Robotic "Companions" Are Testing the Scope of Privacy and Sexual Freedom

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/01/29/battle-bots-robotic-companions-are-testing-the-scope-of-privacy-and-sexual-freedom/

by delichon • 2 years ago

29 58 2 years ago

jonathanturley.org

lupusreal2• 2 years ago

I thought the law concerning sex toys was settled years ago. If they're going to ban "sex robots" then are dildo bans back on the menu?

hanselot2• 2 years ago

Don't tell me you condone the violent rapists that objectify men's phalluses. How dare people enjoy their lives.

bediger4000• 2 years ago

Seems lazy and includes an unexplained slur about "liberal voices" that Turley never connects to the rest of his article. The laziness involves merely listing objections to sex robots/sex dolls without examining any of the nuances or reasons for people to object, then posing "libertarian" as a simple, easy solution.

Turley is not incorrect in subtly noting that the "Lost in Space" character Dr Smith is a robosexual.

soco• 2 years ago

Games about killing people are not a problem, as long they are labeled properly (enforcing that, that's another story). Do we have a bigger problem with objectification, than with plain murdering, or with drug dealing? And how's the argument about having sex with prostitutes in GTA? Really all this only confuses me - people are cherry-picking topics to be upset about, while ignoring similar glaring ones right there. I'm not even saying about what one should be upset, just expecting some consistency in it.

therealpygon2• 2 years ago

Cherry-picking is fundamental to most people’s views, sadly, and they always use “we have to draw the line somewhere” as an excuse for why it is valid to ignore similar or even far worse situations. Worse still, they focus their time creating elaborate objections to what are mostly meaningless topics, mostly due to not being able to exercise their control over those much bigger and broad issues. For example, known effects from cigarettes versus theorized effects of e-cigarettes. Same goes for debates on alcohol vs pot, electric car accidents vs ICE vehicles, so on and so forth. It also happens when placing extraordinary value on an individual cherry-picked life or theoretical life, rather than any of the actual lives lost every day to solvable problems.

End of the day, it’s all about people trying to control other people’s thoughts and actions by forcing them to conform to the box the debater has created and lined with cherry-picked facts. You can see that in the arguments of this article and in this thread.

Just as a note, I’m not advocating one way or another on any topic, just addressing the issue of cherry-picking that happens regardless of which side anyone falls on an issue.

hanselot2• 2 years ago

Anecdotally, I would like to mention that my partner has been sick for over a month with some kind of lung shit he got from an e-cigarette (vuse something disposable crap). He has been literally unable to sleep through a night for over a month, multiple doctor visits, 3 courses of antibiotics, lung xray that apparently confirmed it was viral pneumonia, but yeah. I have been smoking for over 6 years and still alive, but he smoked that shit for less than a few weeks and he is barely functional. I can't remember the last time I got a full night's sleep anymore, because I constantly have to apply muscle relaxants and ensure he has proper medication to be able to remain asleep.

So yeah, not really the point of your argument, but fuck e-cigarettes, for the rest of time I will have this stance. And yes, I am brutally aware of what cigarettes do as well, but don't knock the "theoretical" effects of e-cigarettes.

scarmig• 2 years ago

On the topic of cherry picking and vapes, one of the biggest absurdities is that it's now cheaper and more convenient to purchase meth or fent in San Francisco than it is a flavored vape. I can respect people having different levels of libertarian or public health concerns than me, but there's absolutely no consistent pairing of them that should result in vapes being more restricted than fentanyl.

jijijijij8• 2 years ago

In Germany more than half of all murder victims are women. I presume it's not much different in other countries, although gang on gang violence may distort the picture a bit.

If you look into research on femicide, you see there is a specific dynamic at work, objectification and feelings of possession in men are causal. These motives are universal, as femicides are otherwise frequently happening across all economic, cultural and social backgrounds.

almatabata3• 2 years ago

I presume it's not much different in other countries, although gang on gang violence may distort the picture a bit.

If you count all homicides i would expect women to usually be the minority in most countries due to gang crime as you say. In france its the reverse, 67% of all murder victims are men. The data looks similar in the US.

In the french statistics certain crimes affect mostly women and other mostly men. 97% gang related deaths are men while 66% of intra-family deaths are women.

