Meet Hum, the world's first robotic, artificially intelligent sex toy
October 23, 2014 1:41 PM   Subscribe

Meet Hum, the world's first robotic, artificially intelligent sex toy
Early this summer I discovered two physicists gone rogue. After they watched so many fellow PhD grads make killbots for the Department of Defense, they decided instead to use their skills to make love not war. This is our company. This is the world's first robotic, artificially intelligent sex toy. This is a vibrator for a new world. This is HUM. And the newsletter is definitely NSFW.
Role: lingerie-clad biohacker, Eve of Robotic Sex
posted by sunnichka (11 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

Is there anything to do on the website besides make the mustache twirl?
posted by sparklemotion at 5:04 PM on October 23, 2014


Sign up for the newsletter if you're interested . . . it's non-standard and definitely racy.
posted by sunnichka at 5:33 PM on October 23, 2014


Looks interesting, but I do not wish to sign up for anything.
posted by Evilspork at 11:43 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yah you guys are right, it's not really fair to request newsletter signups without more information. Kind of violates a basic trust principle. For metafilter only -- and don't spread this around!! -- here's a censored version of the secret content that you get from subscribing to the newsletter:

Subscribe page:
"Six weeks ago I did a soft PR launch of HUM, the world’s first robotic, artificially intelligent vibrator. By “soft launch” I mean I climbed on top of a table in my leather jacket at a party inside of a sailboat out at Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay, held up a bottle of scotch and screamed, “MY NAME IS SUNNY AND I AM THE EVE OF ROBOTIC SEX.”

I am sober now but the sentiment stands. I have discovered something new and it is a sex toy created by multiple physicists.

There's more to say about HUM, but I want to share a few stories first.
Some of it is censored. All of it is true. Do you want to hear?"

Confirmation page:
"This newsletter is called Robot Sex but Robot Sex is just one kind of peak on a graph of beautiful life stories.

Sex is about intimacy and relationships, life-affirmation and self-affirmation, joy and ridiculousness. Come along with me on this journey. In the process we'll overcome the shame together and then, I promise, I'll tell you everything you want to know about this vibrator.

My name is Sunny Allen. I'm 29 years old. I'm a starving entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and I'm a Kentucky McCoy. Over the last decade I've run away from not one but two engagements and in the process I had to leave behind first my dog and then my cat. I live in a hacker house and sometimes I feel like a homeless person. I wanna live on a sailboat so I can finally have my own home. I do acrobatic yoga and I get bitchy when I'm drunk. I love riding on the back of motorcycles and I love having sex.

Yes. I love sex. And I'm weary of the culture of shame surrounding it. How can something so central to life be so cringe-worthy? How can something that is the origin story of every single human being on earth be something that we aren't allowed to talk about?

Fuck it. I'm talking.

Here's the first story. It's about masturbation and shame:

I knew it was time to leave him when I finally orgasmed for the first time and I didn’t want to tell him.

I was 20 years old. I was reading the Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano and I was so turned on.

He had insisted on buying this luxurious, expensive down mattress pad that I hated. My entire body sank into it so there was a foot high cliff of mattress pad between him and me in the bed, but on that night it was a convenient barrier. I waited until he was asleep then slid my fingers into my panties and started feeling around down there. I’d never done that on my own without prompting. . . . "
posted by sunnichka at 2:46 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Thanks, I hope you update again when you have actual information about the product to share!
posted by sparklemotion at 4:19 PM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


I signed up, and still don't know anything about the project. This Metafilter page has more information about the project than the project's own website, as far as I can tell.
posted by metaBugs at 3:05 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yes, we're trying to keep the site incredibly simple. An article came out today in the daily dot that describes everything beautifully.
posted by sunnichka at 4:38 PM on November 10, 2014


There is "we are trying to keep the site incredibly simple" and "this site contains no information about the product." This site is the latter.

I'm sorry -- I really am not trying to be unsupportive. I am genuinely your core market and so far your marketing is just WTFing me.
posted by DarlingBri at 8:49 PM on November 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


Thanks for the feedback, DarlingBri. I hear that you're frustrated, but the campaign actually seems to be working beyond our wildest dreams. Whoopi Goldberg said on the View this morning that she wants one. I'll link to the clip when we have the rights to it. Have you checked out the Daily Dot article?
posted by sunnichka at 12:59 AM on November 13, 2014


More info on the press page.
posted by sunnichka at 10:50 PM on November 14, 2014


Here's an image of the very first orgasm graph using data recorded from the sensors inside the vibrator. The three lines are pressure, derivative of pressure, and acceleration, and the y axis is in arb. units.
posted by sunnichka at 4:35 PM on November 19, 2014


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