At a New York University conference on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence earlier this month, Kate Devlin, lecturer in computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, pointed out that interest in sex robots is apparent in the ancient myth of Pygmalion. [...]
“Pygmalion doesn’t like the outside world, he doesn’t like women, he sees them as prostitutes. They disgust him because they wear make-up and behave inappropriately,” she says. “For Pygmalion in Ovid’s story, having a sexbot of his own is great because he doesn’t have to interact with real women, he doesn’t have to engage with the world. He’s no longer living a life of celibacy, which is something David Levy picks up on in his work Love and Sex with Robots, arguing that sexbots in the 21st century will be an answer to loneliness.” [...]
Pygmalion is far from the only tale that draws on sex robot themes. The story was inspired by the Greek myth of Pandora, in which a woman is molded from the earth by the gods. “She’s inherently artificial. She’s a technological creation,” says Liveley. “She’s programmed by the gods to behave in certain ways that are all about being seductive and erotic.” The earliest surviving writing on Pandora dates from 8th century BCE, though Liveley says it likely has much older roots. The tale is also the Greek version of the tale of Adam and Eve, a connection that highlights how the first woman of the Abrahamic religions was molded to serve the needs of the man.
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