Just What I Needed To Start The New Year: Hacked Sex Robots Paranoia

Calico starts the New Year on the wrong foot (or perhaps that should be the wrong genitals), with an unhealthy dose of paranoia about the prospect of hacked sex robots turned into merciless, blowtorch-wielding killers by cybercriminals. What can be done to prevent this horrific vision of the future from coming to fruition? Can sex robots be hardwired to respond to safe words? Can we put a shutoff knob in a convenient, easily-kicked spot on their cyber-scrotums? Maybe we should just make them small, weak, and unable to handle welding tools in the first place?

Explore, if you dare, the chilling notion of sex-crazed giant Ken dolls gone wrong in Calico’s latest post, “Just What I Needed To Start The New Year: Hacked Sex Robot Paranoia” …

by Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com Porn For Women

For many years, I operated under the delusional belief I was a rational person, one who based her actions and beliefs on facts and well-reasoned arguments backed by solid evidence.

Then one of my older sisters pointed out when were kids, all our brother had to do was start mimicking the iconic theme from Jaws and I’d leap out of our family swimming pool like it was filled with gasoline and someone was about to toss a flaming matchstick in there.

Truth be told, my ability to shake off unreasonable fears hasn’t improved much in the interim, it has just become more focused on other people and real-world things, rather than giant, fictional, animatronic sharks which (spoiler alert!!) eventually get blown to smithereens by Roy Scheider.

Really, Doc? Welding Tools?

As of this week, my latest irrational fear (or maybe rational fear, depending on whether you happen to be a doom-saying technologist like cyber-security expert Dr. Nick Patterson) is the prospect of killer sex robots.

To be clear, in this context, a “killer sex robot” is not a regular sex robot with whom you have ‘killer’ sex as in awesome, eyes rolling into the back of your head, wailing-like-a-police-siren-orgasm sex. No, Dr. Patterson is warning us about the prospect of sex robots which have been hacked, then instructed to kill, kill, KILL.

“Hackers can hack into a robot or a robotic device and have full control of the connections, arms, legs and other attached tools like in some cases knives or welding devices,” Patterson said in a recent interview. “Often these robots can be upwards of 200 pounds, and very strong. Once a robot is hacked, the hacker has full control and can issue instructions to the robot.”

Did he really have to mention the “attached tools like… knives or welding devices”? Now, whenever I start thinking about sex robots, I’ll be picturing a giant, buff, blank-faced Ken doll coming at me with a blowtorch.

Paging Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov (Again)…

“The last thing you want is for a hacker to have control over one of these robots,” Patterson continued with his panic-inducing vision of sex robots gone horribly wrong. “Once hacked they could absolutely be used to perform physical actions for an advantageous scenario or to cause damage.”

Patterson’s quote above covers several reasons why I’m always saying Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” need to be an actual, no-shit, unquestionably hardwired thing for all robots – especially 200-pound, hackable, blowtorch-carrying sex robots.

Of course, in just about every robot story (including some of Asimov’s own writing), the three laws generally go to shit at some point in the story – but just because fictional robotic characters can’t be reliably forced to not attack their human sex partners with blowtorches doesn’t mean we can’t aspire to accomplish such a thing.

Here’s an idea: We could create a sex robot version of a “safe word,” which if we scream it (while we’re, oh, I don’t know, maybe being stabbed or burned to death?) will shut down our sex robots, even if they’ve already been hacked.

Look, I’m no technologist or sex robot-engineer, but offhand this seems like something which would be feasible, programmatically. Just to be extra safe, we should make sure they respond to a safe hand signal, too – or at least to a swift kick in their cyber-balls.

Or Maybe We Should Limit Ourselves To The “iStud Mini”

If sex robot safe word/self-destruct mechanisms can’t be fashioned for some reason, maybe the answer is to make our sex robots relatively small, weak and capable of imparting only enough force to stimulate an orgasm in their users.

Plus, how adorable would it be to have a sex robot who only comes up to your knees? I mean, everybody loves those cute little miniature horses, right?

Seriously, if we make them small enough, these potentially scary sex robots would be rendered no more threatening than the average “smart” butt plug.

Oh yeah, I forgot; smart butt plugs can be scary, too.

You know what? Fuck it; I’ll just stick to “Sexual Gratification Aid of the Future Plan B” – by which of course I mean those nice, low-tech, hack-proof, hand-carved wooden dildos from Ghana.