Germany: https://www.bka.de/DE/AktuelleInformationen/StatistikenLageb...

France: https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/5763555?sommaire=576363...

US: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

belorn5• 2 years ago

In Germany more than half of all murder victims are women. I presume it's not much different in other countries, although gang on gang violence may distort the picture a bit.

No? For 2022 in Sweden the numbers were 93 men, 23 women. Men has been overrepresentative by 200% or more for as long as we have statistic data. You can look at the graph at the government statistic department on crime here: https://bra.se/statistik/statistik-om-brottstyper/mord-och-d...

From that same page, 9% of cases involve violence within a couple relation.

It would surprise me if the data looks that much different in other Nordic countries.

PedroBatista2• 2 years ago

Historically there always has been a furious reaction from women/feminist movements against anything related to this, even in past decades when even the act of thinking or imagine anything like this was all one could do.

This is a topic with more mines than an Ukrainian field, but I'll say this:

Last century, we moved places because there were many problems and deservedly so we wanted something better, we had to choose paths to take. What if the paths we choose weren't the best ones? Can we have the courage to admit that?

This doesn't invalidate any problems with the starting point, but the place we ended up might not be any better.

The same applies to this "sex robots" thing, the place of unimaginable silent pain and loneliness is already here, so we want to move to a better place, is this the best choice? or is this the only choice available to those in need? - Just as the first part, this one is to be answered by the ones following the path, not the ones on the sidewalk.

yareal2• 2 years ago

Women, and especially feminist women, in my experience are pretty open to the idea that the need for sex exists and that sex toys are a delight.

What they object to is the equating women to sex objects - treating women like sex tours rather than whole human beings with rich lives and emotional depth and complexity.

Some men have a hard time decoupling the concepts. A fancy toy like proposed in the article is great for the folks who want it so long as it's not seen as a "woman analogue". (Just like how a dildo isn't a man analogue.)

There should be no shame in sex toys, if they make someone happy, go for it. I'm not sure what the implication of "best choice" vs "only choice" is referring to, because I could interpret it quite negatively I think maybe you could expand that idea more?

lawlessone• 2 years ago

I think the issue is when it's a bot or doll emulating a full human and hitting the uncanny valley.

Plenty of toys out there for men and women nobody has an issue with outside of some(not all), strongly religious people.

If there was more of market for male dolls I could definitely some elements of the "manosphere" decrying it as an attempt to denigrate and replace men.

The UK already had an incident with mentally ill guy wanting to kill the queen. Partially because he felt an AI "girlfriend" encouraged him to do so.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/10/06/man-encouraged-by-a...

So it isn't that impossible to believe some user somewhere , divorced from reality , will do something bad to a real person that they might not have done had they not tried it with these dolls/bots.

I don't think they should be banned(although ones emulating children probably should be), but it's worth debating it.

jijijijij8• 2 years ago

A sex toy is a sex toy, not a substitute for a human being.

If you'd frame the topic differently, maybe "women/feminist movements" wouldn't "always react furiously". Why even bring that up? Regardless of truth in that statement, considering crime statistics, a woman has every right to be scared, when a man views them categorically, as something that can be replaced by a doll companion, at all. Same with AI porn, the concept of consensual sexuality becomes even more distant. That's scary, as we're not living in a world where that's all fun and games. At least in Germany, most murder victims are still women. Objectification and feelings of possession is a major cause for femicides.

Super cool, if your fetish is sex robots. But even bringing up "loneliness" and "choice" ... idk, man.

PedroBatista2• 2 years ago

This comment is one of the reasons I've said topic has "more mines than an Ukrainian field"..

Statements like "Regardless of truth in that statement.." say much if not everything.

At least in Germany, most murder victims are still women.

This is objectively not true, for ex. in 2019 of the the 623 murders, 347 were male, 276 were female.

Super cool, if your fetish is sex robots. But even bringing up "loneliness" and "choice" ... idk, man.

This statement reveals either a profound ignorance, a extreme lack of empathy or both.

I understand if you come here with an axe to grind, but it's not productive in any way and this conversation will change nothing.

Just a side note about "the concept of consensual sexuality", go do some research about the most consumed ( by far ) adult literature by women.

Also, are we back to the 80s "conversation" about video games and their affect on children? quite the progress...

