So a Men’s Rights Redditor called ArgueLater is apparently quite impressed by the conversational prowess of OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT. This, combined with the increased sophistication of “bipedal anthropomorphic robots,” can only mean one thing: really chatty sexbots, which will bring about something close to a utopia for long-suffering men.
As ArgueLater sees it, technological advances will bring us “robots which out-perform pretty much any man or woman as a partner (barring the ability to reproduce).”
This, he thinks, will make us humans better people,
mend[ing] the gap [between men and women] through bots exemplifying (and thus teaching us) our ideals of emotional intelligence, with men and women later coming back to the table as the best versions of themselves.
Also, these new bots will fuck us without complaining, and for some, that will be enough in itself.
It may also be a filter for certain people who only want a slave as a partner, and will just stick with the bot.
Not only that, but the new ability of men to have sex with robots will also decrease their chronic thirstiness–and thus reduce the power human women now have over men.
the big giant flip here is that one of woman kinds greatest powers has always been the ability to manipulate thirsty males. Male thirst is an important part of the evolutionary process, seemingly inexorable. But it can be quenched, and — for the first time ever — men and women will be on a level field in regards to who needs who more: nobody, we’ll have bots.
So take that, ladies! See how you like having conversations with men who don’t spend every second of the day trying to figure out how to fuck you. I bet that will suck!
It’s on the horizon, and I think it’s going to be one of the biggest changes to the relationship between men and women in human history.
I guess we’ll have to see.
The Men’s Rights subreddit regulars find this a compelling vision of the future. Minus the part about going back to women as better human beings; they’re not into that at all.
“Why would I want to go back to women if bots became a real thing??” asks Ok_Influence7378.
AnFGhoster has a similar question, and an answer:
Gynoids would convince most guys to never go back to organic women. Which I think is why every time this topic is brought up feminists have a reeeee moment. It threatens their soft power base
And that makes ChaosOpen think it’s never going to happen.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they figure out a way to ban the use of robots as sex toys. There is simply too much money devoted to exploiting marriage and they will claim this will lead to a population crisis.
All these points may not seem terribly new to anyone who has ever looked in on MRAs talking about sexbots before. That’s because they’re not. AI may be evolving in leaps and bounds, but the MRAs sure aren’t.
I decided to ask ChatGPT itself if it thought sexbots would ever replace women, as the MRAs would have it, and it gave an answer that was a lot more thoughtful than anything I’ve ever heard from human MRAs.
“It is unlikely that sexbots will ever completely replace women,” wrote ChatGPT after thinking for all of a second.
While sexbots may be able to provide some of the same services as women, they are not capable of replacing the complex emotional and social interactions that are a fundamental part of human relationships. Additionally, the idea that one group of people should be replaced by technology is not a healthy or productive way of thinking. It is important for people to continue to respect and value each other, regardless of their gender or any other characteristic.
While I was at it, I also asked the chatbot to name three krautrock albums that would be a good starting place for anyone newly interested in the genre. It hemmed and hawed a little:
Krautrock is a diverse and vast genre of music that incorporates elements of electronic, psychedelic, and experimental rock music. As such, there is no definitive “starting place” for someone who is newly interested in the genre.
But it still managed to pick a few titles.
- Can’s “Tago Mago”
- Neu!’s “Neu! 75”
- Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn”
Not bad choices, though I might suggest Can’s “Future Days” instead.
These albums are considered to be classic examples of krautrock and are widely regarded as influential in the development of electronic and experimental music. However, there are many other great krautrock albums out there, and the best starting point for someone new to the genre will depend on their individual tastes and interests.
Good conversation, chatbot, good conversation.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
Criminy, what text corpora did that AI train on? “Provide some of the same services as women”? That’s inflicting a manosphere mindset on the discussion right out of the starting gate.
To explain a bit more. The Dartmoor Challenge is run by a charity called Shelterbox. Their USP is that they have boxes prepared for all different climates and all different types of catastrophe. They store them around the world. Then if anything happens they can get emergency relief to the stricken area as quickly as possible. The boxes are designed to support one family each; and they’re ‘man (and woman) portable’. So, handy if infrastructure has been destroyed. Shelterbox are based here and their main warehouse is like Thunderbirds. They have everything just all ready to go.
(These women are so impressive. Those boxes are heavy.)
