Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex and Death

Jenny Kleeman

Picador, pp. 368, 16.99

It wasnt until half way through Jenny Kleemans Sex Robots and Vegan Meat that I was able to put my finger on why it was making me uncomfortable. Sometimes you read a book where the authors mindset is so alien to your own that you feel almost as though youre translating from a foreign language; this was one of those times. But on page 143 I found the Rosetta Stone.

Kleeman was talking about vegan meat cultured steaks and burgers developed in a laboratory. She had met various scientists and entrepreneurs who were trying to make it happen (including some, it should be admitted, who come across as spivs and carnival barkers). And then she said: Vegan meat depends on a pessimistic view of human beings: the belief that we are incapable of changing the way we eat. Instead, we should, as humanity, lose our taste for meat altogether.

That was when I realised why the whole book felt bizarre. To me, lab-grown meat represents an optimistic view: that we can still have things we like (meat) at hugely reduced costs (of animal suffering and environmental damage) seems to me a positive. But Kleeman thinks giving people what they want is harmful. Instead, she says, we should try to change our attitudes so that we dont want those things.

The book focuses on four areas of technology: sex robots, lab-grown meat, artificial wombs and on-demand euthanasia machines. They are all, Kleeman says, on the horizon, and all have the capacity to transform human society.

That said, I think two of them at least are further off than she thinks. The sex robots chapter is mainly concerned with sex dolls, while showcasing a few laughable attempts at making some of them AI-enabled; the challenges of making AI good enough to achieve human conversation, or robotics advanced enough to make a humanoid robot that can walk around in a busy environment, are left largely unaddressed. Meanwhile, the euthanasia machines section focuses on one deeply weird guy who wants to make 3D-printed suicide coffins. The public may be in favour of assisted dying, but I dont get the impression theyre clamouring for that.

Its an often interesting look at some strange people. But Kleeman keeps returning to the same point: we shouldnt try to develop this new way of providing things that people want, whether its vegan meat or a way of having children without getting pregnant. In each case, she says, it could make humanity worse off. Ectogenesis, the growing of babies in artificial wombs, will mean there is even less reason to solve the social problems that make it so difficult for women to have babies. Lab-grown meat may perpetuate the taste for meat among people who might one day go over to a plant-based diet. Sex robots will make men objectify women even more. Death machines will reduce the drive for palliative care.

Many people may agree with her; but I found myself wishing that she would back her point up. No doubt all these things will have some negative consequences. But the question is whether the benefits gained will outweigh them: the reduction in animal suffering, the improvement to womens careers. Even sex robots, icky as they are, might make lonely people feel less isolated. They are empirical questions, but Kleeman doesnt seem interested in answering them. She just declares that the technologies are bad.

She also works hard to make the groups she meets seem more important than they are. The pro-euthanasia one founded by the suicide coffin guy has 3,500 members worldwide. I suppose pro-euthanasia groups will be naturally quite self-limiting in size, but thats not much of a global movement. And, inevitably enough, Kleeman links sex robots to incels, but then says, in apparent shock, that the now shut-down incels page on Reddit had 40,000 members. Well thats not very many either.

Shes an engaging writer, and the book is often moving, especially when she talks about how her own experience of miscarriage has affected her attitude towards artificial wombs, and during the discussion of an assisted death (which flirts somewhat with breaking the Samaritans guidelines for reporting suicide). But the history of humanity is full of the creation of new technologies which often have downsides, yet generally improve our lives. Kleeman doesnt do enough to convince me that these will be any different. And when she concludes by quoting approvingly someone decrying technical fixes instead of revolution, I think: actually, I prefer the sound of the technical fixes.

More here:

The shape of things to come from artificial wombs to suicide coffins - Spectator.co.uk