ToucanLoucan5• 2 years ago

I'm guessing I'd be one of the liberal voices he hand-waves away. He lists off numerous things I feel are worth considering:

- That sex-bots offer a denuded, perfectly submissive woman to a man: a woman that exists entirely for his pleasure, and should he desire a new one, is 100% disposable, or even resellable

- That the fact that sex-bots designed to appear as children is not a coincidence to the former thing, and seems to be part of the draw, at least for a fair slice of the market

I also feel the numerous comparisons to dildos in this thread really alarming. This isn't just a sex toy. This is, at some point and seemingly what their market truly wants, a simulated human being with which one may have a relationship: except that relationship is entirely one-sided, and will never challenge, grow, or pose a problem to the person in question. I don't think having full and complete access to a perfectly simulated person that you can do literally anything to and any time with zero objection or consequences will be good for anyone's mental health. We can't even help but form relationships and strong emotions for people on fucking television, do you really mean to tell me that a fully three dimensional, simulated human being, in front of you, that you can touch, smell, hold, and fuck are going to somehow not affect us in the slightest?

gitfan864• 2 years ago

Like all technologies, there will be risks and negative outcomes.

Just look at books. At some point a married woman read a romance book that depicted an unrealistic male character who wanted nothing but to satisfy any desire of the woman in the book. And after reading that book she became unhappy in her marriage because her husband would never be like that character.

Is that a bad thing?

jevoten3• 2 years ago

It's a bad thing if it offers some measure of comfort to icky people.

ToucanLoucan is concerned about child-like sex-bots - would he prefer their buyers instead focus their attention on human children? Or does he believe sexuality is malleable, that they can be sent to conversion therapy and become attracted to adult women instead? In which case we might witness some mental gymnastics to explain why conversion therapy only works on sexualities frowned upon by society, but is ineffective pseudoscientific abuse for any of the accepted or celebrated sexualities.

ToucanLoucan5• 2 years ago

I don't think such large questions are served properly with "good" and "bad," context is important. If, for example, the woman in question had no previous knowledge of what a proper relationship looked like, and realized that she was depressed because her husband worked all day, drank beer all night, berated her every effort at making him happy, and couldn't fuck worth a damn, and left him and found a new husband that made her happy? Then I'd say that's terrific. If on the other hand the woman in question was a satisfied, happy homemaker, with a husband who did all he could to make her happy, but then was given an artificial AI sex-bot boyfriend because her husband needed to travel overseas for several months, and she became so enamored with this machine that it undermined an otherwise healthy and productive relationship because no human being can ever truly match up with a simulated one who's sole reason for existence is making another person happy, and as a result, their marriage fractured apart and their children grew up in a split set of two poor households as a result? I call that pretty shitty.

I'm not saying ban sex-bots. I'm saying we should be asking why this is a thing people want and maybe try addressing the actual social ills here.

antisthenes• 2 years ago

If I read your post full of hyperbole and double-standards, I'd hand-wave it away too.

You simply choose to cherry pick certain realities that paint men in a worse light and women in a better light when it comes to preferences for sex toys.

Even if we give you the benefit of the doubt that you are arguing in good faith, you still haven't given a compelling reason as to why it's your goddamn business in the first place what sex toys people use?

ToucanLoucan5• 2 years ago

It's my business insofar as I'm a member of a society which is, on the whole, becoming ever more atomized and anti-social with itself. People retreat into technology because relationships are hard, and relationships are always and will likely forever be hard. People are frightened of their neighbors, people are afraid of being bullied online, people are stressed as fuck because our society is so difficult to live in, and then aside of that, we have a whole cadre of tech companies selling market solutions to our various social ills: shit like AI girlfriends, sex bots, AI pornography, which while yes, do mitigate a level of the immediate symptoms of those ills for their users, also incentivize people to not improve the world, to not integrate into the communities they crave, to not improve themselves as to create intimacy with a chosen spouse(s), but instead to recede even further into their dens where nothing is challenging, nothing is hard, and nothing requires work, but at the same time it doesn't reward you, it doesn't help you grow. It's feeling good without the things that make feeling good a good thing. It's a pale imitation of the human experience.

