Publications
Partners
Sci-fi writers, geeks and anyone with more than a half measure of kinky in their hardwiring, have been fantasising about this invention for decades: A robot girl – because, of course it has to be a girl first – who will fulfill your every sexual desire, is totally under your control, and who can’t go running to the cops when things get weird. It’s like having a sex slave – but without the moral dilemma or fear of persecution.
Tell me I’m not the only one hearing alarm bells here.
Of course that’s not how they’re marketing it… er… her. (Argh. You see - robot rights and ethics are already rearing their pc little heads. I guess that’s what you get when you were raised on Terminator, Buffy and Philip K Dick.) Anyway, they are marketing the sex bot as a “True Companion”. Oh the dissolute, estranged, solitary lives we lead! 6 billion people on the planet and they have to make you a companion?
Hines apparently got the idea after a friend died in the 9/11 crash and he thought how wonderful it would be to be able to preserve someone’s personality.
And the next logical step was to create a latex doll with three orifices called Roxxxy? Riiiight.
What I did find extremely touching was that Roxxxy says nice things to you when you touch her. When the robot senses pressure on her hand, for example, she’ll say something like (gulp at the lump in my throat) “I like it when you hold my hand”.
Is that all we really want? Someone to be nice to us? Oh okay, and to give us orgasms.
Well, maybe not you and me. But I can tell you now that there are a lot of lonely people out there who are willing to pay 9000 dollars for a kind word and a willing receptacle who won’t judge them. I’m not worried about them. Well, not more than I usually am.
No, I’m worried about the types who are not as nice as Lars, and who’ll get themselves sex robots to explore how rape and torture make them feel. Because if Roxxxy can say nice things now it’s only a matter of time before Trixxxie or whoever will be able to say “Oh no, please don’t hurt me.” And I’m worried about the she’s-perfect-because-she-does-what-I-tell-her-to-do types. And the types who’ll hope their real girlfriends start acting a bit more like their robot girlfriends. In short, I’m worried about the same things I always am – that better technology will give sociopaths, weirdos and assholes even greater scope for their awfulness.
Oh, and that these robots will become sentient and kill us all of course.
