Comments on: Sex with robots? Call the unions! http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2007/12/23/sex-with-robots-call-the-unions/ Of sex and science. Elizabeth Pisani's blog about HIV and other sundry things. Mon, 26 Dec 2011 02:54:56 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: elizabeth http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2007/12/23/sex-with-robots-call-the-unions/comment-page-1/#comment-38 elizabeth Mon, 24 Dec 2007 04:52:38 +0000 http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2007/12/23/sex-with-robots-call-the-unions/#comment-38 Sell your Viagra shares now! Sell your Viagra shares now!

]]> By: Lee Rudolph http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2007/12/23/sex-with-robots-call-the-unions/comment-page-1/#comment-37 Lee Rudolph Sun, 23 Dec 2007 14:30:13 +0000 http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2007/12/23/sex-with-robots-call-the-unions/#comment-37 At the 2006 meeting of "Robotics: Science and Systems" in Philadelphia, I heard Hiroshi Isaguro of Osaka University deliver a plenary talk on Android Science. (Actually, he'd already gone on from designing androids to designing "geminoids"--robot duplicates of particular individuals. As of 2006 he'd made geminoids of his young daughter, of a female new anchor that I gathered is the Japanese equivalent of Katie Couric, and of himself; he showed a video of his geminoid having an office-hour across town from his office, from which he was remotely controlling some--but not all--of its activities. I've had office hours that felt like that, myself.) In that talk, he mentioned something I have only recently begun to see in the public prints here in the USA: Japan--which, of course, is "graying" at a tremendous rate, and which has been seeing an increasing breakdown of the traditional family ties that once would have forced children to care personally for their aging parents--has set a national goal, subscribed by the government and most of the major technology companies in Japan, of providing something like 80% of all "senior care" robotically by 2016. He did not say whether "senior care" included sexual services. If so, however, I would assume that the commonest situation would be monogamous robotic concubinage, one human "senior" paired with one robot. (Presumably any client-side desire for partner variety could be satisfied by providing the robots with a capacity for self-reconfiguration; self-reconfigurable robots are, in fact, a hot research topic, though not yet--as far as I know--in the context of androids, much less geminoids. Presently proposed applications are more of the moon-rover type.) That should be fairly safe sex, assuming modest self-cleansing capacities for the robot (which is going to have to be good at cleaning up, anyway, after all). At the 2006 meeting of “Robotics: Science and Systems” in Philadelphia, I heard Hiroshi Isaguro of Osaka University deliver a plenary talk on Android Science. (Actually, he’d already gone on from designing androids to designing “geminoids”–robot duplicates of particular individuals. As of 2006 he’d made geminoids of his young daughter, of a female new anchor that I gathered is the Japanese equivalent of Katie Couric, and of himself; he showed a video of his geminoid having an office-hour across town from his office, from which he was remotely controlling some–but not all–of its activities. I’ve had office hours that felt like that, myself.) In that talk, he mentioned something I have only recently begun to see in the public prints here in the USA: Japan–which, of course, is “graying” at a tremendous rate, and which has been seeing an increasing breakdown of the traditional family ties that once would have forced children to care personally for their aging parents–has set a national goal, subscribed by the government and most of the major technology companies in Japan, of providing something like 80% of all “senior care” robotically by 2016.

He did not say whether “senior care” included sexual services. If so, however, I would assume that the commonest situation would be monogamous robotic concubinage, one human “senior” paired with one robot. (Presumably any client-side desire for partner variety could be satisfied by providing the robots with a capacity for self-reconfiguration; self-reconfigurable robots are, in fact, a hot research topic, though not yet–as far as I know–in the context of androids, much less geminoids. Presently proposed applications are more of the moon-rover type.) That should be fairly safe sex, assuming modest self-cleansing capacities for the robot (which is going to have to be good at cleaning up, anyway, after all).

]]> By: colson http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2007/12/23/sex-with-robots-call-the-unions/comment-page-1/#comment-36 colson Sun, 23 Dec 2007 13:46:18 +0000 http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2007/12/23/sex-with-robots-call-the-unions/#comment-36 Whatever the outcome of these policy considerations may be, a ( female)robot at least may prevent in action questions like "Darling, the ceiling needs painting". Whatever the outcome of these policy considerations may be, a ( female)robot at least may prevent in action questions like “Darling, the ceiling needs painting”.

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