
The truth about sex robots - Sami_Lehtinen
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160209-the-truth-about-sex-robots
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franciscop
I think the post misses completely the point of technology replacing humans.
Like autonomous cars, sex robots will be viable when they are better than the
alternative. And for many people, this means better than nothing/sex toys.
They don't need to be perfect as it suggests.

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nugget
Spot on . . . to borrow from Thoreau, ''the mass of men lead [sex] lives of
quiet desperation''. (As a man, I'm more familiar with the male perspective.)
I think even a crude early version of a sex robot that males could interact
with at home would revolutionize society with all sorts of consequences to
romantic relationships, birth rates, social development, and so on. Combine
the physical manipulations with AI and VR and I think it will be as or more
important than developments like self driving cars and 1 hour drone
deliveries.

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greggman
Isn't that already happening? Not to pick on the Japanese in particular but
it's low-hanging fruit search wise

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=japanese%20men%20not%20interesting%20in%20sex&es_th=1)

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a5seo
Has this author ever heard of 'minimum viable product?'

I doubt the lack of nanotech to create perfect artficial skin (or many of the
other features mentioned) are going to hold this back.

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JoeAltmaier
Exactly! This is a subject dominated by imagination and fantasy. All that is
needed is a spark. Arguably, the robot should be quite different from a real
human, because they are available already and at a reasonable price.

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ekianjo
> In two recent movies, Her and Ex Machina, filmmakers explored an intriguing
> concept: whether humans will fall in love with and want to have sex with AI
> or robots.

Never mind Ghost in the Shell throwing that idea about, like, 20 years ago
already. It's always fun to be see folks late to the party.

~~~
grimgrin
The author went as far back as Pygmalion [1913], where Eliza fell in love with
a statue that came to life.

~~~
lazyant
"In Ovid's narrative, Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who carved a woman out
of ivory. According to Ovid, after seeing the Propoetides he was "not
interested in women", but his statue was so fair and realistic that he fell in
love with it."

Ovid lived over 2,000 years ago.

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mentos
Stepping stone is VR/AR with tracked toys

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JoeAltmaier
There's a market for every toy. Robot feels weird, sounds funny, looks creepy?
Sell to the weird funny creepy crowd.

~~~
AznHisoka
Just because something looks creepy doesn't mean the target buyer is creepy.

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lifeisstillgood
Oddly I am reminded of a comment about New Mexico. There the ratio of non-
imprisoned men to women is something like 90:100 in the non-White community,
and so _apparently_ women are more Likely to acquiesce to the sort of male
demands you can imagine - so less marriage, more polyamory, and apparently
more sex more frequently.

(I am now racking my brains for a reference - it could be Tim Harford?)

The point being, that real people competing against a free "good enough"
alternative are going to be the unusual example of economic Uberisation

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echlebek
> Some worry sex robots might hurt already marginalised sex workers

I doubt that anyone actually worries about this.

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tbeutel
A robot with a self-cleaning feature would make me more likely to use it.

~~~
mchahn
> A robot with a self-cleaning feature would make me more likely to use it.

Or better yet, a house-cleaning feature (male or female).

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DrScump
For a sarcastic view on the concept, check out "Robot Girl" by Was (not
Was)... here's an SNL performance from 1989.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03LVC_r9gJE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03LVC_r9gJE)

(RG starts at about 1:45)

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dhimes
I got such a weird feeling reading that. Happy Valentine's Day!

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upofadown
Unless you get the pheromones and skin chemistry right there really isn't any
point.

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JoeAltmaier
That's not fair! Lots of sex toys sell today. Very very few of them get that
right. In fact, all they have to be is soft and lubricatable.

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merb
What people never learn, human intelligence is not learning by analyzing and
doing it better. human intelligence means actually doing something which could
never be calculated and which could be a total mess, however it could still be
the right thing. Current AI's will learn, but they will learn with their
input, which is something humans don't do, their thinking is abstract.

~~~
woodman
Your description of "human intelligence" sounds more like a bounded random
number generator. Also, your thinking is restricted by sensory input - just
like the AI.

