archaeologist and this is me age 3 about
to embark and wherefores excavation and
I became an archaeologist but and please
excuse the pun there were plenty of
those in my talk I didn’t think there
was any future in it and so to avoid my
career being in ruins I decided to
specialize and so I went back to
university and I did a master’s degree
and then a PhD in computer science my
archaeology is the study of human
activity through the objects and the
architecture of the past
whereas computer science is the creation
of new technologies like the present and
it’s about the future so you don’t think
that have a lot in common but actually
what interests me is the intersection of
these things the changes that we see
through time when new technologies are
introduced to our societies for the past
10 years I’ve been working in
human-computer interaction and
artificial intelligence at Goldsmiths
University of London lately I’ve been
working on sex robots my parents are so
proud of me um so it’s quite niche and
when I say sex robots it’s really a
shorthand for all kinds of Technology
that relates to intimacy so it covers
topics like psychology philosophy
interactivity attachment our hopes our
fears and love it’s about forming
intimate relationships with machines and
with artificial intelligence night sex
and artificial intelligence might sound
like a strange mix but they have some
things in common
sex is central to being human it’s how
we all got here it’s a fundamental
motivation of humans to pass on their
DNA this Maps really nicely to
traditional ideas about artificial
intelligence where people were trying to
program machines that had goal-oriented
here view but there’s another side to it
too there’s a branch of cognitive
science that looks at embodiment how we
use our physical bodies to explore the
world and make sense of it well you
don’t get much more embodied than sex
now for the purposes of my research I’m
defining sex as any type of enacted
sexual behavior so it’s sexual activity
that releases the chemicals that make us
feel good the oxytocin serotonin the
endorphins it’s a bite pleasure
it doesn’t necessarily involve
penetration it doesn’t necessarily mean
reaching orgasm it’s not heteronormative
and it’s not just penis meets vagina so
anything goes no the robot in sex robots
robots are embodied they have a physical
place in the world and some of them have
artificial intelligence in them a robot
is simply a machine that can automate
certain actions and we already have them
around us we have domestic robots in our
homes like robot vacuum cleaners they
work on factory production lines there
are care robots there are robots
carrying out surgery and hospitals to a
higher standard than a human can and we
have robots that we use for
companionship as well now the thing
about robots today is that none of the
robots that we have are sentient none of
them are conscious none of them are
self-aware that’s a really long time off
if it happens at all their big arguments
in the field of artificial intelligence
about whether that will happen so what
about these sex robots then well I see
them as a form of sex technology and you
may be familiar with sex technology you
may be intimately familiar with sex
technology I’m not taking a poll and it
could be things like sex Hardware sex
tech hardware which is sex toys and this
what you can you know buy on the high
street it might be a sex tech software
which are things like apps perhaps
hookup apps apps for intimacy to explore
desires it could be content like virtual
reality which now has a
of poor iners content and I think sex
robots fits under that you might
recognize some of these ships now we
know that phallic objects that look a
lot like sex toys were being created
thirty thousand years ago thirty
thousand these are actually from 12,000
years ago and no they may not have had a
sexual purpose and academics and
archaeologists will argue a lot about
this but I’m saying don’t overlook the
obvious here okay
academia tends to be a bit squeamish
when it comes to talking about sex we
see these ships right the way through
time resulting in the sort of sex toys
we have today like vibrators the
aesthetic of current sex toys is really
changing though because we have the
potential of new forms of interaction
that’s sort of unlimited by physical
realism and so we’re seeing sex toys
that are breaking new boundaries
they’ve become beautiful they’ve become
customisable programmable there are sex
toys today that wouldn’t look out of
place on a shelf in your living room
honestly you wouldn’t tell the
difference I have lots in my office and
people hardly notice so how long have
sex robots been around well actually we
can trace it way way back back to the
earliest written history Pandora known
for her box was the first human woman in
Greek myth she was created by the gods
they met her and they give her an
artificial intelligence she was known as
the beautiful evil she was condemned for
her sexuality and actually that’s a
trope that we see playing throughout
time we see it down the years this idea
of the seductive artificial lover who’s
very a Rotter sized female
Shipley obedient just a little edge of
danger these guides which is the term
for a female humanoid robot they’re
designed to play to cultural stereotypes
and we see it in sci-fi books we seen it
in films like Maria in Metropolis
ever in ex machina it’s far far less
common to see a sex robot in male form
now there’s a number of reasons for this
it might be socialized bias in that
there weren’t that many women authors or
filmmakers before this it may be that
there are fewer women in tech that’s a
big problem we know that the people who
make the tech shape the form of attack
it may be because there’s been a massive
issue in that their women’s sexuality
has been disregarded for centuries what
I want to explore is how can we create
sex technology that is diverse fair
equal and unbiased if you want to buy a
there aren’t really any in existence but
