Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers, and Algorithmic Matchmakers

301 Pages·2021·1.189 MB·English

by  Rob Brooks

A R T I F I C I A L
I N T I M A C Y

A R T I F I C I A L
I N T I M A C Y
Virtual friends, digital lovers
and algorithmic matchmakers
ROB BROOKS
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
First published in Australia by NewSouth, an imprint of UNSW Press
Copyright © 2021 Rob Brooks
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Brooks, Rob, 1970– author.
Title: Artificial intimacy : virtual friends, digital lovers, and
algorithmic matchmakers / Rob Brooks.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2021] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021011487 (print) | LCCN 2021011488 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780231200943 (hardcover ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231553858
(ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Sex. | Intimacy (Psychology) | Online social networks. |
Artificial intelligence—Social aspects. | Technological innovations—
Social aspects.
Classification: LCC HQ21 .B873 2021 (print) | LCC HQ21 (ebook) |
DDC 306.7—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021011487
LC ebook record available at https://lccnloc.gov/2021011488
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable
acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover art and design: Milenda Nan Ok Lee and Design by Committee
For all the people coming of age in this era of climate change,
COVID, and artificial intimacy. Especially my students, and
Ben, Lily, Oskar, Matilda, Christopher, Anthony and Olivia.

Contents
Introduction: In the beginning … 1
1. Meet the dollbots 6
2. It’s not about the robot 27
3. Groom your friends 50
4. The intimacy algorithm 68
5. How did sex become so complicated? 86
6. When artificial intimacy goes bad 108
7. Ploughs, pills and porn: How technology changes sex 132
8. Tomorrow’s moral panic will be just like yesterday’s 152
9. Make war not love 177
10. A Fembot army to disarm the InCel insurrection 199
11. There’s no such thing as free love 217
12. A future in four fictions 233
Acknowledgments 252
References 256
Notes 269
Index 279

Introduction:
In the beginning …
According to the Old Testament, sex and gender relations first grew
complicated when Eve ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good
and Evil, and then manipulated Adam into doing likewise. Their sin
made apparent to them their nakedness, of which they were ashamed.
Through sexual desire and reproduction, Adam and Eve transmitted
their sin to all their descendants, thus transforming human nature.
Greek mythology pinpoints a similar moment. The poet Hesiod
tells us that the first woman, Pandora, brought with her to the world a
jar containing ‘burdensome toil and sickness that brings death to men,
… diseases … [and] a myriad other pains’.1 She promptly scattered all
these contents, filling the earth and sea with evils.
Whichever account you read, sex became complicated very early in
human history, women bore most of the blame, and knowledge made
everything worse. As a scientist who studies the forces that render sex so
complicated, I have nowhere near the canonical certainty of Hesiod, the
Old Testament, or the fundamentalists who today use religious origin
myths to set their moral compass. I do know, however, that knowledge
presents a key to human improvement, that making women responsible
for policing sexuality harms people of all genders, and that there is no
point looking for answers in Genesis.
Sex was complicated from the very first time two single-celled
organisms combined their DNA. It grew even more so by the time
modern humans arose. Yet it reached new depths of complexity over
the last 12 000 years or so, for reasons that have nothing to do with a
1
ARTIFICIAL INTIMACY
mythic Tree of Knowledge. Human sexuality became complex because
new technologies changed how women and men make their livings, and
thus how they relate to one another. From taming animals and domesti-
cating cereal crops to industrialisation and the contraceptive pill, tech-
nology repeatedly disrupted the ways in which people cooperated with,
befriended and loved one another. And new technologies threaten to
overshadow the myriad pains that escaped Pandora’s box.
As lifesized silicone-skinned sex dolls metamorphose into lifelike
robots that can move, talk and, especially, fuck, many commentators
fear they will change human relationships for the worse. That they may
well do, but could a sex robot revolution have some upsides?
While we gawk at the sex robots, trying to process them in all their
uncanny weirdness, other technologies based in artificial intelligence
and virtual reality insinuate themselves into human interactions, quite
likely with more profound effects. Collectively, these are the ‘Artificial
Intimacies’: technologies that engage our human needs for connection,
intimacy, and sexual satisfaction. Machines that can help us make and
maintain friendships in a world of cognitive overload. Machines that
can help us feel better. And machines built to feed back to us whatever
it is that they need us to see, hear, or feel.
Many artificial intimacies will simply refine technologies that
already exist, including social media and video games. Others will look
entirely new. Together, they will likely transform the quality of human
life. The coronavirus pandemic already accelerated the transition to
artificial intimacy as people in isolation leaned more heavily on their
digital tools to socialise, work, play, and sometimes get off. If you want
to date the start of the age of artificial intimacy, then I would suggest
2020.
Human friends or lovers being made redundant by touching, feel-
ing robots and virtual reality avatars will likely remain the realm of
science fiction. Machines may never do intimacy as well as real humans
do. They don’t have to. Social media already occupies some of the
2