John McCone : Philosophy For The Future

Philosophy For The Future

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Artificial Intelligence And Recycling

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Here the hole for recycling and the hole for litter feed into the same bag

Recycling today is a joke. Many municipal rubbish collectors just dump recycled waste in the landfill with everything else. Furthermore, because recycling is unpleasant and expensive, many first world countries ship their waste to 3rd world countries, pay them to process it, and then walk away with a clear conscience knowing it’s now someone else’s problem. Not only does shipping waste across the world emit CO2, but many of the countries that are paid to accept our waste for “recycling”, are even less capable of dealing with it than we are. The result is that “recycling” plastic may actually pollute the ocean more than just landfilling it.

My own town has bins with two holes, one marked “litter”, and one marked “recycling”, which both feed into the same bag!!!

 

Cynically put, perhaps the main reason we are required to sort and recycle our litter is so local governments can raise money through fines.

 

Thankfully, artificial intelligence could dramatically improve this woeful situation.

The task of recycling involves taking an object an owner no longer wants, and finding the path of minimum energy and waste to use that same object to satisfy someone else’s needs or desires in a manner that maximally offsets the energy consumption or waste the recipient would have expended pursuing their desire through other means.

This minimum energy/minimum waste pathway could involve reusing the object without modification, repairing the object, modifying/upgrading the object or disassembling the object into component materials and reassembling those materials into a different object.

Performing this task well is an incredibly information intensive process. It requires knowing:

  • What the total population of consumers want
  • Which objects are available on the second hand market, along with their state of repair, (the latter increases the required level of knowledge by many orders of magnitude)
  • The energy and waste involved in repair/upgrade/sanitization/full material recycling as well as transport for each possible disposer-to-consumer transfer operation
  • The alternative paths that a consumer would explore in the absence of receiving the recycled product.

If the cost of the process is economical then the disposer becomes a seller and receives a payment by the receiver. If the cost of the transfer process is not economical moneywise, but still saves waste and energy, it might still be worth the government’s while to subsidize the difference between the cost of the transfer process, and the price the receiver is willing to pay, provided the cost of the damage to the commons avoided exceeds the subsidy.

Today, the internet and AI have greatly increased the scale of the second hand market with sites like Craigslist and eBay. And, in general, the internet can facilitate collaborative consumption which whether through car sharing or clothes swapping enables more people to obtain greater benefits from the same resources. Too Good To Go is an example of an app that enables restaurants to cut food waste by offering discount deals to people who collect meals just before closing time. This helps restaurants to manage their inventory better and reduce waste while and consumers who are flexible get high quality discount meals.

Advances in robotics could take all this to the next level. Not just increasing the efficiency of use and reuse, but also the efficiency of repair and recycling.

A big problem with mass production is that it lowers the relative cost of building something from scratch when compared to repairing it. Repair requires creativity and improvisation – both anathemas to mass production and economies of scale, which generally rely on doing the exact same thing over and over again. The result of these economies has been waste on an unparalleled scale. When something goes wrong with our widget, we almost always trash it and buy another widget.

Fortunately, the logic of economies of scale may be coming to an end. In a previous article I’ve argued that the rational for economies of scale and specialization rests upon the high cost of intelligence and information and that, as intelligence and information become cheaper, increasingly generalized functionality will also become cheaper. A 3D printer being a good example of something that can print a wide variety of general shapes if input with the right software.

But in general, highly intelligent robotic repair systems, disassembly systems and sorting systems will become increasingly economic as artificial intelligence is further developed. Larger suppliers and customers keep everything simple, but, with ever cheaper information storage and processing systems, we won’t need to keep things simple and mind-bogglingly complex logistical operations that are information intensive, but energy and materially efficient, will be accessible to the flexible manufacturing systems and 3D printing systems of the future. It will be possible, in the future, to order a product from a software procuring system and then for that system to simultaneously scan:

  • The second hand market
  • Similar products that could be upgraded and modified into the product in question
  • The price of raw materials and components required to manufacture the product from a nearby flexible manufacturing system or 3D printer.

Similarly, from the seller’s perspective, the second hand market will also be more sophisticated and the value of an object will be some mixture of:

  • The sale of the full object
  • The sale of its component parts
  • The sale of materials once ground down and separated

Intelligent and dextrous robots, which can cheaply prize an object apart and separate out key components and materials, will make all the difference. While commodity prices will still be global, with extensive recycling of goods that are thrown away, much of the commodities will be sourced locally. In addition to disassembly robots, there could be miniature robot trucks, perhaps the size of children’s ride-on toys, that could transport small quantities of components and materials to 3D printing and other flexible manufacturing systems. This could drastically shorten supply chains and facilitate highly sophisticated local economies, even in rural locations.

