Pleasure isn’t—and shouldn’t be—purely mechanical

Before starting, a truly sincere compliment: the recent designers and builders of artificial companions deserve a round of applause for their frankly staggering degree of engineering skill.

Recently we’ve seen passionate designers and manufacturers pouring amounts of time and resources into perfecting everything from performing oral sex perfectly to ones that need to be convinced .

It’s clear that we may very well be approaching a point where gynoids will be able to ace the Turing test for artificial intelligence and pass for a human—at least in regards to feeling sexually realistic.

More than Tab A into Slot B

Yet it’s this view of sex as being an engineering problem that needs to be solved that lies at the heart of what many are seeing as a fundamental problem with the direction gynoid design and manufacture is going.

Far too often it’s looking like these creations aren’t being built to enhance human sexuality but to build something that will replace women with an always willing, always skilled, replacement.

That is more than troubling. Some have even said that this line of design and manufacturing could even lead to a time when some men might look at real women as being just as unfeeling and even disposable as their plastic and metal doppelgängers.

The right to pleasure

Here’s where things get even more complicated. There are obviously some people emotionally enjoy dolls. We have seen many iDollator’s, including those who have extensively documented their relationships with their synthetic partners.

Because of this, it would be unfair to call wanting to have sex with something like a gynoid “wrong.” If studies of human sexuality have taught us anything it’s that there is practically an infinite spectrum of desires and, as long as it is done safely and consensually, most forms of sex can be healthy.

What we need—and what we want

It’s just that when you look at the current state of sexbot design, it’s become pretty disappointing. While so much work has been put into creating many types of gynoids, so little has been put into being truly imaginative about what a sexbot can be.

Some might argue that the market is driven by demand: that we see current sexbot prototypes because that’s what will sell. But that doesn’t explain why there are so many new female-oriented sex toys being developed and sold.

It also doesn’t explain the homophobia and non-binary gender issues so many sexbot designers show. Far too often the dolls are not just built for straight men, but in the rare cases when any bisexual or queer market is mentioned it’s mostly as a clumsy afterthought.

Fortunately, some manufacturers, such as Abyss Creations, the makers of the RealDoll line of love dolls, give the option to buy a form of transsexual doll—but this is the exception and not the rule.

Be imaginative

What we need is more than a few brave and daring engineers and designers to break the gynoid mold; to work to develop a completely new approach to a sexual pleasure doll or robot.

For one thing, it’s time to acknowledge and respect the concerns of people who see gynoids as a new way to objectify women. Pretending it doesn’t exist does nothing but prove their point that sex doll and robot designers don’t care about anything but their satisfying their desires.

This is not denying the right to enjoying sexual pleasure with a doll or robot. But when you have a product that is pitched over and over again to be just as good as, if not better than, a real woman you should understand how others might see that as treating sex as mechanical, and women as just appliances.

We have seen some attempts at expanding the idea of what a doll or robot can be. The Samantha-bot, which has to be initially aroused, is at least an attempt to consider the idea of consent in a synthetic but still has been criticized by making sex a game that a man has to play to win.

The future could be fantastic

More than anything though, we need a sexbot that is not a replacement but an enhancement. There are many people on this planet who have a challenging time expressing affection or understanding what sex is and can be. Why not create special dolls or robots for them? A unit—for all genders and orientations—that would be a form of AI physical therapist: teaching how to touch and be touched, how to sexually relate to others?

There are also lots of people with sexual anxiety around performance. So where are the dolls or humanoids for people who need help with everything from achieving orgasm to premature ejaculation? A sexbot wouldn’t ever replace a real therapist. But a special doll with a well-designed AI, that would offer encouragement and techniques, could be a huge help to a lot of people.

David Levy pointed out that artificial lovers could help those trying to deal with loneliness. So why not create a model that would also act as an emotional guide, again offering encouragement as well as companionship? Let’s see love doll and sexbot manufacturers team up with psychologists and programmers. Again, it wouldn’t be as good as real human interaction, but for those who long for any kind of company, physical or otherwise, it’s better than being alone.

