Ethics of stim units

[67445da653722Ndrake]

[Split off from the System Shock Infinite thread at this point. ~Kolya]

I have to say I really like Kolya's "pitch". And if you allow me to dig for some subtext before the thing has even taken form I would say that to whole thing revolves around the question of objectification and debasement.
Prostitution is probably the very definition of objectification.
Now the "exciting" question is: Is debasement a necessary component of prostitution?

Kolya's story would imply so. You can't just create sex objects, which would  be very easy with cyberpunk technology .

You have to create AI with subjective consciousness which then can be debased and objectified into sex objects.

[67445da653946Kolya]

I actually didn't try to imply that. I said that these characters would need intelligence to do their job well.
If you believe that most suitors seek to debase a person in prostitution, you might take it that way. I believe that things are probably more varied and that these creatures need their intelligence in order to adapt to highly individualistic interactions.
Both interpretations are valid though.

[67445da653bcdNdrake]

Even though I wrote that "your story implies"...  I didn't mean to imply that it was your intention to imply... maybe my phrasing was suboptimal.
However I believe that a story knows more than it's author, which is just a nice way of saying that the author doesn't get to judge the validity of an interpretation

Also I still believe it would fit into the story really well as an explanation of why the stim's have consciousness. Maybe something like the bit in the Matrix where they explain that a previous version was rejected because it lacked all the suffering... I would maybe have a log of a tri-op technician reasoning about the previous models of perfect-sex-slave stim units, that where rejected by customers because there was just ... something... missing.

(that "something" could be anything really that we attribute to consciousness, maybe debasement, maybe just that hint of resentment...)

[67445da653cfbKolya]

Or maybe affection. You know, just to name a quality that does not imply a rapey scenario.
Have you ever read Video Girl AI by Masakazu Katsura?

[67445da653f4cNdrake]

Yes affection. I hesitated to put it on the list there but I wouldn't  dismiss the possibility that it belongs there.
The difference being mostly that sexual scenarios tend to work just fine without affection. On the other hand the question if prostitution works without debasement can't be answered until there are prostitutes that are objects form the start.
I wouldn't argue that prostitution implies a form of rape nor would I reject the possibility that prostitution can be deliberate. Rather I'd say that it necessarily entails a subject degrading/debasing itself into an object. This is not a question of the customers tastes. You could picture the nicest flowery bed scene - it it's part of a business transaction the prostitute will be degraded into an object for it's duration. Because that's what happens it you quantify and sell subjects - they become objects.
The next question is pure speculation: Would the customer miss that aspect of degradation if the prostitute was somehow engineered to be a purpose-built object from the start?
I would speculate that yes - having intercourse with an object would probably somehow defeat the purpose. Now you could say what the customer is missing could be affection, and this could be true in some cases, but I can't be what a regular customer would be missing because I doubt there's any of that with RL fleshy prostitutes.
I never read Video Girl AI but I'll make sure to check it out. It's interesting that you bring up a manga, I thought about Japanese animation too. Because the Japanese is probably the only culture that has something close to what I imagine truly virtual or artificial prostitution would be like: Pornographic anime and manga. I know drawn pornography exists all over the world, but it's generally considered inferior - for reasons I suspect that are similar to the reasons an Object-AI would be inferior to a Subject-Prostitute. (and it's probably not so much a question of life-likeness)

[67445da65429cKolya]

Just to note the classical counter argument in this discussion: If it's the money that necessarily makes for debasement and objectification, then every wife without her own income is to be pitied. While that often may be true, I don't think it is necessarily true.

I brought up Video Girl AI because it's a story about a virtual girl who is engineered into existence with the sole purpose of cheering up a young boy. Things go wrong and she ends up a developing her own conscience and will. It's just a sweet and innocent story on the very subject we're discussing. And the girl comes out anything but debased in it. Of course it's just a fictional story, but so are our stim units. In other words: Even if the reality is very grim, it doesn't have to be that way in a story.

