Beyond ethics, I'm worried more about societal collapse. Going further we might have entirely generated ultra-realistic and ultra-specific pornography that will ultimately lead to people just not having sex... This concern has already been raised with sexbots, but machine pornography (for the lack of a better term) seems that it'll arrive first.
I'm not concerned about that. Humans are social creatures and can get sick if they don't have sufficient social contact to get their needs met. One of those needs is intimacy (and with intimacy, sex often follows). We are very far away from building a machine that can satisfy that better than a human (since it is harder problem to solve than the Turing test). And if we do develop such a machine and people stop having sex, that's not the end of children. Children can be produced without sex (and eventually may not need a human uterus), so society would likely continue.
I'd be a bit more concerned about people just deciding not to have children (because raising children is a pain), but right now there's too many people, so I'll worry when there are less than 100 million.
What makes you think simulating intimacy is harder than impersonating a human during conversation?
I remember reading about researchers constructing a fake monkey mother out of blankets, a heat lamp, and a milk bottle. The babies seemed to get what they needed in terms of intimacy.
Likewise Paro the Seal seems able to help elders cope with loneliness.
Because intimacy for adults (as opposed to your example, which is a much simpler problem) includes conversation along with a host of other behaviors. Impersonating a human during conversation is therefore a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.
I’m more concerned with the economic realities and the political changes that happen (see: Andrew Yang’s thesis for why our current POTUS was elected) prior to coming up with solutions and that our global power structure is not necessarily good for human progress long term. None of our predictions about technology matters if we hurtle ourselves into another world war that wipes out major areas that concentrate the vast majority of technologists and a second Dark Age occurs as religion and bigotry triumph over reason and tolerance - all because we create technology that must benefit the already-wealthy by design.
Much like the really facile conflict in the movie 2012, will all those 100 million be white and Asian winners of capitalism?
Lastly, human sexuality is super complicated and even with mass-produced customizable porn I’d expect a trend back to imperfect, flawed relationships like we have now eventually. I still see zero answers to what the female equivalent of porn is, so I don’t think every developed country will turn into a mirror of Japan (women may choose to emigrate to find love / purpose similar to how most single men tend to emigrate for economic reasons from developing countries). Most of the West is so culturally obsessed with sex and most Judeochristian religions dogmatically encouraging population growth I don’t see it being possible without a Dark Age of the world happening... which global war could indeed cause.
Younger generations, at least in the US, are already having much less sex than the ones that precede them[0]. Sexbots and on-demand creation of digital pornography will most definitely come--no pun intended--and fill a need that's being neglected more and more: having intimate relationships with actual people. It's bound to happen, I would say; especially if isolation, depression and anxiety rates keep their upward tendency.
Sex with more than one person is a lot more fun than even the most pleasurable wank to even the most ultra specific porn. In fact, you could do the naughty with someone while watching your ultimate kink. There is zero risk of societal collapse due to a lack of sex.
Would that honestly be so terrible? Aren’t we running the risk of overpopulating ourselves out of existence anyway? If a quarter of society just sort of “drops out” into a fantasy world, and they’re happy there, not hurting anybody, what’s the problem?
One could argue that a problem would the type of people who would have access/interest in such a thing. Seems like it would largely be restricted to the (relatively) rich and tech savvy at first, and could precipitate a trend in these people no longer reproducing and passing down the genetics which may have played a role in the success that engendered their ability to acquire or use, not to mention develop, these products in the first place.
> Seems like it would largely be restricted to the (relatively) rich and tech savvy
Yep, that's a problem.
> these people no longer reproducing and passing down the genetics which may have played a role in the success
Nope, that's not it.
Having money has very very little to do with genetics. Sure, you might have some genetic predisposition to being more ambitious, but how many people are ambitious, smart, and driven... but are still incredibly poor because they grew up in the wrong neighborhood or with the "wrong" color skin?
Even if you don't take it that far, the best way to get money is to inherit it. Having money is very cyclical: if you have it, it's easy to get more of it, and if you don't have it, it's easy to get less of it.
Given the ample data demonstrating the link between genes and IQ and health (both of which affect 'success', however defined), I'd like to see you back up your implied claim.
People don’t have children because they want to have sex, they have children when they want to have children.
Even if something better than sex came into being, people’s wish to have children would be unaffected, and I doubt they would have any problem engaging in old-school sex for that purpose.
Ordinarily, Billy would work hard to make money with his paper route, then he'd use the money to buy dinner for Mavis, thus earning a slim chance to perform the reproductive act... But in a world where teens can date robots, why should he bother? Why should anyone bother?!
I see the humor in your post, but I think it misses a little about mainstream Christian theology:
IIUC, the idea is that people should fully enjoy sex for the purposes that God intended, but should limit themselves to that. (There are some secular arguments for/against adhering those those behaviors, but other reasons will depend on premises only meaningful to Christians.)
So Christian theology, in general, isn't to keep your pants on. It's to screw to your heart's desire with your spouse, but nobody else.
That's really rather dramatic. It will certainly lead to a lot of changes and society will function very differently, but pornography leading to the end of the world...really?