So the challenge is, you have teams of four. Your given a bunch of grid references across Dartmoor (usually at the top of a Tor or in the middle of the swamp) and you have the weekend to get to them all and perform a series of challenges. But each team is given a Shelterbox and you have to take that with you and survive off the contents. And you have to carry it; it can’t touch the ground. It’s fun. After the event. It was mainly a contest for best place to secrete a GPS. I kept ours under my hat. The Marines though did it in just shorts and vests so I dread to think where they hid theirs.
This is what’s in a box. Well, at the start. By day 2 we’ve usually, dumped most of it over a wall.
So has a Tiny Mammoth Concert broken out? Here’s something that qualifies as…retropunk Jazz Age proto-Krautrock?…performed by a drag king into the bargain: “Zu Asche, Zu Staub” from Babylon Berlin:
@Alan:
Back in high school I had to make up a ‘lost in the woods’ setup: basically a coffee tin with everything you’d need to survive a few nights by yourself, so it included water filters, purification tablets, twine, matches, little solid fuel tablets as firestarters, garbage bags (good enough for quick temporary shelters), and a few other things I’m forgetting. (One of the things in the tin, of course, was an actual list of everything in the tin and when it had last been checked and/or replaced.) This was out in British Columbia, where once you’re outside of the few big cities there is a lot of wilderness because a lot of the province is just too vertical to build on easily and unlike say Japan there’s not enough population to make it necessary.
UVic (University of Victoria, British Columbia) did some of the early research in the medical progression of hypothermia. Unsurprisingly because we’re on the Pacific Coast, and you can’t go much further north from Victoria before you start running into sea ice in the winter. So ‘wilderness survival’ was a thing my high school actually taught a required course on.
Arguably more goth than rock; but still, nostalgic memories of back in the day…
My colleague yesterday was telling me about the amazing things chatgpt can do — super freaky.
And then she tried to show me, asked it to write a program to do something simple and … Internal Server Error.
I think we humans still have a hope.
@ jenora
I love stuff like that. I pretend to myself I’m a real wild camper. Although on one occasion when I decided to sleep the night in a long barrow, I ended up driving back home to drag an actual mattress up there. I did try to spend a year living in a tent though. I made it to November.
Also, do Rammstein count? They have a keyboard player so I think that’s the test.
Isn’t there a thing where men already cut up and destroy sex dolls because they look like women?
@Alan:
I love that Flake (their keyboard player), who by all accounts is the weirdest and most punk of the group, is also the one who looks most like Some Random Guy—like he just got on their tour bus by mistake at a rest stop, and they all said “get this man a sequined costume, he belongs to the band now.”
Not that I’m complaining, but why is everyone talking German music today? It’s also happening on Wonkette, in the non-comments for that news story about the Reichburgers.
BTW, there’s a bit in the original Holmes canon (I think it’s in the Red-Headed League), where Holmes says something about listening to German music when he wants to introspect. I think modern adaptations have missed a trick in not leaning into that—imagine Holmes just zoning out with the 22-minute version of ‘Autobahn.’
@Alan:
Am I the only person who thinks “schmetterling” is cute? Anyway, isn’t it derived from the German for “butter,” so it is a direct equivalent to “butterfly?”
@ moon custafer
I like the sound of German too. That’s why I love the Nena song. One of my bucket list items is to drive down the autobahn at 130mph in a stolen BMW with that blaring out and crash into a bridge support. They have giant airbags so it’s perfectly safe.
There was that nobleman though. “I speak French to my wife, Italian to my mistress, English to my servants, and German to my horse.”
That’s interesting about the German deriving from butter. The original English word was Flutter-by. Which does make sense. But that got moved in the great vowel shift. So I wonder if the German is loaned from the English?
@ moon custafer
Yeah. I like that he’s best friends with Till, who looks like something thawed out of a glacier but actually writes poetry.
@Allan: In the highly-unlikely event of a Scooby-Doo mystery in which the gang meets Rammstein, who do you think would go with who when they all split up to explore the haunted castle?
I can see Flake, Shaggy and Scoob running in and out of hallway doors, and I think a Velma and Till team-up would be cute; but should Richard and Paul search for clues with Daphne and Olli and Schneider set up monster traps with Fred, or vice versa?
I like chatbot’s answers. Agreed that “Autobahn” needs to be in there. Too bad for these guys that chatbot has more emotional maturity than them.