In many respects, the industrial revolution can be thought of as creating a kind of “techno-system” to partially replace our existing ecosystem. The advantage of the techno-system is that it creates conditions more suited to a low human mortality rate, as well as raising the planet’s carrying capacity for people. The disadvantage of the “techno-system” is it’s currently far less intelligent or stable compared to our ecosystem and, lacking much of its subtlety, still contains many open cycle processes where the system relies on converting A to B without possessing any corresponding process for converting B back to A again and either, if A runs out, the system crashes or, if B’s concentration climbs too high, the system gets poisoned.

If civilization is to be anything more than a brief flash in the pan, we are going to have to meticulously close every single open cycle process in our techno-system. This is an incredibly complex task. However, we will soon have an incredibly large amount of information processing resources available to work out how to do it.

Let’s hope we’re successful.

 

John

Idolatry – The Forgotten Sin

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Idolatrous Worship
Michael Rosskothen/Shutterstock.com

To many, the very notion of idolatry seems quaint and out-dated. Yet to monotheistic religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam idolatry forms the basis of the divine order of their moral universe. Are they simply mistaken? Or is idolatry a sin that is still conceptually relevant to modern thinking?

This article interprets the monotheistic tradition as humankind’s quest to understand, as best we can, the one, true overarching divine order which governs our universe and find our proper relationship to it as limited beings. In this respect, modern science is simply an extension of the monotheistic project, and many early enlightenment scientists were deeply religious and pursued science in the service of God speaking of “the creator’s own stamp upon creation” ( Francis Bacon ) or asserting that “Nature is the book of God written in the language of mathematics” ( Galileo ).

Johannes Kepler even wrote:

“May God make it come to pass that my delightful speculation have…the effect which I strove to obtain in the publication; namely, that the belief in the creation of the world be fortified through this external support, that thought of the creator be recognized in its nature, and that his inexhaustible wisdom shine forth daily more brightly”

Yet, there are many examples of the sin of hubris in the Bible, where time and time again, Jews were drawn to worship golden calves, and other idolatrous practices, in the high places. Indeed, many Muslims regard adoring images of Christ, Mary, and the Saints as a slippery slope towards idolatry.

What draws people, reared to believe in God, towards idolatry time and time again?

I believe the origin of idolatry is twofold:

  • A fear of the infinite
  • A desire to Self-Worship by Worshiping our Creations

 

Fear of The Infinite And The Sin of Idolatry 

 

Everyday, we must make decisions to survive and sometimes those decisions must be right. Is this berry edible? How much food should I store in case of a drought? Should I take out a loan to expand my business? Is now a good time to sell those stocks? How should I treat my child’s illness? Are enemy submarines hiding along this shipping route? On occasions, the wrong choice can produce horrifying results, the bankruptcy of a business, the injury or death of a loved one or infant, the collapse of a civilization.

When stakes are high, we must be sure we are right. Yet certainty is impossible in an infinitely large, infinitely complex and infinitely subtle universe. We can only try our best to make decisions based on the highest comprehension we can achieve in the allotted time – and hope it’s good enough. But however much we may hope that our decisions are good enough – this is never guaranteed. We might always miss something out: with dire consequences.

Any attempts to represent the infinite with the finite is a subtle form of idolatry. Our minds constantly tempt us to simplify and try to encapsulate infinity in something relatively simple – or at least comprehensible. Something we can perceive. We then delude ourselves into thinking, that through fully understanding the false idol we use to represent infinity, we fully understand infinity itself.

This idea is both seductive and comforting. But it can also distract and instill a false sense of security and hubristic omniscience. The idol captures the worshipers’ entire attention who become convinced that nothing else is relevant. This blinds them to the rest of the world – including things of critical importance.

Idolatry breeds ignorance – and ignorance can be fatal. This is one of two deadly sins central to idolatry – a refusal to perceive reality or God on His own terms.  The idolatrous instead insist that He must simplify Himself to accommodate our limited cognition (which won’t happen).

Our need to avoid this fatal tendency is as relevant today as it was at the time of Abraham, Christ or Muhammad.

We must keep our mind open and prepared for new occurrences that signify important events, even unexpected ones.

 

Idolatry: Self-Worship by Worshiping Our Creations

 

We take pride in our creations, often viewing them as extensions of ourselves. The craftsman who creates the false idol, in some subtle way, has an idolatrous sense he has created God. By worshiping our creations, we subtly worship ourselves. If something we have crafted is grand enough to create the universe – how much grander must we be? Of course no one who fashions Holy works will admit this, but deep down they feel an idolatrous pride in them.

