Robostitutes

The Japanese are facing an aging population, a serious decline in childbirths with their usual “isolated island for centuries” mistrust of immigration. The Japanese very clearly had an opportunity to convert their kanji charter-driven script (with a few alphabetical concessions to modernity) into a more recognizable phonetic alphabet after WWII, but they preferred their adaptation of ancient Chinese character-pictographs to insulate them from the prying cultural eyes of foreigners. They simply did not want to be more transparent to the rest of the world, nor were they inclined to make foreigners feel welcome to become Japanese citizens.

But with a declining available workforce necessary to look after an elderly population, and with a traditional Japanese reluctance to allow “guest-workers” from other nations to supply cheap labor to effect elder-care, Japanese engineers are instead working on robots who can respond to, care and feed for the elderly. No foreigners needed. Hmmmm… I wonder what other uses such human droids could be found?

With increasing abilities to mimic a genuinely human and lifelike appearance with robotic innards, the notion of other … er…. “uses”… for robots has increasingly come under the light of social scrutiny. In countries where couples are allowed one child (like China) or where boys support the family and girls just get married off, making sure the fetus is a favored male has resulted in a disproportionate number of males over the number of females. And without enough women to go around, well, the above robotic solution has reared, you will pardon the expression, its ugly head. To see where this new direction (pronounce carefully please) , might be going, I was gently directed to this online article by the father of my brand new daughter-in-law, a miscreant dentist in Atlantic City, who thought this subject deserved to be placed at the feet of those in my blog-audience.

“In the next five years or so it will be possible to build lifelike robots. These robots will look, move, and feel like fellow humans — but, unless the technological singularity comes early, these robots won’t be excellent conversationalists. According some recent research, though, they will make fantastic prostitutes…For a start, sexbots are likely to be very expensive; Realdolls, the world-famous, lifelike silicone sex dolls … start at $6,000. Adding motors and computers — animatronics — will likely drive that cost upwards of $20,000 (though, with increasing demand and improvements in technology, that price would come down). Even so, the depressing truth is that trafficked humans are cheaper and more plentiful.

“There’s also the human element of sex. While one day it might be possible to create living, breathing, sweating, robots — skin-job cylons — they will never be truly human. These sexbots will almost certainly fall smack bang in the middle of the Uncanny Valley, and — unless you have a robot fetish — will be incredibly creepy as a result. [We] don’t want to turn this into something resembling a psychology midterm, but sexual desires (both healthy and otherwise) can be very specific. If a businessman really wants to sleep with a young Russian girl, and experience everything that goes along with that (the screams, the squirming, the illicit thrill, and so on), a sexbot just won’t cut it. The human face is capable of expressing a wide gamut of emotions — if you want to see fear, or shock, or awe in the eyes of your sexual partner, robots won’t do it for you.” ExtremeTech.com, May 11^th.

Hey, girls, what makes men think that they are the only ones who should have the mechanical option? And is it really infidelity when the bod is a bot? Even if the bot evolves to the level of Commander Data?! Well maybe this mechanical distraction could have some benefits, if you think about it enough: “Instead of heading down to the local red light district and engaging in dangerous coitus with a prostitute that might be infested with a veritable smorgasbord of STDs, you could book a session with a sterilized-between-tricks prostibot. If you had enough money, you could of course just buy your own sexbot, and just haul her out of the cupboard when needed.

“In one fell swoop, at least according to Ian Yeoman and Michelle Mars (the authors of recent paper called ‘Robots, men and sex tourism.’ [paywalled]), robots will cleanse the world of… well, almost every sex-related ill that plagues humanity. With robots that bend and flex and kowtow to our every desire, the sexual side of human trafficking — the billion dollar trade of moving (usually young) sex slaves around the world — will disappear. Sexual predators, instead of abducting victims, will be able to order a sexbot to spec; if they want a robot that looks like a young child, or a wrinkly geriatric, so be it.” ExtremeTech.com. Argh! It all sounds pretty sick, if you ask me… which probably means there will be a huge market for these… er… products. Whadyathink? Let me know where you think this is all going? Don’t ask, don’t tell?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am feeling very old fashioned right now.