[ad_1]

By @SimonCocking, review of Turned on, Science, Sex and Robots By Kate Devlin.

The idea of the seductive sex robot is the stuff of myth, legend and science fiction. From the myth of Laodamia in Ancient Greece to twenty-first century shows such as Westworld, robots in human form have captured our imagination, our hopes, and our fears. But beyond the fantasies, there are real and fundamental questions about our relationship with technology as it moves into the realm of robotics.

Turned On explores how the emerging and future development of sexual companion robots might affect us and the society in which we live. It explores the social changes arising from emerging technologies, and our relationships with the machines that someday may care for us and about us. Sex robots are here, and here to stay, and more are coming. 

Computer scientist and sex-robot expert Kate Devlin is our guide as we seek to understand how this technology is developing. From robots in Greek myth and the fantastical automata of the Middle Ages through to the sentient machines of the future that embody the prominent AI debate, she explores the ‘modern’ robot versus the robot servants we were promised by twentieth century sci-fi, and delves into the psychological effects of the technology, and issues raised around gender politics, diversity, surveillance and violence. 

Devlin writes well, is an engaging, witty and diverse way about this endlessly fascinating topic. As we know from the rules of the internet ( #34), if  it exists…there is porn of it. As we know in this case it must surely be true, and Devlin goes back several thousand years for documented examples of people looking to have congress / loving with automated versions of loved ones. There is a lot to like in this book, and it does cover a wide range of opinions and examples of various ideas that people have tried out. Devlin has also facilitated several sex hackathons too, which will only bring more interesting ideas to the fore.

The whole subject raises lots of ethical questions, suppose the robot doesn’t fancy you, can they refuse to have sex with you? Why is predominantly female sexbots so far? What constitutes ‘having sex’? Will we ‘fuck ourselves to death with sexbots’? (this made us laugh outloud). Devlin writes in an engaging and thought provoking way. One area perhaps which left us a little unfilled by the end, was that in some ways we felt the science of sex with robots was not completely explained or resolved. How soon will people be having meaningful sex with robots? Will this work? How do we balance the uncanny alley with not feeling like we have just had sex with the hoover? Is it being unfaithful? The science could be really interesting, it could provide health updates for us too potentially?

Perhaps because this is still quite a bleeding edge topic it is hard to give definitive answers yet to many of these question. Devlin’s book at times feels like more of a wide and comprehensive screen grab of all the current trends out there, rather than yet being able to answer a lot of the questions that this new area of technology raises. At the same time this is a very readable book, postioned well for the general reader, and is a great entry point for wider considerations of AI, the singularity and other issues that we should all at least be aware of, if not formulating considered responses as well. There is undoubtedly more to be said on this topic and Devlin is well positioned to be an expert commentator on this as the area evolves and more effective solutions emerge to the current questions being posed.

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking

[ad_2]

Source link