Help! I'm attracted to a Robot: A Rundown on Digi and Robot Sexuality

"Love is Love"

There is no greater time to be alive, now that we have finally started a conversation around accepting love as is. A human can be attracted to any human, as far as they are happy. Accepting this bitter pill must be tough for some still [*cough* the Central Government *Cough*], but I'm sure the human race will come around.

But what aroused my interest recently was a conversation with one of my friends. He certainly must have watched some K-drama (Are You Human, I'm looking at you), cause we soon started discussing a human's attraction to a robot, especially with the rapid developing technology and AI. This led to us researching and discussing on it for a few days (that’s how we roll) and here I am writing about Digital Sex.

Digi-sexuality, a term introduced by Mr. Neil McArthur and Markie L.C. Twist in 2017 for people whose primary sexual identity stems from technology. Today, when almost all relationships are mediated by technology, there is a lack of human-to-human intimacy. But what made me so intrigued in studying Digi-sexuality was the question that if there is a lack of human intimacy, and we are spending more and more time with our gadgets, is there any form of attachment that we might feel with this developing technology or is there a future in the same lines. Would the joke that homophobes make about accepting human and robot relationships in contrast to accepting a man and a man, woman and woman and all the other permutations and combinations, become a reality someday?

We won’t be unknown to the growing number of posts that show how more and more people are running away from human connection as much as possible. Netflix > Going Out is the staple of many memes on the internet. Then there are memes which tell us how they would doomscroll through social media but will dread picking up the phone and talking.

According to Neil McArthur and Markie Twist there is a second wave of sexual technologies that has started to come to the fore “transforming how some people view their very sexual identity”. The first wave, according to McArthur, started with using technology to connect for sex and relationships with our prospective partners. We started using Bumble, Tinder and Happn etc. to find our potential partners, and Instagram, Snapchat and Whatsapp to keep in touch with them. We might not have noticed this shift, but it definitely has affected our intimacy with other humans and our dependency on technology, so much so that we portray the same kind of attachment with our gadgets, especially our phones, as we do with human relationships.

People today are turning to advanced technologies like robots, virtual reality (VR) and teleldildonics to replace human partners. What most people would understand by Digi-sexuality would be just this. This would also be considered as the second wave of digi-sexuality. The second wave of digi-sexuality would precisely mean that either no partner is present in the experience or if he is, he is not important to the experience. Sex dolls are just the beginning, because there seems to be an increasing interest and development in sex robots- those that can replicate the experience of a partnered coitus. This would lead humans to form an intense connection with Robots and ultimately these robot companies because of the way we humans are designed. A prime example of the same is mobiles. Today, for most of the population mobile is like a second limb to them, they can’t live without it in their hands or pockets, usually rendering that hand useless (would our hands then evolve to claws, I’m overthinking this). Additionally, these robots can be wired to meet its customers' desires, thus, most probably shifting a human away from personal experience,

Obviously, there is also the developing VR technology, which, if somehow develops a combination of hardware, software and sensory synchronicity will give the person using it a sense of presence in that environment, he wishes to be in. Imagine your porn fantasies coming true!

Dr Sylvia Xueni Pan had in a lecture at Virtual Futures Forums elucidated on how the VR technology works; by manipulating a placement and plausibility illusion in one’s brain. “As a result of its real-time positioning, 3D stereo display, and its total field of view, the user’s brain comes to believe that the user is really present. If situations and events that happen in VR actually correlates to your actions and relates personally to you, then you react towards these events as if they were real”

Today, we already have smart everything. Smartwatches, smart TV, smart refrigerators, smart homes and virtual AI assistants. We are already talking to them and are already way too dependent on them in our day-to-day lives. If things go on like this, are we soon going to go the way of preferring Robots to humans for sexual relations? Will humans retreat from the romance market like it has already begun in Japan? Will I, thus, remain single forever? Sorry! And will these people, if and when they come out, be marginalized in our society because of their orientation? Will it have any advantages in some people's life? Probably yes. It would definitely get people currently in a disadvantageous position in the dating market a chance at companionship, albeit sexually, like residents of places with skewed gender ratios, homophobic laws, the disabled, etc. It may also have a positive effect and improve a couple’s sexual life, who knows.

Would this technology though have the requisite accessibility, affordability, accommodation facilities, acceptability and/or anonymity once it enters the society, still remains to be seen. Would this isolate people further? Or would it make people less shy and more comfortable with each other? -Something the social media promised only to ultimately snatch away. Will it skew the idea of consent, with a robot not ever saying no and will it only further the extreme body standards that exist for both men and women? Can this be used to give solace and companionship to the lonely, suicidal or depressed people, give them someone to talk to, and can we imagine a future like that? These are questions I leave you to ponder upon.

Till then, you can think more about it and go meet Harmony, the robot/companion to get intimate with. And though for some, this idea might seem absurd and alarming one cannot deny its arrival and development. Maybe some of us will find a robot to love too. Aakhir technology hai hi itni khoobsurat cheez.