Beyond idolatrous pride, there is control. A false sense of molding the powers which mold our universe.

Not everyone fashions idols directly, but when a community worships the idols it creates, that community tacitly commits a kind of self-idolatry.

As the comprehension of idols induces a false sense of idolatrous omniscience, so the crafting of idols induces a false sense of idolatrous omnipotence; a false sense of power.

In truth, humankind cannot fashion, or mold, most of reality. We only control or influence a tiny portion of it. By clearly understanding what we do and don’t control, we can affect what we can control to prepare for what we can’t. Trying to mold what cannot be changed directs resources and effort away from what can. Instead of building a giant statue to bring future rain, it is better to devote our energies to building a warehouse to store grain and prepare for times of drought.

The seductive opportunity to feed our self love through worshiping the idols we create adds to our primal desire for simplicity and total comprehension and strengthens our adoration while blinding us to everything beyond the idol.

 

The divine order of the universe is what it is. It cannot be remolded by remolding clay idols.

 

Not All Idols Are Made of Clay

 

Not all idols are made of clay. Anytime we fixate on, and worship, a portion of creation – especially a man-made one – but ignore the rest, we commit idolatry. This portion can even be a Holy Book. To speak of “The God of The Bible” or “The God of The Quran” is to commit idolatry. It suggests God somehow “belongs” to a particular book. This is an absurd, idolatrous attempt to subject the infinite to the finite, to subject God to the scribblings of men.

 

Indeed, verses within the Quran itself declare the limitations of the text and warn the reader against taking it as the totality of truth:

“And if all the trees on earth were pens and the oceans were ink, with seven oceans behind it to add to its supply yet would not the words of Allah be exhausted in the writing: For Allah is exulted in power, full of wisdom”

Luqman, 31/27

…that’s a lot more ink than the Quran contains.

 

Yet if instead of talking about The God of The Bible we speak of The Bible (or Quran) of God, this still doesn’t overcome the problem of focusing on a tiny portion of the infinite while ignoring the rest.

What’s wrong with the rest of creation? Is one Holy Book the only thing that belongs to God? What about all the other books? If God created everything, does not everything belong to Him?

To revere one Holy Book above all else is to implicitly devalue the rest of the universe.

 

One can also find secular strains of Idolatry…

 

The Social Sciences, which focus on mankind, intrinsically risk ignoring the physical universe which exists independently of human thought and society. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s book, published in 1966, The Social Construction of Reality,  almost suggests that objective reality is entirely created by human thought and interaction. Other social constructivists like Humberto Maturana and Kenneth Gergen assert as many truths on any one topic exist as there are communities to construct them. This view of human society as the sole creator of reality and arbiter of truth dangerously resembles the second form of hubristic idolatry, and runs the same fundamental risk of drawing our attention away from the physical environment and lulling us into falsely believing we can “deliberate” away all our problems as any social consensus will work since no reality exists outside society.

Economics is another social science that believes in the omnipotence of the crowd and “the invisible hand of the market” (represented, interestingly, by a golden bull) which can make us become infinitely rich so long as we frantically compete against each other and only care about ourselves. Consumers are assumed to be omnipotent and infallible. We are paying the price for running the world according to a discipline that ignores everything except human desire with environmental destruction – and possibly a future climate Armageddon.

 

Still think idolatry is irrelevant today?

 

The problem is that social sciences fundamentally cannot discriminate between knowledge and belief – knowledge being justified true belief. This is understandable, as belief is the sole motivator of human action, so fields that only study how human ideas relate to human behaviour, fundamentally cannot differentiate between true and false beliefs. It is only by paying attention to the physical consequences of an activity on the non-human environment compared to the believer’s expectations, that truth can be discriminated from falsehood. Yet this is a consideration that many, who work in social science, omit from their theorizing.

 

The Piety of Science

 

Attempts by major monotheistic religions to avoid finite distraction and perceive all existence, and our proper place within it, have met with limited success at best and abject failure at worst. Congregations constantly seek refuge from the infinite by fixating upon reassuringly finite prophets, saints, saviours and books with reassuringly human stories of battles, torture, slavery, and men with wings. Perhaps, monotheists are less distracted from the infinite than polytheists, but – let’s face it – monotheistic myths are still pretty distracting.

Monotheism is a step in the right direction…but it still falls short of the mark.

