SF 'Sexbot' Demo Sparks LinkedIn Debate: Normalizing Rape or Sex-Positive Critique Gone Wrong?
Graham_dePenros · x · 2026-11-05
Luiza Jarovsky, PhD, shared a video of a San Francisco sexbot advertised with "SEX IS SOLVED," warning that AI is coming for sex — "the banalization of intimacy and normalization of rape."
The top comments came from two men:
- Owen Matson (philosophy, media theory & cognitive science) pushed back at length: jumping from a robot that can't refuse to "normalization of rape" needs far more argument, echoing the sexual moralism Gayle Rubin's sex-positive feminism challenged decades ago, collapsing fantasy/representation/desire/conduct, and resurrecting conservative suspicion of unconventional sexuality under progressive auspices.
- Independent researcher David Elfanbaum took a middle stance: the video is satire but raises real questions as people form "relationships" with AI companions and photorealistic virtual partners — children and teens adopting unrealistic models of human relationships worry him most.
The poster invited readers to weigh in.
More from AGI Musings
- Prediction market roundtable: CLOBs let market makers profit, AMMs lose them money — devanshmehta · 2026-11-05
- India's tech firms optimized for cheap labor for decades — now AI makes them pay the cost — arpit_bhayani · 2026-11-05
- AI safety researchers clash over whether instrumental convergence predicts agentic risk — davidmanheim · 2026-11-05
- Caught Between AI High Priests and the Luddite Left: One Poster's Proud Centrism — teodorio · 2026-11-05
- The Next Bottleneck Isn't Compute — It's Human Attention — manosaie · 2026-11-05
- LessWrong's flaw: treating 'being less wrong' as an identity, says blogger — StewartalsopIII · 2026-11-05