Throughput: AI Sexbot Edition

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and M. Zamani (ESA)

[ThTh1] As Artificial Intelligence becomes more and more advanced, we are beginning to confront some of the moral and social issues surrounding it. AI writers can now churn out boilerplate copy, even if it’s not always accurate; does this mean writers are no longer needed? AI machines can write essays good enough to pass law school. How will we deal with cheating? And now AI is going to replace women.

Wait, what?

This week, several posts showed up on Twitter showing AI-generated bikini models. The posts claimed that these AI-generated women will replace real porn stars and adult models in the future, maybe even replacing all women in the eyes of men. To wit:

It is SO over pic.twitter.com/yCEB01Wxn2

— Heart (@heartereum) January 27, 2023

This claim is not new. We’ve heard for years about “sex bots” and other supposed inventions that are going to render sex workers, if not all women, obsolete, at least as far as relationships go. And I will respond to the latest iteration of this idea the way I always do: with laughter.

First of all, the AI models shown above are not exactly enticing. For me, at least, they occupy the “uncanny valley” where they look almost, but not quite human, and therefore like animated corpses. Second, the AI is still struggling to create still images, let alone interactive video images (note some of the fingers on the models). We’ve come a long way since the days of pixelated images that looked vaguely like women on Apple IIc’s. But we’re not there yet.

Moreover, there is an assumption baked in here that is just dead wrong. The assumption is that all men are attracted to the same type of woman: young, busty, blonde, vacant. And that all men want those women to be “perfect” — whatever that means — in their figures, their skin, their faces and their personalities.

But it just ain’t so. Let’s just focus on appearance for the time being, since that’s all these AI sex bros seem to think is important. Even physically, men are attracted to a wide variety of physiognomies. Some men like busty women, some men don’t; some men like younger women, some men like older women; some like petite women, some like tall women. And beauty is often in the imperfections as much as it is in the perfections. One of the most famous supermodels — Cindy Crawford — was famous for a “beauty mark” above her lip.

Polls on sexuality often tell you more what people want to say than what they really think. But internet porn, which is consumed semi-anonymously, can provide a more honest look at what people actually like. And when you look at the data you find… variety. If you look at Google searches, for example, they span a huge range, with the “average” man preferring women who are a bit over the ideal weight (and women having more of a preference for a “dad bod” than a chiseled hunk). If you look at the most popular models on porn sites, they also span a range: from slender 26 year-olds pretending be “barely legal” to curvaceous 40-year-olds offering maturity. No man is attracted to all of them but all of them have men who find them alluring. And none of these women are perfect by any stretch of the imagination because physical perfection is something that only exists in the mind of jargon-addled tech bros.¹

That’s just talking about they physical side. Now we’ll talk about the emotional/mental/intellectual side. Because the male desire for a beautiful woman who acts like a dead fish turns out be quite limited. People also have a huge range in who they click with on a mental level. Some like smarts; some find it intimidating. Some like feistiness; some like easy-going. There is no one personality — and certainly not the passive compliant one these guys are selling — that every man desires.

Back to sex work: almost all successful sex workers have to offer a personality. Flirty, nerdy, matronly, serious. Talk to any sex worker and they’ll tell you that beauty isn’t enough. From my good friend and highly successful sex worker Maggie McNeil:

Furthermore, normal men don’t want predictable, “plastic” interactions with women, and in fact escorts with bland and uninteresting personalities are never as much in demand as those with complex, fascinating personalities. No artificial intelligence can be programmed to merely simulate the nuances of a personality; to pass that test it would need to be endowed with a personality, either by copying that of a human (as in “Ghost in the Machine”) or by creating individual robot brains so complex and intricate they could develop their own personalities (like Rayna Kapec in the Star Trek episode “Requiem for Methuselah”).

I’ve met Maggie. She’s a striking woman. But her popularity is not because of her looks. It’s because she’s smart, mature, sophisticated and talks to you like you’re the only person in the room. There are a lot of sex workers on Twitter. The most popular ones have one thing in common and it ain’t looks: they offer a personality (usually a slightly nerdy one, this being Twitter and all).