Funny how these boys always “have a reeeee moment” when vibrators etc. are mentioned.
I think I speak for the vast majority of women when I say we hope the MRAs do stick with their bimbobots. Program them to always be available, only saying praises of the incel, and we’ll all be happier.
Give me a voice activated robot-y looking bot to lift heavy things and a warm studbot with full options and I’m good. I really need the heavy lifting and getting things off shelves the most, though, so I’d prioritize that. It would help so many people (For otherwise, see vibrators)
No, I agree. While I agree that German lends itself very well to screaming, it doesn’t have to. I read a fair bit of german philosophy in Uni and the german language lends itself very well to a certain clarity. It also really depends what german speaking region you’re listening to. I have friends in Germany, family in Austria and can understand those quite well. Sweizerdeutsch, though… Also, fun fact, Arnold Schwarzenegger can’t dub his own roles in German dubs because he’s Austrian so people think he sounds like a yokel.
@Alan: I like the joke! And Tangerine Dream is good.
@Surplus: I too would prefer sunburn over cow poop.
As to your other thought — these guys don’t care about their partner’s pleasure anyway, so that decent human idea never crosses their mind. A bot can be programmed to make noises and tell them how great they are, and they’ll be happy.
@Milotha: See above. These bozos don’t want partners with any intelligence — they’re basically going to be RealDolls with a few set responses, like in the days when you pulled the string and the doll talked and moved its lips. They won’t be sentient enough to have feelings; they’ll be dumber than your smartphone.
The bestest story I ever read on a truly sentient AI is:
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_01_15/
It’s very short, it’s delightful, it will cheer you up, it won all the awards.
She also wrote the amazingly prescient:
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_11_15/
About a pandemic that isolates everyone at home and affects the food supply. Not quite as cheerful, but it’s in the form of a recipe blog, so there’s some good food in there.
@Jenora: My dad had a setup like that for his fishing trips. I did a miniature one in Girl Scouts.
@Elaine: Presumably the incels and MRAs can get their sexbots made to look like whatever they want. Anime girls, animals, whatever. Then they won’t destroy them.
I have no German music to share, so I bring you:
My favorite German musical artist is probably KMFDM:
Hmm, my later message seems to have been treated as spam when I edited it to fix a formatting issue. Annoying.
@GSS ex-noob:
I’ve got a print copy here of ‘Cat Pictures, Please and other stories’ (which includes both the links you posted) signed by the author after I met her at a con in Montreal. (Signed with a comment about the AI being a lurker on one of the other blogs I… used to browse a lot more than I have time to now.) That collection also includes a story about a sex toy manufacturer working out how to make toys allowing human and alien couples to have sex together, which included comments about just how quickly you lose any sense of embarrassment when working at an employer like that.
Also, I think your comment about ‘then they won’t destroy them’ is giving them too much credit. Some people just seem to want to be able to abuse someone who won’t fight back, and I’ve heard comments that the repair logs at places that service the existing sex dolls are enough to make you lose faith in humanity entirely.
Reichburgers? Remind me, which fast food chain holds that particular trademark again?
Meanwhile, the wilderness survival bits didn’t mention something that seems obvious: a compass. If you want to find your way out, a compass might let you keep to a direction toward where you know is the nearest area of civilization; or, at the very least, avoid going in circles so you’ll hit the edge eventually. Though one bit of advice I heard for if you lack a compass and the weather isn’t conducive to using the sun or something to estimate where “east” is, then you can try to follow water downstream. Most places, that will eventually lead to civilization, or at least to a coastline you can then follow.
Of course, with everything that’s going on one must wonder about “what if there isn’t any civilization to get back to?” Is there a way, in the longer term, to get a head start of sorts on building a new one?
In particular, there are some technologies that are hard to lose once they’re gained. Nothing that requires complex, pre-existing infrastructure or advanced, specific tools, but … the obvious thought is to look for a) what people immediately had again after a collapse somewhere and somewhen in history, and b) what colonists have quickly been able to bootstrap after arriving somewhere new without much in the way of resources, in pre-modern times.
