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.

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“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

ESSAY: A Brief Introduction to Sex, Technology and Science

If there’s a lesson to be learned from an examination of the technical writings within the scope of Strange Creations it would be that scientists, philosophers, technologists and those of the literary world do not remotely speak with one voice when it comes to expectations and/or worry regarding the future of technology. The scientific mind seems to necessitate a predisposition towards answering the question “Can we?” The question “Can we?” tends to be the first consideration before embarking down the road of creative, industrious and innovative thought but doesn't, however, always lead to the most ethical of outcomes.

Logically then, the next inquiry, and the one that scientists are less concerned with than philosophers and ethicists, is the question of “Should we?” The creatively minded (like scientists) are by their very nature supposed to be less apt to stop and question the ethical ramifications of their various endeavors as economics, Capitalism, the thirst for knowledge and their own curiosity all tend to propel the scientific mind ever-forward. Ethical questions, though raised occasionally, tend to take the backburner for minds that seek progress. And what does a scientific mind seek, if not progress? However, we will give voice to those that would seek to ask the "Should we?" question in the face of technology's ever-upward march.

The third question and the one that is most difficult, if not impossible, to answer is “What will the world look like if we do?”This is the realm the truly imaginative mind, where one must weigh one hundred thousand previously un-thought of variables and concoct a vision based on estimated guesses stacked upon one another. 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.

Part 2 here