#1539 - Jenny Kleeman

Joe Rogan (0:14)

Thanks for doing this, I appreciate it.

Jenny Kleeman (0:16)

I'm totally psyched to be here. Thank you so much for having me on.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

My pleasure. So your book, Sex, Robots and Vegan Meat, did you have alternative titles that you...

Jenny Kleeman (0:25)

I'm really, really shit at titles, I just can't do it.

Joe Rogan (0:28)

It's a good title.

I thought it's an excellent one. Yeah, it works well.

Jenny Kleeman (0:33)

It's my editor, Chris's title.

Joe Rogan (0:36)

Did you have ideas?

Jenny Kleeman (0:37)

I had really bad ones. I think when I wrote the proposal, it was called Future Humans or something.

And he just said, no, no, no, no, no. I can't do titles. I write things that are very, very long. I can't do nice little short things. So anyway, my editor at the publishing house, Picador, came up with a title and I loved it.

Joe Rogan (0:57)

Yeah, he nailed it. Excellent job, Chris.

Well, it really covers the subject matter so well and so succinctly. So I am concerned with all the things you appear to be concerned with. So I'm really excited about this conversation. Let's start with sex robots. This is the first part.

I'm sure you've seen Ex Machina.

Jenny Kleeman (1:26)

Yes, I have.

Joe Rogan (1:27)

Oh, fantastic movie, right?

Jenny Kleeman (1:29)

Brilliant, yes, totally.

Joe Rogan (1:31)

And confusing because I think there will be a time, whether it's in our grandchildren's life or when, where that's a real concern, where we do have artificial humans that don't have any empathy. They're programmed whatever way we decide to program them, and they're insanely similar to us.

Jenny Kleeman (1:53)

Yes.

Joe Rogan (1:53)

And people are going to have sex with them.

Jenny Kleeman (1:59)

There are people who are working on this stuff now. That's what my book is about. It's about, I went and met the people who are doing this stuff now. We have this idea that comes from science fiction of like, ex machina or Chris from Blade Runner, these totally perfect beings who are really dangerous. That doesn't exist at the moment, but it is going to exist. It is going to exist at some point. There will be something extremely realistic that gives a very good illusion of being human even though it's not.

There are lots of reasons to be concerned about this, and there are some really solid feminist reasons to be concerned about this, because the vast majority of the robots being made at the moment are in the female form.

But for me, the thing that I was worried about is what happens in a future where it's possible to have a relationship where only one half of the partnership matters, where you don't have to have empathy for your other half. You don't have to care about what their ambitions are, what their desires are. They'll always laugh at your jokes. They never get period. You never have to meet their family. What is that going to do to us as human beings when empathy is no longer a requirement of the relationship?

Joe Rogan (3:07)

Jenny, the way you're wearing your microphone, it's rubbing against your clothes because you're trying to look cooler.

Jenny Kleeman (3:14)

Because I move about too much.

Joe Rogan (3:17)

Perfect. Excellent. Yeah, that is a real concern. And I've thought about this a lot because I'm very concerned with...

There's two ways of looking at it. One way of looking at it like we at one point in time, there were single-celled organisms and then millions and millions of years later, you have human beings. Why would we assume that this is the end? It's clearly not. There will be better iterations.

And I have a feeling that one of the ways we're going to bring that about is through technology. And my real fear is that there will be no more biological life. My real fear is that we will slowly integrate, we'll be symbiotic with some sort of technological creation and then eventually we'll realize all the things that are holding us back, they're biologically based, whether it's sex or gender or emotions or all these different things that seem to cause conflicts. And then if we figure out a way to convince this future version of human beings to just give in to the matrix, that's our future.

Jenny Kleeman (4:26)

You know what? I would have kind of agreed with you on that take about a year ago, except for what's happened over the past year, which has just smacked us in the face, reminding us that biology always wins and that we're much more likely to be wiped out by some biological thing that we have no control over whatsoever. Because ultimately, that kind of reading of the future depends on this idea that we will be able to control things really well, that there will be nothing that kind of comes out of left field that can destroy us.