[narrator]

Sometimes I wonder if humans have hard wired deep neural nets that recognize parts of the male and female anatomy, and are tied into dopamine release, nitric oxide, hormone release etc and that's basically all there is to sexual attraction. Kind of weird to think that we could in fact be that simple? Makeup, lipstick, nice clothes are just there to foil those neural nets into recognizing favorable secondary sexual characteristics.

Manipulating these neural networks in our brain would be the perfect strategy for an evil AI to take over the world... :/

[J-dawg]

I remember reading about an experiment done on birds (in one of Richard Dawkins's books, I think).

They put together a highly exaggerated model of a baby bird, with a huge, red mouth. They found that the parents feeding the bird would preferentially drop worms into the fake baby's mouth. The bigger and redder it was, the more they would favour the fake baby, even to the point of starving their real offspring.

Sometimes I think we're really not much more sophisticated than the birds.

[estefan]

Of course we're not. One word: Wonderbra.

[tripzilch]

It's called super-stimuli. I was taught this in highschool biology? (age 16 or so, that's high school in the US right? I always mix it up)

First the example of the seagulls[0], but immediately after that, the teacher showed us a Betty Boop / Jessica Rabbit -like comic book character, clearly demonstrating that, no of course it's not just birds. One thing I remember, for some images (depending on posture, mainly) you actually needed to use a ruler and work out the proportions because at first glance there was nothing wrong with them.

And yes, the advertising industry has of course been abusing this behavioural exploit since ever, to the point that I'm pretty sure there's a couple of EU laws against the most egregious types (though partially covered under false advertising of course).

[0] which is about a red dot the parents have on their beaks, and the offspring would peck at it to get food. except they preferred what was (iirc) basically a large flat yellow wooden plank with a larger red dot on it. are you sure you have the story right? (could be a different experiment, though) also, while the baby birds would prefer the non-feeding wooden plank, I kind of doubt they carried on the experiment to starvation.

[CodeMage]

I think Tim Minchin expressed it quite eloquently in his song "Confessions (Feminism, Altruism, Environment)": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmnxF_WTOgg

[taneq]

> Sometimes I wonder if humans have hard wired deep neural nets that recognize parts of the male and female anatomy [...]

As a teen I tried to figure out exactly what it is about breasts that's so great. I ended up coming to the conclusion that it's just a hardwired hack... Somewhere in my head there's the equivalent of

    if (object.type == boobs) object.value = 100; // HACK!

> Manipulating these neural networks in our brain would be the perfect strategy for an evil AI to take over the world... :/

Sex sells. Most of advertising has been based on it forever.

[Fjolsvith]

I personally did a lot of classification of my personal preferences when I was younger also.

When I saw a model that I felt an attraction to, I would study her features until I could say, "Her eyebrows" or "Her lips" were what I found attractive. After years of this, I knew what my ideal idol would look like.

Its funny, now that I am married happily, that my wife doesn't look anything like that idol. I value her love, companionship, loyalty, and other traits of behaviour, more that her appearance.

[taneq]

After a lot of pondering, I figured out that my ideal was an average of all the women I'd ever cared about (in any context), weighted by total emotion I'd felt for them.

[jonathanstrange]

Of course we have such neural nets. Measurements of arousal and eye tracking show clearly that people from both sexes react to these stimuli even if they pretend not to.

[amelius]

> Manipulating these neural networks in our brain would be the perfect strategy for an evil AI to take over the world... :/

Replace "evil AI" by "advertising network", and your premise is still true.

[crpatino]

What makes you think advertising networks aren't Evil AIs running on a distributed mesh of wetware hosts?

[jiiam]

Maybe I'm being pedantic in interpreting the semantic of what you wrote, but the fact that a certain feature is recognized as sexually attractive and produces a release of hormones does not imply that there is any special physical wiring between your neurons allowing it.

Actually, we are at the point of the research where we are still asking whether we can understand basic facts about the brain by its physical wiring (e.g. we have a complete map of C. Elegans neural network of 302 neurons but can't simulate it).

By the way there is no need for a special physical wiring in order to have innate preferences, but I don't know whether there are some or not. I heard somewhere that breasts evolved as they are now to resemble the shape of a butt, which our ancestors found attractive probably even before the time of the Homo Sapiens. We also know that in different part of the world there are different features that are considered attractive (I'm thinking about beauty standards in remote tribes), so it might also simply be a social construct.

[tombh]

Which is exactly the plot of Ex Machina right? And also why I think that film is so much more believable than it's contemporaneous AI-themed sibling, Her.

[qubex]

The whole “Cogito Ergo Murder” trope isn't very realistic at all, and Ex Machina if anything seems to be very subtle in this regard: Ava might be just a goal-maximising algorithm with a very broad toolbox, Kyoko (insofar as she transcends her programmed limits and deeply surprises her creator) might be the “True AI” in the show.

[matt4077]

Like https://open_nsfw.gitlab.io?

I don't feel like the results are very attractive, but they're obviously recognizable.

[77pt77]

> Manipulating these neural networks in our brain would be the perfect strategy for an evil AI to take over the world... :/

I think it would just be easier for the AI to kill the humans. What benefit can they serve?

[narrator]

Well imagine if it got everyone stuck in some sort of delayed gratification treadmill that lasted their whole lives without any benefit to them. Just endless suffering with a carefully crafted and personalized vision of future eternal bliss for the promise of obedience. The few remaining humans being kept around for biodiversity purposes being subject to this.

[aeontech]

Honestly can't tell if you are describing a futuristic dystopia or current mass consumerism focused society :)

[solotronics]

yikes, this could be a critique of consumer culture.

[77pt77]

More like many religions.

[rm_-rf_slash]

Good luck with that evil AI seducing the religious puritans, the non-sexual, and the level-headed people who have been making the same criticisms of advertising since the 1920s.