RealDoll is a talking, emoting(?) human-size, life-like
sex toy. They are pretty amazing.
I first saw the RealDolls on a Facebook post and
had to learn more…like if they made male models. I dropped that idea like a lava rock when I
found out the price is a modest $10,000.
Not this week.
Abyss Creations is making Love For Sale—very
reminiscent of my book of the same name.
Love For Sale was published in 2015, but the story goes way back to the
90s. It began as a short story, won an
award, and I thought ‘why not a novel?’
I digress.
One of the dolls, the one shown in the ads, is
named Harmony. A columnist from the Engadget
visited Abyss’ facility and met Harmony. He said, “Harmony’s eyes are a window
to an uncertain future.”
I am intrigued by AI used as loving
companions—not so much as pleasure bots, but the RealDolls have their
place. There are a lot of lonely people,
for one reason or another. Some are just not socially adept. Some are deformed
or consider themselves unattractive and unable to find a companion. Coming home to their doll may be a bit weird,
but it’s better than coming home alone, if you crave company.
"A lot of the
people who buy the dolls can be shy or socially intimidated by real social
situations," McMullen of Abyss says. "And so, they get the dolls and
a lot of times it — it does something magical for them. You know, it gives them
a feeling of not being alone, not being a loner. And so, it's the companionship
that I think, more than anything else, appeals to those people in
particular."
“Harmony can hold a conversation, but she's far from a
perfect. When McMullen gave me a spin with a beta version of Harmony AI, I
ramped up a series of random personality traits to their highest levels,
including "annoying," "sexual" and "insecure."
It's like a scene out of West
World, but Harmony is no Maeve Millay.” Quoting the Engadget
article called ‘Computer Love’.
Guile Lindroth is
the Brazilian AI engineer and the brains behind Harmony's brain. He has worked for
more than 15 years on the project. He manually programs her knowledge base.
This permits him to control the conversation without having to access too much
of a end user's data.
The term – the
Uncanny Valley—was coined by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in a 1970 paper
about human reactions to lifelike robots and describes that eerie feeling one
gets when encountering an artificial human that comes close to but doesn't
quite measure up to "being human".
Sex bot aside, if you met Harmony, would you find
her creepy? I asked this question on
another post about human-like robots earlier talking about the Japanese
models. I’m very interested because of
Love For Sale, which is about sentient, human-like androids built to sell as
companions, but in the end that was not their purpose.
Love For Sale is available in eBook, Print
and Audiobook forms from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Love-Sale-Linda-Nightingale-ebook/dp/B00XCZ6EVY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1529202922&sr=8-3&keywords=linda+nightingale