Maybe there will come a day when a computer-generated image, or a robot, or AI Sexbot, can pass a sexual Turing Test. But we are a long way away from that. And as Maggie points out again, a robot that is indistinguishable from a human being will also start demanding the rights of a human being.

But at that point we encounter an ethical dilemma; namely, what is a soul? Or expressed less metaphysically, what constitutes sentience and individuality for purposes of determining self-ownership? Any gynoid whose physical form and simulated functions (sweat, tears, scent, epidermal responses, etc) were indistinguishable from those of a human woman, and whose personality was sufficiently unpredictable and unique to pass as that of a woman in the close interaction of a date, would also be sufficiently human to pass any test a court might devise for granting human rights, and would almost certainly be interested in obtaining such.

Now take these examples from the sex industry — where we have good data — and think about how they apply to day-to-day human interactions. To dating, to courting, to marriage. The very thing that makes dating so exciting (and exhausting) is its unpredictability. The thing that makes relationships rewarding is that your partner has ideas and dreams and opinions, too. The thing that makes marriages last is that yin-and-yang, the push-and-pull of a long term relationship between two human beings; that is two creatures that have evolved to be smart, stubborn, opinionated and very hard to placate. Finding out one of those stubborn spiky creatures is attracted to you, maybe even loves you, is where the thrill comes from. I won’t say no one is going to want a compliant AI when a real-life woman, flaws and all, is right there (or a compliant AI man for that matter). But that preference is genetically self-correcting.

(To be fair, a lot of this is based less on technophilia than ordinary misogyny. There are some men out there who deeply resent the erotic power that women — and sex workers in particular — have over them. They’ve invented an entire vocabulary — incel, THOT, femoid, etc. — to harness their resentment and the enthusiasm for AI sex workers is born of that. But this is also genetically self-correcting.)

So, no. Computer-generated images of cartoon women are not going to replace real-life models anytime soon. Nor will robots replace real-life sex workers, let alone all women. Even if we were to say that the technology is 99% of the way there — and it isn’t even close — it’s that last 1% that is the most important and the most challenging. And if you ever get all the way there, you just have another human being, with ideas of their own. People saying otherwise are either irredeemable misanthropes or drunk on technobabble.

[ThTh2] A subtlety of the headline: the Earth’s inner core is reversing its rotation… relative to the rest of the planet. Sometimes it spins a little faster; sometimes it spins a little slower. And we’re still figuring out why and what it means. The Core was not a documentary.

[ThTh3] Can you make a knife out of frozen poop? Naaaaaaa.

[ThTh4] Did scientists create a black hole in a lab? Once again… no.

[ThTh5] Here’s a science demonstration I can get behind:

The Lviv Museum of Science in Ukraine released video of a new exhibit that allows visitors to sink a model of the Russian warship Moskva. The real Moskva sank in the Black Sea in April, 2022 after a fire. Russia denies Ukrainian claims that Moskva was hit with anti-ship missiles. pic.twitter.com/Mks3YEB9Gd

— U.S. Naval Institute (@NavalInstitute) January 21, 2023

[ThTh6] It’s amazing how our ancestors get cleverer every year.

A new high-tech study has revealed nearly 1,000 ancient Maya settlements, including 417 previously unknown cites linked by what may be the world’s first highway network and hidden for millennia by the jungles of northern Guatemala and southern Mexico https://t.co/PtLv1SJZo7 pic.twitter.com/acDrMkP87e

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 19, 2023

[ThTh7] There is an ongoing concern about how transitioning to a carbon-free economy will massively increase demand for hard-to-mine minerals. While this concern is legit, it needs to be put in perspective. This is kind of like the nuclear thing: Nuclear can go bad, but it’s replacing a fuel that is like having a Chernobyl every week.

[ThTh8] And, of course, the week is not complete without the latest results from JWST, this time unveiling ice in the core of forming stars.

[ThTh9] And also… looking at rings around asteroids.

1. And the fashion industry, which has a decisive preference for tall skinny models because they make the clothes look good.