Then there are people with disabilities. That we haven’t seen a sexbot manufacturer step up to address their needs is shameful. Don’t know how to begin? Try talking to people with disabilities: find out their needs, their limitations, and make something perfectly suited for their sexual pleasure.

While there have been some remarkable developments lately, we are just at the beginning of a real sexbot revolution. New breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, smart materials, 3D printing, and so much more, promise that in the next few years we will be seeing an explosion of designs and possibilities.

Call to innovate

Complicated, messy, strange, and also amazingly beautiful, sex is what makes us human. And with brilliant and imaginative approaches, we just might be able to create machines that will help humanity expand into new erotic vistas.

Image sources: Depositphotos

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Will merging biology and technology make robots indistinguishable from humans?

Researchers at the University of Tokyo’s Department of Mechano-Informatics recently developed a novel method of affixing organic tissue to artificial surfaces.  Specifically, as their paper states, to produce a “robotic face covered with living skin.”

Suppose Michio Kawai, Minghao Nie, and Haruka Oda’s process is developed further. In that case, it might lead to artificial companions with not just lifelike expressions but could be extended to cover entire bodies, so like their partners, they’d feel very much like bone-fide human beings.

Grown not built

The University of Tokyo team’s process utilizes a network of specialty-designed anchors onto which organic tissue can be attached.

As for why they developed this innovative approach to marrying skin to an inorganic surface, the researchers wrote, “One particularly noteworthy aspect of this method is its ability to endow robots with the self-healing capabilities inherent in biological skin.”

If the concept sounds familiar, you might recall how the malevolent AI, SkyNet, gave its titular Terminators an outer covering of real skin to infiltrate the human resistance.

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However, the legendary author Philip K Dick beat James Cameron to the punch with his short story, “The Electric Ant,” where the protagonist suddenly realizes he wasn’t born but made, deceived for most of his existence by his organic flesh.

While equipping tomorrow’s robots with a means to repair themselves would be an obvious benefit, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to envision Toyko University’s process, with a sexual spin, extended to a new generation of intimate artificial companions—especially as the most sophisticated of today’s models tend to look and feel distinctly plastic.  

And you wear it well

Michio Kawai, Minghao Nie, and Haruka Oda’s system could be modified so that instead of permanently bonding tissue to a robot’s body exterior surface, it might be easily exchanged for other flesh suits, granting them a nearly limitless number of enticing wardrobe options, including colors, textures, with or without extra padding, or sexually enticing aromas produced by cloned sweat glands.

We could conceivably fit our skin-clothed companions with an equally broad choice of hairstyles—or none at all, outlandishly wild body modifications, or even imaginatively fantastical features—Total Recall, anybody?

But what good is a hybrid synthetic companion if it only looks and feels lifelike but still moves like an awkward machine?

The answer may lie in soft robotics, another promising technology we’ve reported on quite a few times.  Eschewing muscle-mimicking hydraulics for clunky mechanical actuators, our skin-sheathed artificial companions could be as graceful and erotically alluring as the most talented human dancers—in and out of bed.

Overcoming the ick factor

Let’s—excuse the expression—face it; though some may like the idea of creating, as well as intimately interacting with an artificial companion sporting a fleshy suit, a greater percentage will likely find the technology more disturbing than arousing.

But what if we take life—at least as we presently understand it—out of the equation and swap living cells for artificial ones?  

Something we’re already well on our way to developing, for instance, the work being done by scientists at New York University’s Molecular Design Institute, who’ve successfully produced inorganic cells capable of mimicking the actions and behaviors of their organic counterparts.

Using simulated tissue would provide our hybrid artificial companions with all of the pros and less of the squeamish cons of a truly biological/technological robot, so no one would have to worry about where, how, or from whom our living robots got their flesh and blood parts.

We Can Build You

By taking a less manufactured, more grown approach to artificial companions, we may end up, unintentionally or otherwise, blurring the line between what is human and what might not necessarily be inhuman but perhaps an entirely different kind of person.

A question we may have to face sooner rather than later, as Philip K Dick was fond of pondering when our synthetic flesh and artificial blood companions find it increasingly difficult to comprehend why they shouldn’t be treated like the rest of humanity—when they mentally and physically feel just like us.

Image Sources: Depositphotos

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