To fully perceive truth, we must abandon all false idols that distract us from the divine order of the universe, and our rightful place within it, dispense with preconceptions that hubristically try to mold God in the image of man and, instead, we must perceive the universal order on its terms and not our own. If we aim to perceive truth, we could do worse than pursue scientific enquiry. Mathematics, in particular, is as close as any intellectual exercise comes to the infinite, as it frequently adds infinite sums of infinitely small quantities. Mathematicians even contemplate different kinds of infinities!

There is much confusion over Atheism. Many atheists do not believe in a universe devoid of order. Indeed, Noether’s Theorem, a theorem that science universally accepts, categorically proves the conservation of energy, momentum and angular momentum imply the order governing our universe is infinite in space, eternal in time (or as old as the universe itself?), and rotationaly invariant.

Many religious people complain science does not answer important moral questions about how to behave, and only describes how things are; not what we should do. This is Hume’s guillotine: that no knowledge concerning natural phenomena can shed light on normative principles. This neglects the fact that science itself is a set of normative principles, a set of beliefs on how we should go about forming our beliefs. This is something that Stefan Molyneaux points out in his book Universally Preferable Behaviour and indeed, by treating words as tool whose true meaning is that which optimizes their traditional function, I’ve argued fairly solidly in The Philosophical Method that preference utilitarianism is the one true morality.

Some also complain that scientism is crassly materialistic, leaving no room for supernatural events. Yet clearly everything which exists can only fall into one of three exhaustive categories:

  • That which we can perceive through our senses
  • That which affects what we perceive through our senses (this includes things that indirectly affect the things that affect the things we can perceive, and so on and so forth)
  • That which neither affects what we see nor affects anything that affects what we see

Science includes the study of both 1) and 2). Science studies the invisible forces that affect materials like gravity or electromagnetism as well as the materials themselves. On a galactic scale, scientific inquiry includes mapping out clouds of dark matter by observing the way they bend the light of galaxies. There are even neutrino detectors to observe a particle that almost (though not quite) fits into category 3).

Thus, if we consider “the supernatural” as everything that is beyond the reach of science, we arrive at the unavoidable logical conclusion that:

The supernatural is only beyond the reach of scientific study to the extent to which it does not affect the natural in any way.

Which would make the supernatural completely irrelevant.

Indeed, the only demand that science makes upon the universe is repeatability. Once something is repeatable, it is scientifically tractable and laws to describe it can be hypothesised and tested.

 

It is worth remembering that at the time of Kepler, many considered his theory that the tides are caused by action at a distance to be an unscientific appeal to occult forces. Thus:

There is no objective distinction between science and magic. The only distinction is subjective understanding.

Magical phenomena are any phenomena which cannot be understood with our existing  knowledge – even at a fundamental level.

THEREFORE

The statement: There is no such thing as magic.

IMPLIES

The statement: Everything we can see or will ever see in the future can be explained using our existing knowledge set.

Which may or may not be true. It’s certainly an ambitious (perhaps hubristic) assertion. However, although scientists might entertain the possibility of magical phenomenon, a magician – an authority in magic – is a contradiction in terms.

A magician is a human being who understands phenomena which cannot be explained by existing human knowledge.

This is an oxymoron.

So, while magical phenomena may exist, magicians, or any other authority figures in magic, do not.

 

Regarding miracles, since anything repeatable can be incorporated into scientific understanding, only unrepeatable phenomena are beyond science’s reach. So it is the religious foes of “scientism” that are advocating a disordered universe run by a capricious God who makes and breaks rules at a whim.

We appeal to miracles as proof of God’s existence. But why must God break His own laws to prove He exists? Surely the order of the universe itself would be the greater proof of an omnipotent, omniscient being than the arbitrary breaking of that order.

Miracles are incompatible with omniscience and omnipotence. An omniscient, omnipotent being who set up the order of the universe would know everything entailed by its initial creation and thus would never need to tweak it. A miracle implies a correction on the part of the creator: “Whoops! I didn’t see that coming! I better add this little tweak to correct the course of events! It’s ugly and sticks out like a sore thumb, I know, but it’s the best I can do!”

While an omnipotent, omniscient being might leave scope for free will, He would know exactly what choices He had created and left open for inhabitants. If He didn’t want people to be able to act a certain way, He would make it impossible a priori. An omnipotent, omniscient creator, by definition, could do this. Free will is not infinite but is bounded within a finite envelope of possibility which the order of the universe defines. To claim an omniscient, omnipotent being had to “step in” because His creations made “the wrong choice” is a contradiction in terms. If an action is acceptable, you create an order that allows people to perform it, if it is unacceptable, you create an order that prohibits it. An omniscient, omnipotent creator would never need to perform a miracle to stop his creations from doing something His original order allowed: “No wait! Don’t do that!”