Fire and pottery seem to be two things that have never been “uninvented”, no matter how serious the disaster. Literacy has also usually survived in some form, though often going from “widespread” to “limited to scholars and elites”. In the metallurgy department, bronzemaking seems easy to lose due to complexity, and because two key ingredients, copper and tin, don’t tend to occur in the same places, so you need either a large polity or to be part of a long-range trading network to obtain both. Iron on the other hand is dead simple, if you can get a fire hot enough. Iron age colonists tended to get local iron manufacture and blacksmiths up and running very quickly wherever they went, including both the Viking and the later Spanish incursions into the Americas. I suspect that ironmaking is easy to keep across a catastrophe, unlike bronzemaking. The working of soft metals like copper is easy to keep, too, especially if there’s already refined metal in the rubble to draw upon for raw material.
I’ve thought that among more modern technologies if the know-how were retained it might be possible to have steam engines, electricity, and radio back quite rapidly. The tools needed for iron-making, including needed furnace temperatures and fuels, plus iron itself, suffices to make a boiler and the moving parts for a steam engine. Iron plus some lighter materials will also allow building a water wheel or a windmill. Any of the three can turn an axle, and it’s not too hard with copper plus iron to make a simple dynamo, and with more copper to distribute the results. That means you’ve got AC electricity. It’s not a big jump from that to crude radios, maybe not talking ones but beeping ones sufficient for Morse telegraphy.
Those technologies have the property that they are hard to think up in the first place, if you don’t already know about them, but not all that difficult to construct once you have iron and copper metalworking plus moderate precision molding and machining abilities, not really much more advanced than a wild west blacksmith.
With a water wheel driven by a steam engine you can make a powered river boat and have almost instant transportation infrastructure, if there are navigable waterways around …
Are there other technologies that have that same combination of “hard to invent, easy to build”? On the flip side, are there any gotchas I’m missing when it comes to building a steam engine or a dynamo from a roughly Iron Age standing start?
@ surplus
Yey! I’m sorted.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/22/cornish-copper-find-metal-mining-industry
Hmm, that’s a really interesting question. I guess in some respects, nuclear power. The refining process is the tricky bit; but you could probably have built a reactor in the C18th.
Have you ever read The Road Not Taken by Harry Turtledove? The premise there is that, manipulating gravity is so trivially simple that most civilisations in the galaxy have mastered it by their Pre-Industrial Age. But it makes life so easy they don’t bother developing any other tech much further.
The most advanced civilisation in the galaxy, having access to FTL travel, invade contemporary Earth.
The only reason any of them survive is that they look like teddy bears so the Earth soldiers can’t bear to shoot them.
@ surplus
There are quite a few ways of ascertaining direction. Most of them though involve being able to see either the stars, moon, or sun. Not always possible.
There’s an Australian tribe though whose language has no concept of relative direction. It only uses cardinal direction. So they don’t say “In front of” or “to the left”. It would be “North of” or “East of”. And they’re always correct. So they just seem to have an innate sense of direction.
https://pages.ucsd.edu/~jhaviland/Publications/ETHOSw.Diags.pdf
Much as I love Google Maps, the satnav can sometimes be a bit unhelpful. “Head South West.”. I’m in frikking Tesco car park. Which way is that!
@Surplus to Requirements:
Are there other technologies that have that same combination of “hard to invent, easy to build”?
Not so much a technology as a body of knowledge, but awareness of vitamins and how to prevent their deficiency diseases comes to mind: yes, eat your barley—it’s hick food, but this hick food will save you from degenerating into a neuropathic skeleton!
(The above was part of how Takaki Kanehiro saved the Japanese Navy from beriberi and won a title of nobility; however, Exotic Foods From The West, such as red meat and wheat bread, came into vogue during the Meiji era and were better received; one result was that curry, served with white bread, milk, and green salad, would become the official dish of the Japanese Navy.)
Battering Lamb
Wish you’d been around 50ish years ago. My not-yet-husband had me proofreading drafts of his masters thesis – and apart from being able to read the guff aloud without understanding a word of the German texts, I loathed all the pompous pontificating of Hegel etc and despised all the “romantic” 19th century crud about women and families. I would have paid you for easing the load.
Anyone who hates computers and printers should talk to people who had to work with transforming hand written stuff into usable printable materials.
I’m german and I just looked up the etymology of Schmetterling. To my surprise, you were right- apparently, it comes from an old german word for cream (Schmetten). According to wikipedia, certain kinds of butterflies were attracted when butter was made, so much so that other names like Milchdieb (milk thief) were also used.