And now something about sex-education apps, informed consent, disruption, dating and regulated desire:

(A fried rightly thought that this article would be of interest to me.)

'Ghostbot, another app, eschews communication entirely. Instead, it is used to ghost, or quietly dump, aggressive dates on a user’s behalf. It is a collaboration between Burner, a temporary phone number app, and Voxable, a company that develops conversational A.I. The app is meant to give people greater control, said Greg Cohn, a co-founder and the chief executive of Burner, by letting them opt out of abusive or inappropriate interactions.

“I think that sometimes people don’t quite realize the emotional burden that can come with dealing with all that,” said Lauren Golembiewski, Voxable’s C.E.O.

The way it works is simple: By setting a contact to “ghost,” the app automatically responds to that person’s texts with curt messages like, “sorry, I’m swamped with work and am socially M.I.A.” The user never has to see their communication again.

Of course, the problem with all of this software, and any digital dating hack, is still the problem with humans. Communication, in dating and otherwise, is subjective. Whether something is offensive, sexy or misleading can be a matter of opinion. And apps that run on A.I. are certain to reflect some of the perspectives and biases of the programmers who create them.'

Read the article here.

This is fantastic, the solution to so many problems: I'm swamped with work and socially M.I.A.

Many requests, attempts at intimacy, questions can be dealt with in one rather beautiful and simple sentence.

Variations are possible, like:

This is not going to be easy for the two of us and I hope you can work this out in therapy, but I'm swamped with deadlines and socially M.I.A.

With a bot like this, who needs a revolution?