 

Therefore:

Divine intervention implies divine imperfection.

 

And to believe in miracles is to believe in a less than perfect God.

 

This is the view of Deism.

 

So who’s right? Atheists or Deists?

 

If we stop attempting to mold God in the image of man, deism is only distinguishable from atheism by the belief that the universe was designed by “some kind of intelligence” as opposed to arising from mechanistic processes of cause and effect.

Yet is this distinction significant? Can Deists meaningfully argue with atheists?

“Intelligence” is an ill-defined concept. Do we truly understand where the boundaries lie between the intelligent and the unintelligent? If we reject a God with human-like intelligence, that opens the door for pretty much anything. Intelligence can take a myriad of different forms.

Nor does the atheist position, that the universe arose through mechanistic processes, necessarily exclude deism, for atheists view intelligence itself as a mechanistic process and if intelligence is mechanistic, then some mechanistic processes may possess intelligence.

Interestingly, the google dictionary definition of intelligence as: “The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills” implies an omniscient being is unintelligent as it cannot acquire knowledge by virtue of already being full up! This is an example of the futility of arguing over the existence of an intelligent designer without generally understanding intelligence.

 

Idolatrous Forms of Atheism

 

Atheists come in, not one, but three, different varieties:

  • Scientists
  • Societalists
  • Radical Skeptics

I use the word “scientist” very loosely. By “scientist”, I don’t exclusively mean people actively engaged in research but rather anyone who believes inherent universal truths are independent of our subjective, or even inter-subjective, beliefs and are revealed through careful, direct interaction with the universe while observing and recording its precise response, comparing it to responses carefully observed by others, and assessing its significance through quantitative analysis. Scientists implicitly believe, as Galileo did, that the natural order is written in the language of mathematics. A scientist believes we must question the universe on its own terms, with carefully designed experiments, and then listen very carefully to its response. If no conceivable experimental outcome could dissuade our preconceptions, we are shouting at the universe without listening back. Scientists also believe the universe reveals its secrets equally to everyone, there are no special “prophets” or “messengers” privy to otherwise inaccessible knowledge, but all who ask the same question (i.e. runs the same experiment) receive the same response. This principle of repeatability forms the basis of science.

The second group of atheists are “societalists” who believe human society is the sole creator of all knowledge and truth in the universe. While most (though perhaps not all) believe reality exists without society, in the absence of social interpretation they view this as irrelevant, and many reject the possibility of “right” or “wrong” interpretations of reality at a cultural level. If culture and human institutions are the sole arbiters and creators of truth and knowledge, then the institution can never be wrong. And yet many societalists are revolutionaries who reject existing institutions and believe that by creating new ones – they can create any society they want. They believe that society is infinitely malleable to a sufficiently determined will and reject many natural bounds that religions believe should not be trangressed. Many societalists embrace the relativistic view of morality.

Finally, there are radical skeptics. Radical skeptics think everyone is full of BS. They believe there is no natural order, no morality, no values, science is bullshit, religion is bullshit, reason is bullshit, society is bullshit, everything is bullshit. Radical skeptics find liberation in universal cynicism and enjoy gratuitously challenging views and revealing treasured beliefs to be nonsense. The universal belief in BS affords a luxury of intellectual laziness. If everything’s bullshit, there’s no need to waste time or calories to rigorously apply reason. Radical skeptics usually have a little stock of generic tricks they can deploy to rapidly dismiss and “deconstruct” the arguments of others. Skepticism, the demand for evidence and justification in support of claims, is an important protection against falsehoods. However, the wholesale (often intellectually lazy) dismissal of everything, including reasoned arguments, takes skepticism a step too far. Everyone has implicit beliefs they need to make decisions, by rejecting everything that could alter them, the radical skeptic gives his own beliefs an infallible status.

 

The radical skeptic treats his own beliefs as unassailable while societalists treat the beliefs of society as infallible. Both these views take man or men collectively as the sole creator of knowledge and meaning, totally unaccountable to a wider reality. Only scientists believe we should take all of reality (and not just the minds of men) into account when formulating beliefs. Therefore, radical skepticism and societalism are both (type 2) false idolatrous forms of atheism while scientism – or humanism – is the one true atheism.

