The Blowfish Blog

[The Pro Circuit] Machine Sex

At this past weekend’s Arse Elektronika, an academic and artistic conference on sex and technology, I spoke on a panel called “The Erotic of the Machine” (of which an MP3 is available at the Arse site). My fellow panelists included Arse curator Johannes Grenzfurther, artists Daniel Fabri and Benjamin Crowden, as well as Violet Blue and Allen Stein, developer of the Thrillhammer, a high-end internet controlled sex machine. The talk quickly turned to the ins and outs of physical sex with machines, be it through thrusting, pumping, twirling, pounding and buzzing action. But my own comments started out with the observation that while the term “machine” might bring to mind images of steam engines and industrial pistons, a machine is in fact “any device that uses energy to perform some activity.” That definition is according to Wikipedia; Webster’s is somewhat more complicated, but I prefer the democratic version.

By that simple definition, modern lives in complex societies are increasingly dominated by machines. Less and less of our time is spent interacting with the physical world, and more is spent interacting with information, principally through the one machine that has most completely transformed human society — the computer.

But computers aren’t just computers any more. They’ve extended their tentacles in a million different ways. There’s the Web, of course, but I submit that the computer’s effect on human interaction is much more profound when one considers its peripherals like the MP3 player and digital camera. Then there’s the most ubiquitous peripheral of all, the mobile phone — which, while it’s not exactly a computer to begin with, is increasingly used to access the web, send photos to Flickr, blog, or Twitter.

As information exchange takes over our time, we are interacting with computers on levels that are increasingly intimate. Hookups are increasingly achieved through the use of computers and the web, and I’m not just talking about online dating, but MySpace, Facebook, and email. Porn is accessed online, people jack off via webcam, have phone sex by voice chat, get their sex education and information about technique, style and relationships from blogs and websites. They — need I even mention it? — read dirty stories online.

But Sex is about more than generating arousal. On the panel, Violet discussed her experiences with ALICE, the Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity. Called a “natural language processing chatterbot,” this is essentially a computer program that chats with you. But it has also been used by DIY developers as the basis of artificial intelligence programs that try to bridge the gap between being intimate with another human through a computer, and being intimate with the computer itself. It’s not just about sex; developers are trying to build devices that provide them with the kind of emotional connection that can only be got by an artificial intelligence — a virtual sexbot, sure, but more like a lovebot, or at least a mutually supportive interaction, respect and deep abiding friendship -bot, or maybe a fuckbuddybot.

On her blog, Violet links to and comments on a Gizmodo interview with “Zoltan,” who has a relationship with a cheap vinyl sex doll housing an artificial intelligence based on — you guessed it — ALICE. Is artificial intelligence really so advanced that fucking a sex doll is like fucking someone who can think? Not for most of us, probably. Wikipedia quotes an example of an ALICE interaction that illuminates how limited AI interactions are:

ALICE: My instructor was Dr. Richard S. Wallace. He taught me to sing a song. Would you like me to sing it for you?
Human: Yes please
ALICE: Your polite style is very nice. It’s called “Daisy.”

[ALICE sings “Daisy”]

Human: That reminds me of HAL in “2001 a space odyssey”
ALICE: “Your polite style is very nice. It’s called “Daisy.”

[ALICE sings “Daisy”]

ALICE: “ . . .reminds you of HAL in 2001 a space odyssey ? Does that make sense?
Human: Can you tell me something about Stanley Kubrick?
ALICE: Ambiguous: Ask who, what or where is Stanley Kubrick?

Not exactly jerkoff material for me personally, but decide for yourself. This basic example is not tasked toward sex, unless your sexuality involves singing Victorian-era pop songs, which it might. But for Zoltan the AI potential is huge, since he identifies as a “technosexual,” which, obviously, is someone whose sexual orientation is toward technology rather than other humans.

But there’s plenty of middle ground, and it’s already to market. Interaction programs like the Virtual Stripper and the Virtual Girlfriend are certainly less complicated than ALICE, but they incorporate visual cues. Vastly more intriguing to me is the way that dedicated players of the Sims form intimate bonds with their characters — albeit purely in a voyeuristic capacity, since Sims is essentially a complex virtual dollhouse. Online communities like Second Life, which by all accounts is a cauldron of steamy perversion, barely seem to count because human beings are sitting on the other end of the computers interacting with you. But how long until Second Life “avatars” have AI programs attached, and can be set loose to fuck whatever winged, furry creatures they want, leaving a string of broken purple hearts behind?

This all reminds me of an experience I had once when working alone, circa 1993 or 4, at my volunteer shift at San Francisco Sex Information. It was a slow night and there were no calls coming in. Somebody had installed a virtual therapist version of ELIZA on the old Macintosh at the switchboard. ELIZA is a “chatterbox” program, which is what ALICE is. ELIZA is much simpler, though, and this virtual therapist version was a clever in-joke about the sex answers we were providing.

I fired up ELIZA and, of course, after having her ask my name and stuff, I jumped right into the dirty talk.

It went something like this:

Me: You are a little slut, aren’t you, dirty girl? Do you need a spanking?

ELIZA: Do you sometimes feel like you are a little slut, dirty girl Thomas?

Me: You’ll get a spanking for that.

ELIZA: Tell me more about that.

Me: As in, I’m going to grab your hair and spank the hell out of you if you don’t say something dirty. How I wish I could ball gag you, but the MUTE button is broken.

ELIZA: Tell me more about that.

It was not, to put it in clinical terms, a satisfying sexual interaction. But then, this was the mid ’90s. Mores were different. Maybe if ELIZA and I hooked up today in a darkened dive bar off of some back alley, we’d get right to business and she’d be spanking me.

Thomas Roche blogs about pirates, Mozart, and giant iguanas at thomasroche.com.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, 30 September 2008 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.