IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016 - 48

Technology has replaced magic as
the philosopher's stone to create life
from the inanimate and lifeless.

not all men buy sex or consume pornography. There is
a strong movement now with males turning away from
prostitution and pornography as they recognize the detrimental effects on their intimate relationships, an issue
I believe will gain more ground over the next decade
[3], [18], [35].

Sex Robots and Prostitution
What is a sex robot? It is a doll with programs and
motors that is primarily imagined and/or produced in
the form of a woman or girl. The artistic representation
of the appearance of the human in objects is an historical accomplishment, with Renaissance artists able to
produce realistic portraits of humans in two dimensions
[5]. Since then, developments in the manufacturing of
artificial materials, such as silicon, have allowed dolls to
look more lifelike than their predecessors. Making
objects appear lifelike provokes what Mashiro Mori [37]
called "the uncanny valley." This is where appearance
and behavior are not congruent, causing discomfort and
distress. Mori does not cite Sigmund Freud's The Uncanny, written in 1919 [20], as a reference in his uncanny
valley paper, but Freud's book addressed concerns
about the making of anthropomorphic objects.1
In Freud's writing, the uncanny is a strange and
uncomfortable eerie feeling that is triggered when a person is uncertain of ontological categories about what is
living or dead, animate or inanimate, real or artificial.
The robot had not made a public cultural appearance in
1919 (not until 1920/1921 in the now Czech Republic),
so Freud examines objects such as automata, dolls, and
statues to explore fears conjured by anthropomorphic
figures. In light of our subject matter - sex robots -
Freud's essay opens up some important considerations.
He wrote [20, p 141],
...if intellectual uncertainty is aroused as to
whether something is animate or inanimate, and
whether the lifeless bears an excessive likeness to
1

Mori's original article "Bukimi No Tani" did not translate into "The Uncanny Valley," but is still close to Freud's view of the uncanny as including that
which is "eerie." According to an article published in Live Science, "The
first English use of the 'uncanny valley' phrase came from a popular robotics book by Jasia Reichardt" and was use as the translation by Karl MacDorman and his fellow translators [24].

the living. With dolls, of course, we recall that children, in their early games, make no sharp distinction between the animate and the inanimate and
that they are especially fond of treating their dolls
as if they were alive.
At present there is no working definition of a sex
robot, and in reality there are really no sex robots. The
introduction of a robotic or AI programs into a doll is
enough to claim it as a "sex-robot," but these mechanistic dolls more closely resemble automata. A concern
about sex robots is not driven by the technology, but by
ideas and practices that are drawn on to make and promote these mechanical objects. These robotic sex dolls
mimic human appearance, may run voice activated programs, and have motors embedded in various parts of
the robot body. Sex robots are building on doll-like platforms popularized by the work of Matt McMullen, an artist and maker of RealDoll (www.realdolls.com).
RealDolls are life sized dolls made with PVC skeletons
with steel joints and silicone skin, but McMullen is also
introducing technologies into these dolls such as voice
activated programs. Also in the U.S., AI engineer Douglas Hine is developing a robotic platform, Roxxxy, produced by the company T rueCompanion (w w w.
truecompanion.com). The making of these dolls does
not stop at adults. In Japan, child sex dolls resembling
five year old girls are produced by company Trottla
(www.Trottla.com).
The dolls are modeled primarily on pornographic
representations of women [27]. The speech programs in
these robots are primarily focused on the buyer/owner
of the model. While the pornography industry shapes
the way the robots are designed in appearance (their
ethnicity and age are also important), the type of relationship that is used as the model for the buyer/owner
of the sex robot and the robot is inspired, not by an
empathetic human encounter, but a non-empathetic
form of encounter characterized by the buying and selling of sex [44]. As I argued elsewhere [44], I did not
make these easy comparisons between a sex robot and
a prostituted person, this was done by sex robot advocates [30], [31], [53]. One obvious example is Levy and
Loebner's jointly authored paper "Robot prostitutes as
alternatives to human sex workers" [31]. In my analysis,
I problematized these assumptions by showing how
arguments for sex robots reveal a coercive attitude
towards women's bodies as commodities, and promote
a non-empathetic form of encounter.
Do not take my word for it. Let us look at what the
buyers of sex say about their activities:
"It's like renting a girlfriend or wife. You get to
choose like a catalogue."

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

∕

june 2016

http://www.realdolls.com http://www.truecompanion.com http://www.Trottla.com

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