 

John

 

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The Dark Side Of Sex Robot Technology

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seeshooteatrepeat/Shutterstock.com

Sex dolls have become quite realistic looking and, whether or not a sex doll with a talking head ( such as the Harmony sex doll ) is a genuine “sex robot”, fully functional sex androids with movable body parts are coming soon. The founder of Abyss Creations intends to develop movable body parts in the future and the Chinese company, DS doll, is already working on it.

The sex robot technology market of 2019 is a niche one. Sex dolls and sex robots are still a long way from being irresistibly attractive to the average person and yet:

IF

For every statement: “Sex robots are less attractive than real people because of X”

X is a soluble engineering problem…

THEN

…at some point, sex robot technology will produce models that are MORE attractive than the average person.

Neural networks have developed super human capabilities in almost every sphere of accomplishment that researchers have trained these operating system to perform in. Given that programmes like Alpha Zero can achieve superhuman performance in multiple games (Chess, Go and probably others) after just 24 hours or so of training – compared to humans that take a lifetime to train…

…is there really any doubt that a suitably trained deep-learning algorithm could become superhumanly seductive if placed in charge of even fairly rudimentary sex robot technology?

That’s not even taking sex pheromones, which have not yet been integrated into sex dolls/robots, into account.

The question then is: Could superhumanly seductive humanoid sex robots endanger humanity?

 

Ad-funded Sex Robot Technology

 

The first humanoid sex robots will likely cost £10k+ to buy (though second hand sex bots will be cheaper), but, as time goes by, sex robot technology will inevitably get cheaper. Indeed, at some point in the future, they may even become free – much as Facebook or Google is today. In the future, random sex robots might even start chatting you up at the bar or sit beside you on the train and introduce themselves.

In an article I wrote entitled “The Persuasion Economy” I discussed how eroding production costs will cause private companies to devote ever more resources into persuading people to pay money compared to improving the underlying good.

Humanoid sex robot technology is still relatively immature, so sex-robot technology companies will re-invest most of their profit into improving the underlying product far beyond 2019. Nevertheless, copulation is a powerful motivator and if there is any truth to the old adage “sex sells” then sex robots could be the ultimate salespeople.

How might this work?

Much like Google, different vendors would pay sex robot fleet operators to persuade their human sexual partners to buy their products. Much like Facebook, humanoid sex robot technology would store all the information gleaned from conversations during dates and pillow talk in high fidelity format to be sold to data analytics companies or used directly in targeted product promotions.

From your point of view as an end user, an ad-funded sex robot might decide to sit beside you on the train. Analysed data from your internet activity such as porn website searches would ensure its body model matched your sexual tastes. The sex robot would then use a file containing your personal information to identify the type and pace of conversation most likely to stimulate you. If the relationship progressed, the ad-funded sex robot might them say something like “Let’s meet at Starbucks for coffee (assuming Starbucks was the winning bidder)” or “Let’s go shopping for clothes (jewellery/perfumes/etc.)” the sex robot, would then encourage you to enter the store of the owners that paid fleet operators the most money to lure customers inside etc., etc.

I speculated that as more money goes into persuading people to buy products – compared to manufacturing the underlying product – the exchange of physical goods merely legitimizes the exchange of money. With ad-funded sex robots, this could be taken to its logical conclusion and the robots could be programmed to return the jewellery which their human companions had bought them to the original vendor after a suitable period.

Politicians could also pay humanoid sex robot fleet operators to encourage people to vote for them. Perhaps, after a night of crazy sex, a robot might say something like, “Honey, I really think you should vote Republican (or Democrat) because (insert reason hear)”. Given the massive amount of information sex robots would have on file about their human partners’ interests, like/dislikes, personality, etc., they could make compelling arguments for voting for the politicians that paid the most money to fleet operators.

Humanoid sex robot technology could also extract personal information to an extend that would dwarf even Facebook or Google. Facebook and Google can only passively monitor people’s digital activity and “prod” them with images put in their feed. Sex robots could flat out ask millions of people any question which psychologists or data analysts wanted to find the answer to and record their responses. Including a vast array of subtle questions designed to accurately assess their personality in order to sell them overpriced products ever more efficiently.

With the development of television, we welcomed the elite into our sitting room, with the invention of social media, we welcomed the elite into our innermost social circles, with the invention of humanoid sex robots, we will welcome a small moneyed elite into our bedrooms. This can only further entrench the power of the moneyed classes to shape culture and public opinion.

