I struggle to see the benefit of this kind of censorship as well, it has a very “video games make people murders” vibe. That we’re being protected, for our own good, from…horny robots?
These broad strokes are always the result of poor reporting extrapolated to all humans. See also: escalation of porn use.
In all of these "___ makes people ___," there are a minority of people for which it's true. The media just presents it backward, as though most people are this way.
The question then becomes, do we care. Let a maladjusted 12-year old boy play with a sexbot for the next few years and they will come to some deeply-flawed conclusions about how sexual interactions and healthy human relationships work. If he's distracted and banging away at a flashlight, that's one less competitor for me on the dating market.
Where does that end though? What happens when he wakes up, realizes he's been duped, and goes looking for retribution against someone? It won't be PornHub; they're an ephemeral concept. It won't be me either; I never did him wrong or denied him anything. The victim is more likely to be our wives and daughters-- the objects of his envy.
Entertainment is supposed to be a distraction-- maybe you drag out the sexbot after an unsuccessful night of trying to hook up. But that's not how these things get used. People clearly spend 8-12 hours at a time with these things and form parasocial relationships with them instead of forging actual human connections. Most of us don't need the handholding to be told this isn't going to end well, but some people do, and these are the ones who slip through the cracks and become the 40-year-old creeps following your wife to the car or trying to solicit your kids on Roblox.
I suspect sexbots (and porn) are particularly exploitative of the autistic. They're an easy trap to fall into when you have to work 3x as hard to connect with people. You get the benefits of sexual release without any of the effort. There's no incentive to go the hard route and learn to work around your issues when you can just engage with a bot you can rape to death once offended. You don't learn any skills that transfer to useful human interactions this way.
2. Society seems to have collectively decided that romantic intimacy, unlike food and shelter, is optional and that experiencing an absence of it should not entitle you to sympathy or support. Therefore, the kindest thing they can do is leave the autists alone so they can cope as best they can in peace.
UPD:
3. Replacing productive activities with substitutes like video games is obviously bad both for individual survival and for society at large, but what are the negative effects of being in a relationship with a fictional partner instead of a real one? You could argue the AI companies would have an incentive to exploit their users, but this is a thing that happens in real relationships as well!
Fertility might be a concern, but my understanding is that the current mainstream view is that the world needs fewer children, not more of them.
The author of this app must be doing this unknowingly: his overdeveloped mind sees just an interesting problem to solve, and the thick layer of nihilism obscures the sight of what he's really doing.
With many people choosing not to reproduce, many currently existing relationships are already primarily a sort of recreational activity and are divorced from their evolutionary purpose. Replacing live partners with AIs would just take that one step further.
> Therefore, the kindest thing they can do is leave the autists alone so they can cope as best they can in peace.
This one, no. I'm probably autistic. It wasn't a diagnosis for anything when I was growing up, I was just weird. I craved connection so badly it compelled me to try to "improve" myself to be more like others. I'd be completely fucked today if someone offered a fake, effortless alternative.
I don't think parasocial relationships are actually working out for anyone. The kids are all miserable, lonely, and have a million mental health issues. Kids used to negotiate their differences and play together. Now each of them thinks they get to set the rules for the entire playground. I'd be lonely and bitter too with that mentality.
> You could argue the AI companies would have an incentive to exploit their users, but this is a thing that happens in real relationships as well!
Sadly, yeah. Your chances of finding a human companion who isn't a piece of shit is way higher than finding an ethical tech company to pour your heart out to though.
As long as someone makes enough effort to pay the bills and not neglect their health, I don't see why anything more should be necessary. It certainly beats having to adopt hobbies you don't like or learning to lie about your feelings in order to appeal to potential partners (both common pieces of advice for nerdy men).
>I don't think parasocial relationships are actually working out for anyone.
The tech isn't quite there yet, but we've seen immense progress just over the past couple of years.
>Your chances of finding a human companion who isn't a piece of shit is way higher than finding an ethical tech company to pour your heart out to though.
It seems that the solution here, just as with other software, is to make AI companions open source.