We've got a thing, and it's called Robot Love!

[4est_4est_Gump]

03/18/2010

LAS VEGAS — A New Jersey company says it has developed "the world's first sex robot," a life-size rubber doll that's designed to engage the owner with conversation rather than lifelike movement.

At a demonstration at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas on Saturday, the dark-haired, negligee-clad robot said "I love holding hands with you" when it sensed that its creator touched its hand.

Another action, this one unprintable, elicited a different vocal response from Roxxxy the robot. The level of sophistication demonstrated was not beyond that of a child's talking toy, but Roxxxy has a lot more brains than that – there's a laptop connected to cables coming out of its back. It has touch sensors at strategic locations and can sense when it's being moved. But it can't move on its own, not even to turn its head or move its lips. The sound comes out of an internal loudspeaker.

Douglas Hines, founder of Lincoln Park, N.J.-based True Companion LLC, said Roxxxy can carry on simple conversations. The real aim, he said, is to make the doll someone the owner can talk to and relate to.

"Sex only goes so far – then you want to be able to talk to the person," Hines said

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/10/roxxxy-sex-robot-photo-wo_n_417976.html

Jump ahead to today...

When the anatomically correct, customizable, touch-responsive, personality-changing sexbot named Roxxxy was unveiled at the Adult Entertainment Expo last year, it -- she? -- was met with a lot of snarky responses. Only losers and perverts would be interested in shelling out $7,000 for a glorified sex toy, many said.

Inventor and TrueCompanion founder Douglas Hines doesn't see it that way. With about 4,000 pre-orders, Hines believes artificially intelligent robots such as Roxxxy are "the future of robotics."

It also maybe the future of love and marriage, if you believe artificial intelligent (AI) expert David Levy, author of Love and Sex With Robots.

According to Levy, human-robot sex, love and marriage is inevitable -- perhaps as soon as 2025. He predicts that robots may not only be more lovable and faithful than many humans, but they may even be more emotionally available than the "typical American human male." Not only will they make us become better, more creative lovers, but they also will offer those singles who feel a void in their emotional and sexual lives and married couples with differing sexual needs new, nonjudgmental ways to be happy and healthy.

Even if you can't wrap your head around the idea of loving a robot (let alone marrying one), imagine that for a certain percentage of the population it's not only not fantasy but preferable to relationships with humans. What will that mean for us as a society as a whole?

Although Levy believes that the "availability of regular sex with a robot will dramatically reduce the incidence of infidelity as we know it today," he also acknowledges there may be some potential sticky points. "(S)ome human spouses and lovers might consider robot sex to be just as unfaithful as sex with another person."

And that's what caught the interest of Sonya Ziaja, a San Francisco Bay Area attorney who blogs at numerous law and policy media outlets as well as her own, Shark. Laser. Blawg. After reading about Roxxxy, Ziaga says she wondered about hypothetical situations in which a sexbot might create some legal headaches. "It was most fun to discuss those (situations) in which laws that were designed to regulate interactions between humans suddenly faced (with) the prospect of regulating interactions between humans and machines," she writes.

And what could be more fraught with legal dilemmas than a love triangle among a married couple and a sexbot? How that might impact a divorce? That's what Ziaja explores in her paper, "Homewrecker 2.0: An Exploration of Liability for Heart Balm Torts Involving AI Humanoid Consorts," which she presented at the 2011 International Conference on Social Robotics that took place in Amsterdam at the end of November.

"If the doll's owner becomes enamored with the doll, and leaves his spouse, can the spouse sue as she or he would be able to if the interloper had been human? And who would be sued? The manufacturer? Inventor? The AI itself?" she questions. "(S)o long as we're intent on adding socially interactive AI into situations that would ordinarily be only human. ... socially interactive robots need to be 'safe to play with' in a way that manufacturers of toaster ovens never had to imagine."

...

Q: What exactly are heart balm torts?

A: In the most basic and general sense, heart balm torts allow someone who is in a protected relationship (usually marriage, but it can be parent-child) to sue someone outside of that relationship for interfering with it. So, for example, alienation of affections -- a type of heart balm tort -- allows a married person to sue a third-party paramour for damaging the relationship. In other words, If Alice the wife of Bob has an affair with Charles, Bob, the husband can sue Charles for money damages. Of course, the husband in this case would have to prove specific element depending on the type of tort.

...

Q: In what way would heart balm torts with a human-robot relationship be the same as with two humans? In what way would they be different?

A: There is a possibility of combining social-based or emotionally based torts with more traditional product liability theory -- something that creators might want to keep an eye on. Social robots as products, because of their social nature, have the potential to cause social and emotional harm. This is something that designers and manufacturers never really had to think about before. The short take home is this: Robots are not toasters.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicki-larson/robots_1_b_1150679.html

Where there's a Will, there's a way!

 

[Wat_Tyler]

I always thought that George Jetson eyed the maid with lecherous intent.


It's a half-assed Ford and I'm shiftin' gears . . . .

 

[Saint Peter]

It talks?





Fuck that.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Robot sings a forgotten song...




One more radar lover gone!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

It talks?





Fuck that.

rlmao...

 

[Wat_Tyler]

It takes trucks, too.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Does it get you into the car pool lane?

 

[Wat_Tyler]

No, it's a HOV-not.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Then I won't marry it!



Will I get sued for Robomony?

 

[Wat_Tyler]

I don't think it's bigamy if you did.


Of course, it might be machinicism.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Welcome to the machine!



What if I accidentally spill my drink on it? Am I guilty of robotocide?

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Not if you're drinking 30-weight.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Is that a Foster's joke?

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Guinness.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I was thinking more tranny-fluid can for my tranny-bot-mission...

 

[Saint Peter]

"Was I speeding, Officer?"

"No. I am pulling you over because you are spilling tranny-fluid all over the HOV lane."


"I had no idea."


"Well, mop that rubbery bitch up and have a nice day."

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I had to kill her!



She kept correcting my lyrics when the radio was on...

It's Pour some shook-up Ramon!

In the name of Love!