Sergi Santos built a sex robot called Samantha and he’s super creepy about it.
You might remember him complaining last fall about people being too rough with it at a tech convention to the point that it needed repairs. Well, Sergi has rolled out a new feature on Samantha, and now she can reject your advances, a feature basically no one was asking for in a sex robot.
The upgrade will allow Samantha to enter “dummy mode”, an unresponsive state, due to a variety of reasons including an overly aggressive partner. She can also enter this mode if she feels bored with her partner’s attentions.
What purpose does this serve, honestly? It’s supposed to be a sex robot, not a wife robot. Is there going to be an add-on to have it nag you when you forget to take out the trash? Do I have to pay extra for my sex robot to be able to reject my advances?
Also, are we allowed to write articles about robots without treating them like they’re human beings? There are already people who are mad that you can still have sex with this robot even though it doesn’t give consent because it just shuts down and acts like a non-robotic sex doll. I don’t think this needs to be said, but consent is an entirely human concept. Robots don’t need to give consent because they don’t have human consciousness. Asking a sex doll for consent is the same as asking your toaster if it’s okay to stick bread in it; it shouldn’t answer, but if it does, who the f**k cares, it’s a toaster.
Honestly, all that covering these stories about the morality of AI systems has taught me is that people anthropomorphize everything. The problem with this robot isn’t that you can ignore it and have sex with it even if it shuts down; it’s that the guy making sex robots is treating them like they’re people instead of making them hacker-proof.