The Sapphire Gentleman's Club has rented an artist's robot strippers to draw some of the attention and press surrounding the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:
The robots were as advertised: They gyrated on a stripper pole to music from 50 Cent and Pharrell, with dollar bills scattered on the stage and the floor. A half-dozen human dancers, most of whom were dressed in tight, shiny robot costumes, repeatedly took pics in front of their metallic colleagues. (The woman greeting guests as I walked in told me that I missed a skit where the human dancers unveiled the robot dancers to "Star Wars" music, and then joked about them stealing their jobs.)
The robots look nothing like actual humans, thank God. They had CCTV security cameras for faces, and you could see their metal interiors and wires as they moved up and down the pole. (They were, however, wearing high heels.)
And unlike many of the big tech gimmicks you'll hear about this week from CES, the robot pole-dancers aren't courtesy of a massive multi-billion dollar corporation. They're the work of an artist named Giles Walker, a 50-year-old Brit who describes himself as a scrap metal artist with a passion for building animatronic robots. One of his other projects, The Last Supper, features 13 robots interacting around a table.
Walker says he got the idea for pole-dancing robots more than seven years ago, when he noticed the rise of CCTV cameras being used as a way to surveil people in Britain for safety purposes, what he called "mechanical Peeping Toms." He was inspired by the idea of voyeurism, or watching others for pleasure, and decided to try and turn the cameras into something sexy on their own.
Walker goes on to express concerns about the eventual rise of sex robots, and describes himself as a "robot pimp".
Video (1m0s).
Source: [H]ardOCP: Robot Strippers Return at CES 2018 (Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard)
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday January 11 2018, @02:35PM (8 children)
n/t
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 11 2018, @02:39PM
Hahahah.
Here's some sexbot links. Likely part of the CES hype:
https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/10/there-s-a-new-sex-robot-in-town-say-hello-to-solana/ [engadget.com]
https://www.her.ie/tech/good-news-male-sex-robots-bionic-penises-will-available-soon-383121 [www.her.ie]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5257099/Harmony-sexbot-inventor-unveils-new-personality-Solana.html [dailymail.co.uk]
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/673208/Sex-robot-Harmony-Solana-sex-doll-RealDoll-Matt-McMulle-CES-Engadget-After-Hours-show [dailystar.co.uk]
Brit tabloids do one thing right: pics.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 11 2018, @02:39PM (4 children)
I dunno about that but this is one particular field where the workers are in very little danger of having their jobs taken by robots.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11 2018, @04:06PM (3 children)
I dunno, when the first sex robots come out they will likely be out of the range of affordability for most. You'll probably see strip clubs become robot brothels.
Besides, the owners probably salivate at the idea of taking all the tip money.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 11 2018, @04:34PM (2 children)
Big difference between a strip joint and a brothel.
Nudie bars, you're not paying to get off, you're paying to get worked up. Likely with some of your friends unless you're just pathetically desperate to see naked women. They don't sell sex, they sell the idea that you're the kind of person who can simply wave a few bucks and women will dance around naked for you. It's a power thing as well as a tits and ass thing. Oddly enough, it's usually a power thing for the chicks dancing as well in that they're getting paid large wads of cash simply for the privilege of looking at them. Perspective's an interesting thing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2018, @12:29AM (1 child)
A lot of those strippers are available for paid sex after their shift is over.
But yeah, generally speaking, strip bars are a huge tease and and I don't see the point.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday January 12 2018, @01:10AM
It beats Netflix for a night out with the guys and you don't have to clean up after.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by looorg on Thursday January 11 2018, @02:41PM
Clearly deviant. We wouldn't want to think that they are robosexuals. That said Bender would be so proud, he would build his own stripclub .. with Blackjack and hookers ... oh right its a stripclub in Vegas so they probably already have that.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday January 11 2018, @05:35PM
You must drive an electric car, because the whole piston-in-hot-cylinder thing is a lot more explicit than those gyrating bunches of plastic.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11 2018, @04:02PM (2 children)
Yeah, look at that exhaust fan!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11 2018, @06:27PM (1 child)
Didn't know lithium ion batteries had any byproducts at all :P
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday January 11 2018, @08:24PM
Yeah! Shake it baby! Let's see that power supply! Wooooooo! Show us those servo controllers!
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday January 11 2018, @05:15PM (5 children)
I expect this is offensive to the women attending CES
I don't object to strip clubs. I object to men who attend them while at work
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 11 2018, @05:29PM
CES closes at 6 PM at the latest. [ces.tech]
Sapphire Gentleman's Club is open 24/7. And you can get a free Tesla ride there apparently. No problem.
As for it being offensive to the women attending CES, the Club isn't affiliated with CES. And we should all be offended when bots take our jerbs.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11 2018, @07:11PM (1 child)
It makes no sense.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 11 2018, @08:23PM
It makes no cents.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Thursday January 11 2018, @10:47PM (1 child)
You "expect"?
I get that it's an improvement when the bunch of dudes that get to be part of the discussion (i.e. the popular kids in adulthood) take an interest in sexism. But you know who else paid lip service to ending sexism? Harvey Weinstein and the rest of the "creative class" [zcomm.org]. Their advocacy has clearly done a lot to advance the cause</sarcasm>.
How about we get some actual women to opine on whether they were offended? Otherwise, we risk changing society to fix the sexism you perceive without necessarily doing a single damn thing to fix the sexism anybody actually experiences.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2018, @02:06AM
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/01/09/case-j09.html [wsws.org]
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/01/10/lemo-j10.html [wsws.org]
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/01/11/duto-j11.html [wsws.org]
Many women see the dangerous precedent it may set but are scared of publicly opposing #MeToo.
This "kinematic sculpture" was exactly what certain powerful people needed to pour some gas on the fire.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11 2018, @08:27PM (3 children)
Finally, this is what feminists have been asking for. Through the employment of these appliances no women get...
AmIdoingItRait?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11 2018, @10:09PM (2 children)
So would you also be ok with these robots made to look like children?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11 2018, @10:49PM (1 child)
Kiddie porn is legal in Japan (as long as it's drawn and no actual kids were involved), and their rate of child sexual abuse is much lower than in the US. So why not? Because you like judging other people for their sexual desires?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2018, @02:45PM
Because it normalizes the activity. Humans are funny that way.