Feminist Intelligence and Sex Robotics

• In Event: Feminist Intelligence

Abstract

Neda Atanasoski will consider the desire for artificial intelligence in recent sex robotics project (extending her co-authored work with Kalindi Vora). The desire for an animate object of sexual satisfaction, that like Silicone Samantha that can be controlled through users shifting between more and less sexually responsive modes, or like the RealBotix imaginary of enhanced user pleasure through the robot simulation of reciprocity, desire and pleasure (orgasm) has a long history. Programming the simulation of reciprocity and pleasure, even with the stated purpose of enhancing the sexual pleasure of users in the engineering of an object intended for unreflective sexual gratification, may seem counter-intuitive. We argue that the design imaginaries behind commercial sex robotics represent a technoliberal update to a racial history entangling the desire for “a carefully calibrated sentience” in an artificial person with a desire for property.
This desire is for sex with animate objects that simulate pleasure, and therefore simulate consent. We ask, what stands behind the technoliberal desire to engineer the simulation of reciprocity and pleasure into sex robots?

Author

• Neda Atanasoski, University of California Santa Cruz