Which reminds me that I recently stumbled over a picture of Marsha Hunt. As I found out she used to be the girlfriend of Mick Jagger for nine months in 1969 and bore his first child. If you see some of her pictures from that time, her attraction to that  English lad is quite understandable. He put it in a song that became rather well known: Brown Sugar.
If you know the lyrics of that song, it's actually very grim, about slavery and sexual exploitation, with Jagger obviously taking the point of view of the exploiter. But if you listen to the song, it is pure lust and fun and it's hard not to sing along.
Jagger once said that he doesn't know what drove him to write such a song and he surely wouldn't write it like that today (and a point could be made that this is the problem with the Stones' later material). And Marsha Hunt, when asked in an interview, if she knew the song was about her, said: "Yes."
"How does that make you feel?"
"It doesn't make me feel any way at all."



Okay, the point is that a fictional work can take liberties even with the darkest subjects and might be better for it. Because we all know that prostitution is a grim and unpleasant thing in reality. We don't need a fictional work to slam that in our faces again. In fact we crave to see the brighter side of it. Hence the phenomenal success of the film Pretty Woman.
So staying close to reality, or what reality would probably be like as far as we can tell if stim units existed, might not be the best course for an entertaining story about them.
[MarshaHunt.jpg expired]

[67445da6543d5xdiesp]

Blade Runner's Pris was a basic pleasure model replicant, and Spielberg's AI had android gigolos. However, I think our Nikki should be less advanced and human than those. Having hit self awareness only recently, she'd be more childlike and closer to the horrible kid in AI (like a "good" midwife cyborg).

And then cue megaman music, after you repair her she becomes Super Nikki and rushes kungfuing security bots to death.

[67445da6545e1Ndrake]

Mhm sure love that song. Much better than the obvious "Sympathy for the Devil" or the shallow protest-y "Gimme Shelter" to name two extremes.
I can't help but detect an inconsistency here. On one hand you mention that the song text is "very grim" and on the other hand you say that we don't need a fictional work to slam the grim reality in our faces and it should instead serve our craving to see the bright side of it.
I'd say the song is pretty much a  grim reality slam in the face.
I strongly disagree that a fictional work should show a bright side of something that probably hasn't one in reality. With the exception of course of "life itself". You can tell stories about the bright side of life set in the darkest scenarios of history. But you can't tell a story about the bright side of a terrible historic event.
Additionally with something simple like violence it's a good thing to have someone like Tarantino to turn it into three hours of pure fun for all of us. Same goes for video games about violence I guess.
But with a socially complex issue like prostitution I feel  a movie like pretty woman is just a lie. Suitors come form all walks of life and there's no need to show them or anyone else the "bright side" of an issue that can be compared and linked to outright slavery with good reason.
I feel if it's grim and "a slam in your face" it doesn't hurt if its entertaining at the same time -> see "Black Sugar" (if that weren't true we would have to question 500 years of play-writing)
But if you already start out with the intention to sugarcoat it - the whole thing seems morally sticky to me. (see Pretty Woman)

[67445da65471aKolya]

Eh, the point is that Brown Sugar is sexy fun, although it is about a grim subject. Of course it is morally ambiguous, but that just makes it interesting.
And I'm not starting out with the intention to sugar coat anything. I'm saying that realism isn't the only or even the best measurement for the quality of a fictional work.

[67445da654b77xdiesp]

Or maybe affection. You know, just to name a quality that does not imply a rapey scenario.
Have you ever read Video Girl AI by Masakazu Katsura?

And the manga was much more sexual than the anime (Katsura as an artist definitely comes from hentai!). Last of his works I read, and loved, was I''s: the terrifying soap opera of a young man split between... well, it's basically the same plot as Catherine.

[67445da6552c6Ndrake]

Eh, the point is that Brown Sugar is sexy fun, although it is about a grim subject. Of course it is morally ambiguous, but that just makes it interesting.
And I'm not starting out with the intention to sugar coat anything. I'm saying that realism isn't the only or even the best measurement for the quality of a fictional work.

Yes but you are not trying to make Pretty Woman 2, are you? If that was your intention then indeed you would start out with the intention to sugarcoat something.
I'm not talking about realism, how could I when the subject is cyber-prostitutes? Realism and truth in art are two different things entirely.
Surely you must see the difference in the way Pretty Woman and Brown Sugar treat the subject?

