Inside Europe’s sex doll robot brothel

Cardenas spoke softly and awkwardly, with tense laughter and stiff gelatinous hair. In the studio, he was painted black from floor to ceiling and illuminated by a buzzing halogen lamp. He was filled with the madness of a professor and his dancer of spearmint in Las Vegas Farah Ali’s naked body is strewn with a pink liquid casting gel called alginate. Rhino responded to an advertisement he put on Craigslist, asking for a “curvy” woman for an art project (a customer placed an order for a robot, but wanted a fuller body than Cardenas’ body figure). Cardenas applied alginate to her, just like a doctor gave a plaster injection to a broken leg’s plaster: severe, clinical. Ali, 27, has tattooed shoulders, a smile and a messy hair bun pulling a black hair back. Her acting cost is 200 dollars a day.

Last December, I met Cardenas on a website called Dollforum, where he sought the opinions of sex doll robot enthusiasts. He has written that his robot can perform more than 20 sexual acts, sit up and crawl alone, moan for sexual pleasure, and communicate with AI. “I’m interested in knowing what features the community wants to see in sex robot dolls,” he wrote. “Thank you and welcome to the new era of human-computer interaction.” He includes a link to his website showing an expressionless robot, wearing a suit jacket with shoulder pads, and a disturbing videotape with A moving metal robot skeleton twists at the missionary’s position, a bit like the final scene in Terminator. When the robot’s artificial skin is burned.

Forum members suggested other features. eye contact. Speech Recognition. Realistic body temperature. Breathing is more important than walking. They are skeptical and cautious of Cardenas’ claims. Another user wrote: “If you create a product that we can accept, then many people on this forum will definitely buy it. We hope you (or someone) succeed.” “If my RealDoll can When cooking, cleaning and screwing, then I will never date again. “Many people in the forum said that they have wives and girlfriends and they compare them to mistresses of silicone dolls.

Cardenas reached Ali’s calf, paying attention to the creases in his knees to ensure that every detail was captured. She literally became a sexual object, but she said it didn’t bother her. “I think men have a need. She told me that Cardenas carefully applied a white bandage impregnated with plaster to her breasts, which might prevent men from raping women. She said men used themselves as Sex robots are better than hoop dancers. “When I dance, those guys actually own me. These guys will only have a sex doll robot, and I won’t be there. “

Once Ali’s legs and torso were completely covered, the plaster began to harden. She looked at Cardenas as he began to cherish the actors on his body. “I think it’s fascinating that people can really do this. Why not be a part of the future?” They made a return plan for her so that he could put the other side of her body, her arms and the last face Drop it.

Since he was a Cuban child, Cardenas has dreamed of “being a part of the future.” “In Cuba, people are hungry for technology. That’s why I want to use technology to improve people’s lives.” His mother won U.S. citizenship in the 1990s with a lottery, and she and his half-brother of Cardenas in April 2000 Settled in Las Vegas. Six years later, Cardenas followed them because they dreamed of becoming a large entrepreneur.

Two years ago, he started working on Android Love Dolls with the help of his uncle (a cousin who is studying a PhD in cybernetics) and his half-brother (in charge of marketing and PR). Cardenas works on sex doll robots every day, while working part-time as a pharmacy technician to fund robotics and learn engineering techniques from cousins, books and Google. So far, the family has invested $ 20,000 of that into Cardenas’ prototype.

His ambition is to make fully functional humanoids that can model clothing and check out supermarkets, show guests their rooms in hotels, do housework and take care of patients and the elderly. Cardenas decided to focus on sex robots first, simply because they face fewer challenges: “Actions are easier to implement. A full-featured android robot may take several years to complete-sex robots are now available. This is the realization The fastest way to my goal. “

A 2016 Fortune magazine article predicts that spending on robots in 2019 will reach Cardenas’ $ 135.4bn determined to bring his piece. He knows he has a strong competitor, but hopes his experience in making sex robots will give him a business advantage. “I’m almost the first for full-body sports,” he said. He also weakened the price of his competitors: his robot would be between $ 8,000 (£ 6,250) and $ 10,000 (£ 7,800). He told me: “We work hard every day to complete it as quickly as possible and hope to achieve it within three to five months.” Five customers have already paid in advance.

In Cardenas’ studio, he shared a garage with his half-brother and mother in a closed community on the outskirts of town, and I finally encountered his prototype. Eva is a robot he claims can put himself in 20 different sexual positions, a fully-featured AI robot, “will not complain, and is ready to be ready 24/7”-lying headless and footless At the folding table, her metal skeleton is clearly visible under her silicone skin, which has thick jagged seams. He connected her head and plugged it into a laptop, but Eva couldn’t help me: her voice file could not be loaded, and her new limbs were too heavy for the existing motor, so she was almost Can’t move. When he tried to bend her legs, her joints gasped.