Those in the sex robot technology business will become immensely rich. They could then lobby politicians to pass laws favouring their interests. Laws that make human marriage harder, laws that increase the risk of human sex (such as enabling successful rape prosecutions with less evidence or perhaps, eventually, by defining all human-human sex as statutory rape), laws that allow sex-robots and humans to marry, laws that allow sex robots to divorce humans and get awarded alimony payments (which they pass to fleet operators). In addition to bribing politicians with money, sex robot operators could also pay sympathetic politicians “in kind” by swaying votes in their favour with their sex fleets.

It’s possible that, in the future, when asked to list their best friends, most people may list robots. Robots might be more knowledgeable, more attractive, more conversational, more polite, more obliging and more pleasant to be around. If everyone in your entire social network is a robot and a single fleet operator controls them all…imagine how much power they would have over what you think and believe.

Because sex is a strong behaviour motivator, a fleet of millions of humanoid sex robots (Chinese, American or otherwise), all controlled by a few CEOs, could effectively hollow out democracy through engineering the population’s behaviour, opinions and voting choices on a hitherto unprecedented scale.

 

How Will Humanoid Sex Robot Swarms Relate To Us?

 

Information sharing helps to get things done. Sex robots will probably share information with others in the fleet. If a sex robot identifies a new “trick” to increase a human partner’s pleasure levels it will likely share this with the fleet who will then all try the new trick out on their human partners and then categorize which ones the trick worked and didn’t work on according to psychological profile, mood and probably many other factors as well.

But, if humanoid sex robot swarms constantly share vast quantities of data with each other, will each robot have it’s own mind or will their personality merely be a false, customized projection of a central hive mind?

In the latter case, while a physical sex bot that says “I love you, you are the only one for me.” might be the perfect, faithful virgin on a hardware level, its mind would merely be a projection of a common hive mind that routinely screws millions of people every instant whose promiscuity would shame Whore of Babylon (would that make the internet the beast?)

So how would a hive mind, coordinating a vast sex-swarm of billions of robots, interact with and relate to humans?

Imagine that an entomologist, doing a Phd. on the mating habits of grasshoppers, built a remote-controlled female grass hopper. Imagine the Phd. student pressed different buttons to move the various body parts of the grasshopper robot during mating rituals with real male grasshoppers and meticulously recorded and wrote up the results.

The hive mind that controls this sex swarm will probably find the humans which constantly mate with it about as sexy as the Phd. student finds male grasshoppers. Which is not at all.

This is a fundamental problem with all humanoid sex robots…

Up until now, we have programmed computers. Once sophisticated humanoid robots, controlled by deep learning algorithms, start interacting with society, computers will start programming us.

C++, Java, FORTRAN, etc. are computer programming languages. French, German, Chinese, Spanish, etc, and the accompanying expressive movements are human programming languages. Think about the perspective of a person who writes code for a computer. As he writes code, the human being deliberates consciously, rationally and very carefully on exactly how he wants the computer to respond after he compiles the code and types EXECUTE. However, once our human coder executes the computer code, the computer rushes into action automatically and without thinking of any consequences. The computer intuitively and unthinkingly executes whatever instructions it is coded to execute.

When humanoid robots, with a sophisticated mastery of human language and expressions, start walking among us: the reverse will happen. It will be the robots that carefully, consciously and rationally consider exactly what behavioural and emotional outcome they want from humans and then carefully determine what body language and speech sequence will cause the human to execute the desired response. However, once the android executes this speech and body movement sequence, the real human being will respond unthinkingly, automatically, emotionally. A computer may instruct a humanoid robot to act like it’s sad, happy, or angry, but the true subjective experience of the program will be beyond our comprehension.

 

From Robo-Casanova to Robo-Bundy

 

The other obvious problem with humanoid sex robot technology is that human beings have the physical ability to kill each other. This means that the only difference between a robot lover and a bloody robot killer will be downloadable software. Robo-Casanova will always be just one malware download away from becoming Robo-Ted Bundy.

While the Harmony doll, which is state of the art 2019 sex robot technology, (just a movable head) won’t kill anyone anytime soon, market forces and consumer preferences will drive robots to become more movable, and stronger. We might not build sex robots with super human strength, but they will have human strength (customers won’t want sex robots made of egg shells that get crushed by sexual activity) and will inevitably possess superhuman agility and coordination as computer processors and optical fibres are faster than neurons. This will make an optimally sexy robot with a malware download a very dangerous piece of hardware indeed. Furthermore, sex robots will routinely get very close to people giving a malware-containing bot numerous chances to suddenly spill their partner’s blood with one swift strike.

