Stretching freedom with robots
HOW far can freedom be stretched? In the West today, freedom of sexual practice, including freedom of sexual orientation, has already been claimed to its full measure. Or has it? Isn’t there more areas or dimensions where this freedom can be extended?
The great sexual revolution started in America in 1960 with the marketing launch of Enovid, the first birth control pill. Within five years, 6 million American women were on the Pill. This was quickly followed by the feminist movement. The feminists saw the sexual revolution as a tool for female sexual empowerment, enabling them to separate sex from procreation. But for social conservatives, the sexual revolution was an opening to greater promiscuity and immorality which as a result, would assail the very foundation of American society – the family.
Such is the power of science and technology that it revolutionizes society’s definition of mankind’s basic biological function – sex.
The pill unleashed a vast expanse of sexual freedom, eliminating the erstwhile fear of pregnancy and the resulting responsibility. The philosophy which has been drummed up by the media into the minds of the liberal Westerners goes something like this: “The sexual revolution was a good thing. It has allowed people to remove the shackles of repressive, puritanical morality and experience freedom. People are sexual beings, and they need to explore their sexuality when they feel ready, without fear of guilt or shame.”
But the sexual revolution has not ended with the pill and other implements which prevent pregnancy. Now technology is weighing heavily on the further direction of this revolution with new inventions. We now have the sex dolls, dolls which appear uncannily realistic, and constructed with flesh-like physique “with portals which feel like the real thing.” A Google search for “sex dolls suppliers” has more than a million results, and these suppliers include those on Malaysia, with one proudly assuring it can deliver 40,000 such dolls per month! But the price of the dolls is prohibitively high – around US7,0000 each. That is more expensive than a village wedding in Sabah!
But there is another bigger threat to traditional human values which is hovering in the horizon, a new and high-tech ‘living’ gadget called “sexbots” (sex robots). While sex dolls are immobile on their own, sexbots can move (and moan?) and simulate all the actions of a coital partner.
One Matt McMullen who has been selling sex dolls, is now developing what he calls “Realbotrixs” constructed from silicon and empowered with artificial intelligence. Announcing that these will be available by 2018, he told New York Times: “I want to have people actually develop an emotional attachment to not only the doll being the robot, but the actual character behind it, to develop some kind of love for this being.” I guess that is not difficult, knowing how people develop ‘love’ for other non-sexual gadgets, such as smartphones!
Research has shown that one in four Brits would not mind dating a sexbots. Ghistaine Boddington, co-founder and creative director of an East London design unit, is foreseeing that, “Our bodies, our identities and our senses are enhancing thanks to technology and societal shifts. Indeed, intimacy as we know it expanding its boundaries – enabling us to experience love and affection beyond the physical and into the virtual.”
A robot with human appearance is scientifically called an android, but a more advance copy of the human form and intelligence is the cyborg, a ‘human’ constructed with artificial flesh and blood with intelligence surpassing that of normal humans. Such ‘beings’ (to date still within the realm of science fiction) are featured in the Star Trek series, in numerous movies such as Aliens 3.
By extension of our current technological capabilities, cyborgs will eventually be realized and made available as sex dolls of today. One day our grandchildren will be able to order cyborgs which will look like movie stars, resulting in the worsening of the problem of people not marrying. With men happy with their artificial love attachments, even more women will be consigned to singledom as men lose interest in them. Men can do without the security of marriage more than women who get worried, even neurotic, if they are still single in their 30s.
The prediction is that in 2050, sex with robots will be common. But it will most likely be sooner than that. With all the artificial love partners filling in the emotional void of those not able to attract human spouses, the meaning of love is changing. And here comes the serious problem of social bankruptcy and collapse.
While these developments may be intriguing and appealing to the liberals, we must all, conservatives or not, realize the dark side of artificial intelligence and its attendant ramifications. Blow dolls, sex dolls and the dark sexbots and weapons of the forces of darkness to drag us into sin and destruction.
Some rationalists argue that sexbots will improve human lives by ending prostitution and sex trafficking, and by fulfilling basic human needs. But Christopher Benek, an associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Ft. Lauderdale says that “Sex with a robot is far from the purpose and intent of God’s design for sex in the first place.” He added that oneness is the purpose of sex between man and woman, or between husband and wife as stated in Genesis 2:24-25.
One Jennifer Leclaire writes that “Sex outside of marriage— any form of sex outside of marriage, from adultery to masturbation to, yes, sex with robots—is classified in God’s eyes as immorality. God created sex for a purpose, and having sex with a robot abuses that purpose.”
Humans tend to forget that technology’s blessings are often curses as well. So let us all beware as what S.P Snow says: “Technology is a queer thing. It brings you gifts with one hand, and stabs you in the back with the other.”