SEX WITH A CLONE

On the surface, cloning seems like a really cool thing. Replace your heart, arteries, kidneys, liver, eyes; you name it. Hypothetically, you could be just like that energizer bunny. You could keep going and going and going, maybe even forever. What's to stop it besides the money to pay for it?

There is one particular aspect of the process though, that I've been wondering about for some time now. It has to do with cloning a complete human being, not just the replacement parts.

And I don't mean just any human being. I'm talking about babes, the beautiful young ladies who always seem to be around teasing us into a coma.

What if you could clone them? It is a venture that -I dare say - many a horny young dude has thought about. What I'm wondering (assuming that you're married) is whether or not having sex with a cloned babe would constitute infidelity. I really don't think it would.

A cloned babe would not be a person. A cloned Jessica Simpson, for example, would not have her memories (would it?) and thus (please excuse me for using this word) her soul. So, in a very real sense, you wouldn't actually be having sex with Jessica Simpson, any more than you would be if you masturbated while looking at one of her photographs or videos. Having sex with a cloned sex toy would be the most sophisticated form of masturbation imaginable.

And that is truly all it would be.

And incredibly expensive. Can you even begin to imagine? But if it were possible, I'm sure that the rich millionaires wouldn't hesitate to get themselves a copy of whoever happened to be the latest hot model.

And the models surely wouldn't mind because it would be yet another source of income for them. They could sell a single hair from their head for god knows what price.

But that would mean that they would have to be obsessively careful about anything they touched. They wouldn't want to leave a drop of saliva on a glass or straw at a restaurant. They might even resort to walking around with plastic shower caps on their heads lest a single hair should find its way into some unscrupulous counterfeiting hands.

There would even be an interest in cloning deceased babes, like Marilyn Monroe, possibly one of the sexiest women to ever haunt the planet.

There is already a precedent for this sort of thing. Have you ever seen those love dolls they're making these days?(Check out RealDoll to see what I'm talking about.) They cost five-thousand dollars and more. And they're only made from synthetic materials. Can you even begin to figure how much one would cost made from human DNA?

I truly believe that the desire for sex is powerful enough to fuel the effort to accomplish such cloning. Coupled with the desire to live forever, it's difficult to imagine stopping it. It's like prostitution. You can legislate against it till you're blue in the face. Does that make it go away? The primal urge to live and reproduce is much stronger than the social urge to legislate. It's just about that simple.

For the second time, my somewhat eccentric views have been vindicated (see Imus Primus for the other instance).

The above essay was originally posted in January, 2007. Today, June 15, 2008, the following was posted at Yahoo News:

In 2050, your lover may be a ... robot

by Alix Rijckaert Sun Jun 15, 1:50 AM ET

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands (AFP) - Romantic human-robot relationships are no longer the stuff of science fiction -- researchers expect them to become reality within four decades.

"I am talking about loving relationships about 40 years from now," David Levy, author of the book "Love + sex with robots", told AFP at an international conference held last week at the University of Maastricht in the south-east of the country.

"... when there are robots that have also emotions, personality, consciousness. They can talk to you, they can make you laugh. They can ... say they love you just like a human would say 'I love you', and say it as though they mean it ..."

Robots as sex toys should already be on the market within five years, predicted Levy, "a sort of an upgrade of the sex dolls on sale now".

These would have electronic speech and sensors that make them utter "nice sounds" when a human caresses their "erogenous zones".

But to build robots as real partners would take a bit longer, with conversation skills being the main obstacle for developers.

Scientists were working on artificial personality, emotion and consciousness, said Levy, and some robots already appear lifelike.

"But for loving relationships -- that is something completely different. In loving relationships there are many more things that are important. And the most difficult of all is conversation.

"You want your robot to be able to talk to you about what is interesting to you. You want a partner who has some similar interest to you, who talks to you in a manner that pleases you, who has a similar sense of humour to you."

The field of human-computer conversation is crucial to building robots with whom humans could fall in love, but is lagging behind other areas of development, said the author.

"I am sure it will (happen.) In 40 years ... perhaps sooner. You will find robots, conversation partners, that will talk to you and you will get as much pleasure from it as talking to another human. I am sure of it."

Levy's bombshell thesis, whose publication has had a ripple-effect way beyond the scientific community, gives rise to a number of complicated ethical and relationship questions.

British scholar Dylan Evans pointed out the paradox inherent to any relationship with a robot.

"What is absolutely crucial to the sentiment of love, is the belief that the love is neither unconditional nor eternal.

"Robots cannot choose you, they cannot reject you. That could become very boring, and one can imagine the human becoming cruel against his defenseless partner", said Evans.

A robot could conceivably be programmed with a will of its own and the ability to reject his human partner, he said, "but that would be a very difficult robot to sell".

Some warn against being overhasty.

"Let us not exaggerate the possibilities!" said Dutch researcher Vincent Wiegel of the Technological University of the eastern town of Delft.

"Today, the artificial intelligence we are able to create is that of a child of one year of age."

But Levy is unyielding. He is convinced it will happen, and predicts many societal benefits.

"There are many millions of people in the world who have nobody. They might be shy or they might have some psychological hang-ups or psycho-sexual hang-ups, they might have personality problems, they might be ugly ...

"There will always be many millions of people who cannot make normal satisfactory relationships with humans, and for them the choice is not: 'would I prefer a relationship with a human or would I prefer a relationship with a robot?' -- the choice is no relationship at all or a relationship with a robot."

They might even become human-to-human relationship savers, he predicted.

"Certainly there will be some existing human-human relationships where one partner might say to the other partner: 'if you have sex with a robot I'm leaving you'.

"There will be others who say: 'when you go on your business trip please take your robot because I happen to worry about the red light district'."