qDot @qdot@mastodon.social

Futurists are why we can't have nice futures.

tired: writing your name on the tag of your underwear

wired: writing band names on black metal shirt tags for when the logo resolution part of your brain fails

why yes i also enjoyed the show of the black metal band whose shirt i am wearing it was quite loud and quite black metalish and the singer was delightfully growly

tfw you’re sleepy and someone comments on your black metal shirt and you can’t remember which band shirt it is and you look down and an indecipherable mess of twigs looks back at you and laughs

If sex tech wants to be accepted as other tech is, it's going to get the same criticism as other tech.

It's a new version of the "we're the first to" type marketing that's prevalent in sex tech, but instead of claiming it without further description as has happened in the past, now we're getting more details, a lot of which are bullshit.

So, here I am, on twitter. :|

The whole reason I'm outlining this is that we're starting to see sex toys start marketing with robotics engineering and machine learning terms. Autoblow absolutely isn't the only one, the Vibease "AI Lipstick" is another one I should get around to talking about.

Then we fall back to 3 paragraphs explaining hall effect sensors and optical encoders like they're fucking magic, continuing the "Let's over-explain tech to make the product look better" marketing ploy.

Which of course makes me write about it and further the cause. :(

To Autoblow's credit, the "Finish" button is a good idea. This is something that has been added in a few @buttplugio@twitter.com applications (like movie sync, allowing the user to snap to a scene of their choice at will), to automatically let the user decide when enough is enough.

I feel like this is a misreading of the way sexual interaction works between two people. Real blowjobs are not an "unpredictable situation", but are rather sustained/limited by human sensor input. People make sounds, flinch, move, all sorts of stuff. There's ways to close loops.

This uses vaginal/anal pressure sensors for biometrics sensing, which gives the machine an interface. The problem with the @sextechguide@twitter.com article quotes is that it seems to treat blowjobs as a sensorless, random situation, as described by this quote:

For instance, another open source edging platform, the Nogasm, uses rate averaging of pelvic floor or sphincter contractions to reduce or shut off power to vibration motors: https://github.com/nogasm/nogasm

The idea of edging is to get someone close to orgasm, then reduce stimulation, then repeat. To automate this requires user input of some sort, the close the loop on what the user is feeling and have the machine is reacting accordingly.

So, first off, new claims that the Autoblow AI is capable of Edging, or the idea that it can delay orgasm. I'm not convinced this is possible without a closed loop feedback control system, which the Autoblow doesn't have.

(And if you want some fun musing about the issues with mass porn tagging for machine learning in sexual contexts, see https://twitter.com/qDot/status/1056377347245465600 but that's not quite as relevant here)

First off, if you didn't see my prior thread debating the usefulness of movement data and the usage of "machine learning" for Blowjob AIs, check that out first as I'll be building on that argument: https://twitter.com/qDot/status/1055865846726152192

Ok, so @sextechguide@twitter.com decided to publish on article on the background of the Autoblow Blowjob AI paper. And of course, I have issues. Because I always have issues. https://sextechguide.com/ai/going-deep-tech-behind-autoblow-ai

And if you have no idea how or where to hire an ethicist, feel free to DM me. I managed to do so, you can too. I’m happy to help.

We got where we are right now by thinking we as tech people knew best about product. To claim a single tv show now makes everyone aware of needs is to perpetuate the cycle of navelgazing as the rest of the body dies.

Alternative idea:

Hire and work with an ethicist who actually knows the history and frameworks of ethics, versus your untrained ass trying to randomly recreate a whole field from a few episodes of a fucking tv show.

https://twitter.com/aaronzlewis/status/1063544871472914432

Ok well apparently Amaroq notifications got hosed on my phone and I didn’t see the last 3 days of SLSA live tweet replies so this is like coming home to a social media account full of Christmas presents.