Friday, April 28, 2017

"The £20 BILLION race to create an AI sex doll"

From the Daily Mail Online today.


"The 'sex tech' market is worth an estimated $30.6bn - and across the globe, firms are racing to create a radical new type of robot they say could change sex forever.

"From AI personalities capable of holding a conversation to models with a functioning G-spot, firms are hoping consumers will pay up to $15,000 for a sex doll that never says no.

"Among the most impressive is RealDoll's Harmony - an artificial intelligence based sex bot that can hold conversations, remember what she's told and even has a customizable personality. ..."
The Guardian also has the story, their extensive article suggesting that (unfortunately?) hype is still running way ahead of reality.

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I was always puzzled (quick disclaimer: when I thought about the subject at all) as to how the sexbot's responses would be programmed.

I imagined over-excited yet poorly-paid programmers toiling in robot control language, trialling this limb movement in response to that input.

Silly me: still trapped in that old GOFAI paradigm.

They'll simple enroll thousands of couples, wire them up to a dense mesh of sound and motion sensors .. and set them to go.

With so much fine-grained big data at their disposal, they'll unleash a DeepMind-style artificial neural net .. and just learn optimised responses.*

It'll be 'Go' all over again.

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* I seriously would not want to be on the test team ... .

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