I'm not saying trying to keep it light will always fail. Going back to the mod we are in space, everything is "cyber" and we are in the horror genre. Pretty Woman had none of this going for it
I think an important decision is how you frame the gaining of consciousness.
There's the "those Tri-Op Bastards knew full well what they were toying with and they did it anyway". Probably the standard trope for such a story, but it would lend itself to the darker implications I mentioned above.
Keeping it light the way to go (and your original idea as I understood it) would be to make the consciousness purely accidental. Those stim's were sex machines, and they worked just fine and everyone was happy. Then something went wrong..
I think a good trick to keep it light here is to switch from sex to violence quickly, that's one of the benefits of the horror genre. So the moment Nikki gains consciousness she turns from sex machine to killing machine.

Edit:

I feel if it's grim and "a slam in your face" it doesn't hurt if its entertaining at the same time -> see "Black Sugar" (if that weren't true we would have to question 500 years of play-writing)
But if you already start out with the intention to sugarcoat it - the whole thing seems morally sticky to me. (see Pretty Woman)

Just to be clear Pretty Woman = morally sticky
Brown Sugar = much less  so (if even that)

[67445da6553edOmegaDEATH]

It's a important rule of horror when it comes to sex.. death follows.

No drinking.. no drugs.. no hidden lies.
However this is not a Jason or freddie movie.
So I think you guys can get away with murder here.

[67445da65571aKolya]

And the manga was much more sexual than the anime (Katsura as an artist definitely comes from hentai!). Last of his works I read, and loved, was I''s: the terrifying soap opera of a young man split between... well, it's basically the same plot as Catherine.

Although Katsura did one very sexy short called "M" between VGAI and I's  (which I have a 10-year-project of translating to German by now) he does not actually come from Hentai. He started drawing super hero comics ("Zetman"), inspired by American comics. He then turned to shoujo manga because it sold much better.

[67445da655828OmegaDEATH]

Ahh I see.
His work is actually pretty good.
watched Zetman and read a few of his manga's.
someone told me he worked on FL-CL too "citation needed"

[67445da655951Kolya]

FLCL was great and I wouldn't be surprised, but it's the first time I heard that. No idea really.

Anyway, about the Infinite subplot: It doesn't really deal with how Nikki gained sentience. The way I described it, she has it from the start or as soon as you first repair her. The stim units may have been sentient all along but it's of no great relevance for this subplot.

Would be fun to hear what SHODAN thinks of you caring for another AI. I imagine she wouldn't be delighted. Haha.

[67445da655aa1Yankee Clipper]

SHODAN, with her affinity for manipulation, would probably immediately begin looking for ways to exploit the "relationship". She might even view the caring as a plus provided she can work out away to use it.

[67445da655c15xdiesp]

I think a superior AI network would look down on a low level ginoid (or sentient routine) due to the classic lack of empathy of replicants, even for the little camaraderie between fellow synethetic lifeforms. SHODAN would seduce Nikki and remake her into another avatar, like Rebeccadan.

About her level of self awareness, and when exactly she achieved that, I didn't think much of it. You can still be a self aware toaster, barely and briefly, without the world changing at all. When the computer screen talks back to you, you shoot it and problem solved. But in Infinite, we already had an AI becoming self-aware: Sarah, the control unit for the FTL drive. Caring but not very intelligent, more like a caretaker of sorts, a very evolved interface. Marie was supposed to actually be her, but I thought the trope was overused.

[67445da655cfcKolya]

Shobecca. Like Sholito. It shows that SHODAN is the dominant or leading lifeform.

[67445da655dd3xdiesp]

It's like Rebecca-chan, only evil.

[67445da656220unn_atropos]

Would be fun to hear what SHODAN thinks of you caring for another AI. I imagine she wouldn't be delighted. Haha.

I imagine that she would be very scornful.
   

[67445da656365xdiesp]

Placeholder for the tragic story that will define a generation.

[67445da656493Kolya]

Haha, nice one.

[67445da656581xdiesp]

I could commission another drawing for Nikkichan, the chibi midwife. Then we can have midwife rap over jpop, while the mod credits in kanji scroll up!

[67445da65665dKolya]

That's completely perverted.