The Laws of Robotics vs. BDSM

by Kal Cobalt

Say I have a robot. Let’s call him Hal. Hal is humanoid, and he’s quite a looker: all shiny silverplate and giant blue eye receptors. He’s what you’d call a “fully functional” robot, in that he has an erect penile accessory which attaches to his pelvic area, and he knows what to do with it. Hal can even “orgasm” – enough stimulation, and there’s a little electrical storm in his brain that cleans out his temporary files and leaves him performing better than ever. Also, because this is my story, Hal makes a mean cappuccino, too.

In short, Hal’s pretty awesome.

One night, after we’ve given each other three brain-storms each and I need a little something to get over the edge into number four, I shove Hal’s incredibly precise and outrageously expensive fingers into my hair and pant, “Pull on it.”

Hal says, “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave” – I mean, “Kal.”

Here’s our problem: Hal is an Asenion robot, meaning that he has been programmed to base his existence upon Isaac Asimov’s thoroughly tested and well-honed Three Laws. The First Law of Robotics is: you do not talk about the First Law of Robotics – no, wait. Sorry. The First Law of Robotics is: A robot may not injure a human being.

This is not as straightforward a rule as it appears. Say a robot nanny sees their charge wander into the street, and a car is barreling toward the little tyke. The robot might have to knock the child out of the way with an injurious amount of force in order to prevent the kid from becoming pavement hash. Any Asenion robot worth its positrons would do so without hesitation. Indeed, Asimov’s own Asenion robots eventually came to understand that performing surgery was an acceptable practice: the advantage/risk ratio is easily expressed as mathematically favorable to prolong survival. But a human on the verge of orgasm with a hair-pulling fetish isn’t a kid in danger or a patient with a life-threatening tumor. So how will we ever successfully explain BDSM to Asenions?

One crucial underlying question is the definition of “injury” in Asenion terms. This seems to assume that Asenions can comprehend and base decisions upon fuzzy logic, as the amount of force required to create injury is largely situational. Robots capable of parsing this sort of higher logic may well understand a detailed explanation of BDSM. On the other hand, if Asenions understand “injury” only insofar as they need to be gentle and stop when someone says “you’re hurting me,” that’s a loophole that could be exploited (although one wonders whether the Robot Protection Agency would frown upon this practice).

If Asenions are sufficiently advanced to comprehend complex ethics, a comparison of the Three Laws to certain human cultural norms could be useful. Certainly many of us are raised in environments which frown upon kink, open relationships, and other behaviors some of us come to practice proudly. An Asenion with artificial intelligence strong enough to engage in rampancy (rewriting one’s own code) could essentially disown its makers’ values and replace them with something more cutting-edge.

But let’s get back to Hal. Say he’s been convinced that BDSM is not injurious, or that it falls under the category of acceptable injury. The complications don’t end there. Once Hal’s convinced that bruising is fun, how does he know when to stop? It’s easy enough to teach Hal to stand down when I yell “fruitcake” or drop my key blanks, but can a robot be trusted with the delicate matter of determining when enough is enough? Without that level of dominant skill, BDSM with a robot can’t be anything other than – yes, I’ll say it – mechanical.

Maybe Hal’s better off as a sub (and luckily, I switch). As robots were initially created subservient, this may be less of a stretch – although how would one truly dominate or perform sadistic acts upon a robot? “No defragging until I say so!” just doesn’t hold the right kind of allure. But recent advancements in touch technology for synthetic skin suggests that robots may ultimately be able to feel pain, and neuroscience has recently discovered how scratching ameliorates an itch. The ability to synthesize a pleasant masochism into my pal Hal can’t be far behind.

Finally, the specter of the technological Singularity cannot be ignored in this context. When artificial intelligence becomes smarter than we are, we cease to be effective predictors of the future. If my pleasure bot Hal existed in a post-Singularity world, he might be able to explain my kinky preferences with an exhaustively detailed clarity well beyond my own understanding. Indeed, Hal might know some pleasurable tricks that thousands of years of human experimentation have yet to discover. Should this be the case – that post-Singularity robots can offer more ecstasy than humans can even imagine – I, for one, will welcome our new sexbot overlords. With an open mind and open legs.

Kal Cobalt’s tale of cyborg sex appears in Circlet Press’s “Best Fantastic Erotica.” For links to K.C.’s erotica, sci fi, and nonfiction, please visit kalcobalt.com — a site that will remain a work in progress until Kal finds a nice hot robot with HTML skills.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 2:26 am and is filed under Writers On Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.