ESSAY: Sex and Technology Part 4: Sex and Machines in a World Beyond the Uncanny Valley

There is not a great deal of data regarding whether the uncanny valley reaction is based on social condition to fear robots or some inbred defense mechanism hard-wired into our brain. However, what little data there is seems to indicate the former:

These unsettling emotions [of the uncanny valley] are thought to have an evolutionary origin, but tests of this hypothesis have not been forthcoming. To bridge this gap, we presented monkeys with unrealistic and realistic synthetic monkey faces, as well as real monkey faces, and measured whether they preferred looking at one type versus the others (using looking time as a measure of preference). To our surprise, monkey visual behavior fell into the uncanny valley: They looked longer at real faces and unrealistic synthetic faces than at realistic synthetic faces” (Steckenfinger).

The World Beyond the Uncanny Valley

In the world of Do Androids Dream… concerns about the Uncanny Valley are obviously moot as it requires human beings with an extremely specialized skill-set to even be able to tell the difference between a human being and the ultra-realistic Nexus-6 replicants. That kind of technology simply doesn’t exist in a mass producible form today. It is, as of this moment impossible to create a face and body that have sufficiently human-like actions and reactions that it could fool most humans. “Natural human faces with abnormal visual features produce uncomfortable impressions” (Seyama).

Whether or not our attitudes towards sex with robots is based on an inherent emotional response brought on by something natural (like a built-in, uncanny valley that resides in all of us) there can be no doubt that the feelings of revulsion created by realistic robots that we are, ostensibly, supposed to feel amorously toward is the final frontier between human beings and satisfactory robotic sexual partners.

Robotocists like David Levy, however are supremely confident that crossing the divide of the valley is simply a matter of time. Levy believes that within a matter of years, robots will be able to provide for human beings a sexual experience that is satisfying, not only on a physical level, but on an emotional level as well. Moreso than the uncanny valley Levy sees the Turing test as the final frontier to creating a satisfying sexual partner

[A]s psychology and cognitive science began to consider what relationships might one day develop between man and machine, between human and robot. Suddenly it was important to think about what might happen when a robot communicates with a human on a personal level rather than merely for pragmatic reasons (Levy)

The word “partner” Levy mentions earlier is so very important when discussing these relationships because it implies a necessary reality if humans are to have robots as sexual partners, but also a tremendous ethical quandary. With obvious exception, human beings on balance prefer intimacy with someone whom the feel a connection, or with whom they feel they are on even footing. This is why, for example we have laws against statutory rape, as it is understood that a sexual relationship between a young girl and a full grown man is inherently unequal and manipulative.

Even if it’s not monogamous or a partnership in the traditional sense, many human beings tend to experience feelings of dissatisfaction and sometimes guilt when they have engaged in a sexual liaison that was not mutually satisfactory and enjoyable both physically and psychically. Such a connection with a machine may never be possible without the development of extremely advanced artificial intelligence or at the very least the development of a robot that can perfectly simulate a real sexual relationship.

[Levy] does not shy away from the details of how this could be done. ‘A robot who wants to engender feelings of love from its human,’ Levy speculates, ‘might try all sorts of different strategies in an attempt to achieve this goal, such as suggesting a visit to the ballet, cooking the human's favorite food or making flattering statements about the human's haircut, then measuring the effect of each strategy by conducting an fMRI scan of the human's brain.’ The robot would know it was on the right track when it saw brain activity in the appropriate areas, and continue the successful strategy (Trimarco)

Trimarco finds the scenario he describes above quite distasteful and one would have to assume he wouldn’t be in the minority. Thus, a logical conclusion would be that most human beings would not desire amorous relationships with a robot barring some seismic shift with regard to sexual expectations and social mores.

ESSAY: Sex and Technology Part 3: Overcoming the Uncanny

Part 2 of this series of essays can be viewed here

Sexual Robots: Can we? What’s stopping us?

“The initial forays by robotocists into the world of fully interactive autonomous robots focused on entertainment with creations as simple as robot toys robots pets, and robots that play sports. Simple electronic cats and dogs have been shown to provide psychological enrichment for humans, being both pleasurable and relaxing to play with” (Levy 9). For the time being, at least, it seems that robotics is well concerned with finding a way to provide true, satisfying companionship to human beings.

This is not a purely or even primarily sexual pursuit. In fact, one of the main uses for intelligent robots going forward may be as company for demographics that typically find themselves suffering from loneliness like the elderly, developmentally disabled or those lacking in traditional social graces. Phillip K. Dick presciently gave this scenario a face by way of the character Isidore whose primary company are the various machines which occupy his apartment and Buster Friendly on television: “'But,' Isidore said, 'it's good to have neighbors. Heck, until you came along I didn't have any.' And that was no fun, god knew” (Androids 62).