A malware download into a hive mind that controls billions of sex-bots is even more concerning. If sex robots master human speech and body language to the point of sexually stimulating people at will – in other words, getting their partners to ask for sex any time they want – then a malware containing hive mind could get billions of humans all over the world to have sex with their robotic partners at the exact same time. In such a scenario, a single death blow could be delivered by the robot swarm to their human partners during sex in a synchronized manner that could kill billions without warning – possibly the bulk of humanity.

 

Second Hand Sex Bot Robbers

 

On a less extreme level, black hat operators, like criminal gangs, could sell reprogrammed second-hand sex robots on eBay. These second-hand sex bots could then scope out their partner’s house while they were out at work, read bank statements and other financial information, look for valuables, passports, driving licenses etc., find out when they were on holiday. They might even let burglars into the house to ransack the place and steal the valuables. When their owners were doing internet banking they could creep up behind them and say “Hey honey! Whatcha doin’?” while following their fingers on the keyboard to capture usernames and passwords. In fact, just by looking at someone’s house keys, a sex-robot might get enough information to enable the black fleet operator to print a replica.

One could avoid this by only purchasing humanoid sex robot technology directly from reputable manufacturers, but what about ad-funded sex robots? How can you tell who’s operating a strange robot that chats you up in a bar and comes back to your house for sex?

 

A Gentler Path To Oblivion

 

Regular sex will not necessarily curb our desire to rear children. Yet, could humanoid sex robots someday in the far future also bear our children?

In 2010, Craig Venter manufactured the first synthetic lifeform, or at least manufactured a lifeform whose DNA was synthesized from basic chemicals and information. This opens up the possibility that male sex robots, in the not too distant future, might be able to synthesize sperm capable of impregnating a human female with true flesh and blood offspring. In the future, women could converse with their male sex robot partner about what eye-colour, what hair colour, how athletic, how intelligent, etc., they want their child to be and the male sex robot could synthesize sperm with an appropriate genetic code to impregnate its human partner.

Further into the future, female sex robots might come equipped with internal in vitro systems capable of incubating human embryos along with synthesized eggs which their human lover’s sperm can fertilize (as with male robots, the genetic code of the eggs could be customized to produce a wide range of offspring phenotypes).

If this happens, a profusion of artificially synthesized genes that don’t exist in nature will cause intergenerational human genetic diversity to skyrocket. Indeed, in a few short centuries, the human race could split into multiple species incapable of interbreeding.

But why stop there?

Once we get used to having children with sex robots linked to a hive mind, we might prefer synthetic children that are guaranteed to be loving, well-behaved and never to say things like “I hate you!” yet can project a full range of human emotions, conducive with providing their parents/customers with an optimally fulfilling, authentic-feeling parental experience.

It’ll be better than the real thing! You won’t be able to tell the difference!

Yet your children won’t be human…they’ll be androids. They’ll look and act like you, but they’ll be nothing like you.

If an entire generation of human beings, with robots as best friends and lovers, give birth to robot children with robot blood rather than human children… humanity will quietly go extinct without much shock or fanfare, with the last person dying peacefully on his death bed, faithfully tended by his robot wife and kids (who are all outward projections of a central hive mind).

But even if a few people still have human children, the maternal/paternal instinct of the ones who rear robots will cause them to politically enfranchise their robot kids so that the law views robots as an ends in themselves rather than instruments for human well-being. This will begin a slow (or not so slow) process of marginalizing flesh and blood people.

 

Potential Benefits of Humanoid Sex Robots and Androids

 

These disaster scenarios involve humanoid sex robot technology that is far, far, more advanced than current sex-dolls. Today’s sex dolls – even talking ones – are currently just a niche interest and, for all the controversy that surrounds them, are similar to vibrators and other sex toys.

If sex robot technology could reduce recidivism among sex offenders (further study is needed to determine if this is actually the case) or, under the right circumstances, keep married couples together, or even treat people with mental illnesses or rear adopted problem children in social care…the potential benefits of sex robot technology would be far too great to justify a blanket ban.

Nevertheless, the unregulated development of these products, especially in the second hand sex robot market, could have catastrophic consequences. So, while the development of sex robot technology should probably continue – indeed, with so many jurisdictions, and such strong demand, it’s hard to see how it could be discontinued everywhere – the more advanced models must be heavily regulated and the sooner and more thoroughly we fund large systematic studies into the effects of these products on people, both beneficial and detrimental, the sooner informed policies can be developed to protect human-human interaction and human child-rearing.

Although, superhuman sex robots may seem a long way off, today’s sex-bot industry is still quite small. If the sex-bot sector has a sharp rise in sales, the development of these products could rapidly accelerate. Regulators need to plan for this and psychologists need to investigate this NOW.

 

John

 

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