we have our mechanized sex dolls and
companies that are promising to put
artificial intelligence into those dolls
they are poseable silicone woman shaped
objects they’re pretty much like a bad
shot mannequin from the 1980s so who
buys them well the US company that
manufactures this particular doll says
they’re bought by people who are lonely
and isolated they call them love dolls
rather than sex dolls they say that
they’re brought by therapists and
psychiatrists by families for adult
children who are socially excluded now
we know from years of study that humans
get attached to nonliving things such a
particular effect known as the
Tamagotchi effect after those little
virtual pets that people had in the
mid-90s some people tried to kill those
pets deliberately but people get
attached to them and we see it in
studies about care and companion robots
and nursing homes we see it with our
digital assistants in the homes sri
cortana alexa we see people arguing with
their GPS systems there are actually
anecdotes of soldiers in battle who have
funerals for their bomb disposal robots
when they’re damaged beyond repair
we also know that human-like robots can
really freak us out
okay so this is a thing called the
uncanny valley and it’s basically that
the more lifelike something looks the
wider the gulf gets the more recouped
out by it until it crosses that boundary
into being indistinguishable from us now
there are some theories about why that
might be and it might be because
something that seems looks human looks
alive but isn’t alive makes us think of
death so we’re a long way off we’re a
long way off from closing that gap and
from crossing the uncanny valley we’re a
long way from the TV shows of West world
or humans so I want to think about what
other forms that sex robots could take
what’s the point in pursuing this human
angle what about all the technology we
have that allows us to explore things
what about different textures different
shapes different movements these days
we’ve got smart fabrics we’ve got a
textiles that respond to touch so we
could make a cuddly robots we can make a
sensual one that can be stroked and
could stroke us back a lot of us are
wearing technology that can track our
bodies things like health trackers that
can measure our heartbeat or our skin
responses you can buy off-the-shelf
equipment that read your brainwaves what
if we took that data that we get from
those trackers and we fed it into some
form of sex technology so that we have
something very individual that would
respond to our needs can we abstract
these sex robots the way we abstract sex
toys and can we make something that’s
really beautiful and malleable and
unique it’s one of the benefits because
I don’t think it’s just this dystopian
vision of a solitary man addicted to his
robot girlfriend we know that sex has a
really wide range of well-being measures
associated with it now not everyone
wants to have sex but there are people
who do and who aren’t able to there are
sexual surrogates who are people working
with clients and sex therapists who will
engage with these clients actually to
work on physio
chuckle and psychological issues that
the clients have perhaps that’s a place
where our technology could be applied
there’s a sex tech company in the UK
they make what they term a guy breeder
and it’s a sex toy that allows men with
spinal cord injuries to reach orgasm can
also be used for a reptile dysfunction
and the really nice thing about that
tech is it can be used by anyone and
this is a great thing about accessible
technology if you make your technology
accessible everybody in society can
benefit from it we’ve got an aging
population in the developed world the
English longitudinal study of aging has
shown that people are having sex in
their 70s 80s and 90s and yet we have a
care crisis and people end up going into
care homes and nursing homes where sex
becomes way down the list of priorities
in their life but maybe they want that
maybe we can provide technology that
lets them have an active sex life sex
robots could be used therapeutically to
treat sex offenders there’s been a study
at the University of Montreal to use
virtual reality to rehabilitate
rehabilitate sex offenders but before
you think I’m too naive and optimistic
I do recognize there are problems around
we might go out with a bang these are
headlines that arose from a conference I
organized in December around love and
sex with robots which the media loved I
think that’s a little bit too negative
but there are there are issues one of my
big concerns is a right D etre so a lot
of smart technology collects data and
it’s massive massive amounts of personal
information that’s being taken and
stored and hopefully is safe but you
never know what happens if there’s a
data breach who’s got your data who owns
it there’s already been a lawsuit in the
u.s. around data collected from a smart
vibrator there are other legal and
ethical ramifications what happens if we
try to treat sex offenders with sex
robots and instead of it being a proxy
it becomes an escalation to further
abuse there needs to be a lot more work
in this now a big question that people
ask will humans become redundant I don’t
think they’re well it’s a normal fear
that we see repeated throughout time
when the printing press has developed we
were told that books would be a threat
due to the sheer amount of information
that people will be exposed to
newspapers were going to lead to
complete social isolation the television
was going to destroy family life we
treat new technology with wariness
because of the unknown but I have a
degree of optimism we’re living in a
technological age we can’t avoid it
we’re human in a world that’s
increasingly full of machines artificial
intelligence is integrating seamlessly
into our lives so seamlessly that we
don’t even notice it perhaps our robotic
counterparts are the key to happiness if
we ship them in the right way maybe it’s
time to literally embrace the robots
thank you you