Robots that are designed for companionship and company are considered by many robotics-developers to be imminent in the relatively near future: “To researchers like Turkle, the widespread deployment of social robots is as risky as it is inevitable. With some analysts estimating a $15 billion market for personal robots by 2015, the demand for expressive machines is expected to be voracious” (Sofge).

However, while company is one question the question of sexual relationships with robots and androids is quite another.

And robots that are able to provide some measure of a satisfying sexual experience are equally imminent according robotocists like David Levy and professional technological prognosticators like Ray Kurzweil. However, providing a “satisfying” sexual experience requires more than just creating a machine that can assume the necessary positions and make the movements required to gratify a human being. “A new generation of AI researcher was investigating more meaningful relationships between humans and what… [is] called 'artificial partners'" (Levy 11). To create a “partner” or a machine that a human being could possibly consider to be on equal sexual and psychological footing, (which despite the focus on the sexual depravity of men is generally a requirement for both genders) is a much more difficult task than simply developing the robotics technology. One has to overcome the Uncanny Valley on one of the basest, most fundamentally human level: the level of sexual desire. This is no easy task.

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

“The corresponding recess in the supposed function is called the uncanny valley. The core of this explanation… will be a form of empathy involving a kind of imaginative perception. However, as will be shown, imaginative perception fails in cases of very humanlike objects” (Misselhorn 1). The uncanny valley is derived from an expository psychological essay by Sigmund Freud referred to as simply “the Uncanny” Freud described the phenomenon as being: “undoubtedly related to what is frightening — to what arouses dread and horror; yet we may expect that a special core of feeling is present which justifies the use of a special conceptual term. One is curious to know what this common core is which allows us to distinguish as ‘uncanny’; certain things which lie within the field of what is frightening” (Freud I).

Freud’s “Uncanny” has in recent times become a seminal work cited often, though, usually not in the field of psycho-analysis (Batnaes 1). Robot engineer Masohiro Mori posited the idea that if a robot were sufficiently stylized, that is, had human features but wasn’t actually human, than we would focus on those features that were similar to us and find them empathetic or endearing. However, if a robot crosses a certain threshold of realism we start to look for ways not to think of it as human and any portion of the robot which fails to meet our expectations of what is naturally human causes us to feel revulsion or fright. “It is hypothesized that this uncanny feeling is because the realistic synthetic characters elicit the concept of "human," but fail to live up to it. That is, this failure generates feelings of unease due to character traits falling outside the expected spectrum of everyday social experience (Steckenfinger 1).

ESSAY: A Brief Introduction to Sex, Technology and Science Part 2

You can view part 1 here

This realm that asks “What will become of the world” seems to belong to writers, the literary types, those who are able to conceive of expansive futures where nothing can possibly be certain. This is the realm of Phillip K. Dick

Of the thousands of thorny ethical and psychological questions that will crop up over the coming years and decades as we stand on the precipice of creating automata with truly remarkable abilities and realism perhaps the most complex is: what will our relationships be like to these machines? How will we relate to them? Will we love them? Will we fall in love with them?

Perhaps the toughest question of all is: will we want to invite them into our lives in an intimate capacity? Is there a sexual future for man and machine?

Leaving aside the (mostly) crude machines that already exist to gratify human beings now, most prognosticators of the future of technology believe that we are near the day when we will achieve a new type of sexual relationship with computers. For this essay, we will first explore the obstacles that stand in the way of our first question: “Can we?” For this portion we will examine questions of overcoming the Uncanny Valley, or that portion of automation wherein machines become too human and frighten us.

The second question we will seek to answer will come from some technological ethicists who pose the more agnostic: “Should we?” What are ethical ramifications of a sexual (and by extension for most, emotional) relationship with a machine that is designed to simulate emotions but doesn't actually experience them? When does simulation close the gap so completely with reality that the cannon between the two becomes moot?

Finally, that discussion will dovetail into a deep exploration of the psycho-sexual relationships present in Phillip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? also known as "Blade Runner." While predicting the future is impossible, Dick stands alone in his ability to flesh out a world where the sexual, economic and political meld together in a shockingly believable fashion. Dick’s predictions about the future in Do Androids Dream… presents a ideas which can be reverse-engineered as a metaphoric stand-in for the types of sexual revolution that was going on when the novel for first published and in Dick’s own life, coalescing in the culture wars ongoing today.

In other words, Do Androids Dream... shows a future that isn't necessarily different from the present in terms of its cultural make-up and prejudice, but it does show a future where the specific social mores and prejudice have simply shifted. In that regard, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep may be our best and only window into a world that answers the questions “What will the world look like if we do?”

Part 3 can be viewed here