At a time when it’s hard to keep pace with
technology—hard even to know what to believe about the latest revelations, the
interface between reality and imagination is increasingly blurred. For
generations, humans have been free to use their imaginations without much fear
of penalty, safe from consequences unless they acted upon their inner visions.
In the case of fiction, our minds have wandered without restraint into a world
of pretend. Suppose I were a warrior or an ancient goddess or even a wronged
nobody. How I would punish those opposed to me. As a child I cheerfully gunned
down a legion of baddies in my playtime without reproof. And as an adult, how
many times have I visualized what I would do to this or that screen or literary
villain.
But what if a synthetic facsimile of that bully or that femme fatale
takes tangible form? Are they things or are they something more? Can I smash
them to pieces or molest them as I would any other possession or, as with the
child sex dolls, are there legal and moral considerations? Could it be that
there are psychological ramifications for human aggressors willing to assault an
entity that looks and acts exactly like a human but isn’t?
Of course, we are
already familiar with surrogates depicted on various screens, whether human
actors or computer concocted entities. But technology will surely give us much
more tactile power at some future date to star in our own private dramas in
which androids or holograms or some other creation will be summoned by a human,
rather like a genie of old, and used or abused as that human sees fit. Who will
protect the child dolls then?
As a writer of fiction currently working on a
story about androids, I think we are entering legal and communal territory we
cannot yet fully appreciate. My fictitious androids are adult in appearance, and
submit themselves to whatever uses their human companions dream up. But will
that be an innocent enough viewpoint in the future? Will AI hit back at robot
abusers? Will rights activists find a new cause in fembotphilia or fembotphobia?
Will human moral distaste prevail? Or ultimately, will the courts have to decide
what, in this changing world, can be safely transferred from imagination to an
increasingly hard-to-define reality?
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