I don't care if you have a sex toy, I have a whole fuckin tote bin of them. I'm not concerned about the toys. I'm concerned about the people who seem to be in a situation where they believe all they can have is toys. That depresses and worries me.

yareal2• 2 years ago

Many things are discussed in that article, from toys that are really fancy fleshlights to chat ai that poses as a sexualized minor.

I find the sexualization of minors, even mock minors, to be reprehensible and we should consider shutting that down.

But the rest of it is basically proposing steadily increasingly accurate (or alien) versions of fleshlights. Increasingly fancy toys for people to use by themselves or with their partners.

We are not now, not likely will we be in decades, capable of producing something even remotely close to a "simulated human". The concerns there are valid, but as likely to pass as "I'm really worried about people getting access to black magic". Yes, it would be bad if it came to pass and yes, people absolutely want it, but it's not real.

tekla• 2 years ago

I'm pretty sure that the exact same arguments were made when I was killing cops en masse in GTA2, but I mostly think we turned out fine.

belorn5• 2 years ago

Naturally it will have an effect, some which will be negative.

Now that schools has started to utilize AI for teaching, how will children be effected? The school period and teacher-student relationship is a critical part of growing up and developing functional and healthy adults, and replacing it with a cold one-sided interaction done in isolation can only be destructive to peoples mental and physical health. Even if the teaching tools could be made into perfect simulated teachers, the lack of the human connection is a major danger.

We can also see the same thing with AI doctors, with worse medical outcomes as a result. People need human relationships and connections, especially during periods of needs. There are plenty of researcher (already published and will likely be published in the future) on the harm that AI/remote doctors has on mental health and outcomes.

All this come however at a crash against a reality that not all children get great teacher-student relationships. Not all patient get good doctors. Some don't even get any teacher or doctor. During covid, some doctors did more harm by being physical near their patients than if they did not do anything at all. A robot/ai/word-for-human-replacement will likely be worse than a human, but they can also benefit people when the lack of alternatives are worse. People having simulated relationship with generated AI models might be worse than most real human relationship, but it also might be much better than some of the less-healthy human relationships that people might get as an alternative.

jevoten3• 2 years ago

Privacy, personal freedom, absence of victims, even absence of interaction with any other being (human or animal), will not keep society from interfering if they can portray the perpetrator as a modern-day witch.

jacknews• 2 years ago

IMHO There's no good reason for 'feminists' to be upset about robot brothels. If anything, it would re-inforce the divide between fantasy and reality.

The only explanation is that it's competition. It might sate some men, expecially singles, reducing their craving for sex with real women, and therefore it's 'value', and the effort they're willing to expend to obtain it.

delichon4• 2 years ago

Incrementally better pornography is incrementally better at suppressing fertility rates by satisfying sexual hunger with lower odds of producing zygotes. Robot sex is a kind of better pornography. But there are feminist natalists and anti-natalists, and that's only a problem for the former.

jijijijij8• 2 years ago

You think "feminist natalist" think about men's sexual health like they're cattle?

I don't know about you, but I never met a single "feminist", or woman, who was involved with a stranger man's fertility at all.

dandare• 2 years ago

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.

What does it mean to be a Shapiro Professor?

delichon4• 2 years ago

"The J. B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Fellowship is an organization that donates a lot of money to George Washington University's law school. Two of the faculty chairs are named after them. Jonathan Turley, and also Robert Glicksman, who is the J. B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law." -- https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/979js7/w...

greenyoda• 2 years ago

Or, more generally:

An endowed professorship (or endowed chair) is a position permanently paid for with the revenue from an endowment fund specifically set up for that purpose. To set up an endowed chair generally costs between US$1 and $5 million at major research universities. Typically, the position is designated to be in a certain department. The donor might be allowed to name the position. Endowed professorships aid the university by providing a faculty member who does not have to be paid entirely out of the operating budget, allowing the university to either reduce its student-to-faculty ratio, a statistic used for college rankings and other institutional evaluations, or direct money that would otherwise have been spent on salaries toward other university needs. In addition, holding such a professorship is considered to be an honor in the academic world, and the university can use them to reward its best faculty or to recruit top professors from other institutions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_endowment#Endowed_pr...

Robotic "Companions" Are Testing the Scope of Privacy and Sexual Freedom

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