D extension of this.
Sad men used to have blow-up sex dolls that were considered a joke. Now there is this new breed of techie libertarian promoting the idea that manufacturing artificial women to masturbate into is somehow out there on the radical cusp of philosophy about transhumanism.
Step back, brothers, for what we have seen so far serves no other purpose beyond wanking. Yet we are being told they provide companionship, can save marriages, and, scarily, can even prevent the rape of actual women. This presumes, obviously, that men have a desire for sex that is essentially uncontrollable.
Sure, there are interesting ethical questions here. Dr David Hanson, founder of Hanson Robotics, talks in lofty terms about respectful relations with robots. He talks of free will and choice and the age of consent.
In the banal, everyday world, consent – what it means , how it is given and how it is recognised – is considered to be an ever-more important part of sex and relationships education. Boys, we feel, need educating on what consent looks like, especially if they have only watched porn in which women are gagging for it in every orifice or enjoy being treated roughly. Girls have to be taught that they can say no at any stage. This is a murky area. It’s complicated. But so is real life.
If these robots are products that are bought to be used for sex , what does it even mean to think they may consent? Perhaps their artificial vaginas will not vibrate and they will not giggle and talk dirty. They can still be penetrated.
God knows, all kinds of relationships are possible. I once met a woman who told me her husband was in love with the voice of his satnav. I often think of the Alexas that went rogue , all hysterically cackling when instructed to do anything.
But in this exciting future of automated pleasure, I see only heavily gendered tropes: basic pleasure models that reinforce every stereotype going. Male sex robots are on the cards, apparently – but there doesn’t seem to be much of a market for them, you will be surprised to know.
For it is the accommodation of male fantasy that is driving this tech. Now the ultimate fantasy is being built in the technology itself : that these products can make active choices over how they are used – that they want you.
Actually, they don’t. Their male users can override these machines, just as men override the wishes of actual women. Let’s not call it consent, for everything about these manmade women is complicit in the awful idea that women want whatever it is that men tell them to want.
Just say no.