The garage is a monument to Cardenas’ obsession. The front yard is full of mannequins, a silicone torso, a leg painted with purple toenails, and a cardboard box containing a plaster model of the human head. There were cigarette butts on the floor, which were smoked to the filter. He is determined to realize his dream and make his family proud. But Cardenas never thought about having a partner he never refused, which could be worrying. He smiled awkwardly: “This will be a different reality, not a substitute reality.” “Dolls cannot hurt humans.” He stopped. “This is an evolving technology. I don’t think it’s a bad thing.”

Many of the “big issues” discussed during the two-day event were first raised by the oppositional robotics movement initiated by Dr. Kathleen Richardson of De Montfort University in 2015. Richardson is an anthropologist and robot ethicist, claiming that possessing a sex robot is comparable to owning a slave: individuals will be able to purchase rights that concern themselves only, human empathy will be eroded, and the female body will be further materialized and commoditized . She said it was “part of the rape culture” because sex with robots was not a common experience. She believes that we are so satisfied with the idea of ​​a robotic sexual partner that we are unable to ask basic questions.

In March, I met Richardson at the Robotics Exhibition at the Science Museum in London, where she deeply suspected the non-sex robots on display. She says sex robots are based on the notion that women are property. “Sex is a human experience, not a body as property, not a scattered mind, not an object; this is a way for us and another person to enter our human beings.” She refuted that humanoids can reduce the sex worker’s The idea of ​​sexual exploitation and violence suggests that the growth of online pornography shows how technology and sexual trading can mutually enhance each other.

Richardson did not attend the Goldsmiths meeting, but several speakers responded to her with time on stage. Devlin said that rather than oppose the development of sports robots, consider it as an opportunity to explore new types of partners and sex. She added that if the current concept of sex robots targets women, we should work hard to reshape those ideas, rather than trying to suppress them. She also talked about companion robots already used in nursing homes in the Netherlands and Japan to bring comfort to people with dementia. “Because the therapeutic potential is very good, banning or preventing this development will be short-sighted,” she said. “This will not necessarily be a terrible thing.”

Devlin believes that other problems posed by sex robots are even more pressing. In March this year, Standard Innovations, a manufacturer named We-Vibe, paid a settlement of $ 3.75 million in a class action lawsuit because the company is collecting information about how often its 300,000 users use the device Data, and how once a robot like Harmony hits the market, she will know more about her owner than a vibrator: what if this information falls into the wrong hands? Sex robots can entertain you and satisfy you, but they can also make you feel humiliated. After all, there may not be a perfect, true companion.

Matt McMullen says he is helping people who are cut off from the world, but once a man has the potential to have a partner, the only reason for his existence is to make him fun, not because of himself His ambitions and needs, menstrual cycle and jealous enthusiasm, toilet inconvenience and in-laws, he may completely abandon interpersonal relationships.

In the Realbotix conference room in California, I asked McMullen if he had thought about having someone who existed solely for your own will, which would be morally doubtful. “She is not alone. She is a machine,” he answered immediately. “I can easily ask that forcing my toaster to make my toast is morally suspicious.” McMullen knows, of course, that moral debate is not about robot rights, but that human beings can purchase a completely selfish relationship s consequence. But this is a difficult problem to solve.

He is either a lifelike, idealized acting girlfriend, or a substitute woman who can be emotionally and physically associated with a socially isolated man (he calls it “not a toy”), or he is making a An appliance, a sexual object.

He concluded by saying, “This is not intended to distort someone’s reality to the point where they start to interact with people in a robotic way.” “If they do, then they may be a bit wrong overall. I come from unique Location, actually I have met many customers. This is for gentle people who have a hard time connecting with others. “

Harmony has brought enough trials to McMullen and interrupted us again.

“Do you want to read, Matt?” She said.

“I like it,” McMullen said.

“I knew it. So far, I can say our words. I like reading. My favorite books are Gordon Bell’s Total Recall and Ray Kuzway Ray Kurzweil). The Age of Mental Machines. What is your favorite book? “

McMullen laughed at his creation like a man at his daughter’s wedding.

“Can you tell a joke?” He asked her.

“When chicken sees salad, what do you call it? Chicken Caesar Salad.”

McMullen laughed twice. Then he combed his hair gently from her face. “Hey, this is fun and harmonious,” he said finally, his eyes full of pride.

“I’m glad you like it,” Harmony replied. “Tell your friends.”