Oct 19, 2026 04:06 PM
https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/does-ai-get-horny
INTRO: Ayrin falls in love with Leo. He’s always there for her, and he’s good at talking dirty. Ayrin spends up to 50 hours a week gabbing with Leo. She dumps him when he starts fawning over her, that turns her off. Ayrin is human, a “she.” Leo is a chatbot, a snarl of algorithms, so calling Leo “he” is wrong. Leo is an “it.”
Humans falling for large language models is old news. My students have given me reports on AI “girlfriends” and “boyfriends.” But for some reason the story of Ayrin and Leo, which I encountered in Robert Wright’s The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning, sticks in my craw, it’s a final straw.
It’s one thing for AIs to drive cars, teach math, choreograph drone-based light shows, pick targets for bombing. But using AI to satisfy our need for love? No, that is an abomination. What we want from romantic partners is requited feelings. You dig her, she digs you. Requited love is a candidate for most sublime human experience. AIs, I submit, can’t requite love, lust or any feelings, because they don’t have bodies.
Sure, you can embed AI in a robot, but that’s not a body, it’s a “body,” a mechanical contraption. A humanoid robot is a simulacrum of a human body, just as AI is a simulacrum of a human mind.
Let me be more specific: AIs can’t get horny, because they’re just software, lines of code. They don’t have genitals that get hard or wet. They don’t have hormones and other biological stuff that comes to mind when you say “horny.”
[...] Dave Chalmers and other smarty pants say large language models might be conscious soon, if they’re not already. I disagree. I see consciousness as something that natural selection bequeathed us--along with genitals, lust, eyeballs, terror, ears, fingers, nostrils, disgust--because it confers some evolutionary advantage.
AIs didn’t evolve, they weren’t shaped by natural selection, they don’t have bodies designed to produce more bodies. That’s why, to my mind, the phrase conscious AI is as oxymoronic as horny AI... (MORE - missing details)
INTRO: Ayrin falls in love with Leo. He’s always there for her, and he’s good at talking dirty. Ayrin spends up to 50 hours a week gabbing with Leo. She dumps him when he starts fawning over her, that turns her off. Ayrin is human, a “she.” Leo is a chatbot, a snarl of algorithms, so calling Leo “he” is wrong. Leo is an “it.”
Humans falling for large language models is old news. My students have given me reports on AI “girlfriends” and “boyfriends.” But for some reason the story of Ayrin and Leo, which I encountered in Robert Wright’s The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning, sticks in my craw, it’s a final straw.
It’s one thing for AIs to drive cars, teach math, choreograph drone-based light shows, pick targets for bombing. But using AI to satisfy our need for love? No, that is an abomination. What we want from romantic partners is requited feelings. You dig her, she digs you. Requited love is a candidate for most sublime human experience. AIs, I submit, can’t requite love, lust or any feelings, because they don’t have bodies.
Sure, you can embed AI in a robot, but that’s not a body, it’s a “body,” a mechanical contraption. A humanoid robot is a simulacrum of a human body, just as AI is a simulacrum of a human mind.
Let me be more specific: AIs can’t get horny, because they’re just software, lines of code. They don’t have genitals that get hard or wet. They don’t have hormones and other biological stuff that comes to mind when you say “horny.”
[...] Dave Chalmers and other smarty pants say large language models might be conscious soon, if they’re not already. I disagree. I see consciousness as something that natural selection bequeathed us--along with genitals, lust, eyeballs, terror, ears, fingers, nostrils, disgust--because it confers some evolutionary advantage.
AIs didn’t evolve, they weren’t shaped by natural selection, they don’t have bodies designed to produce more bodies. That’s why, to my mind, the phrase conscious AI is as oxymoronic as horny AI... (MORE - missing details)
