2025 – Sexuality and Love in the Era of A. I.

Some time ago, I read a newspaper article about reproduction through sperm donation. It discussed a recent case in which a sperm donor passed on his “cancer gene” to dozens of children. The article explored the possibilities and limitations of better registration systems to help prevent such mistakes in the future.

At one point, the article reads:

“It’s important to keep in mind that the likelihood of a donor passing on a pathogenic variant is significantly lower than in traditional bedroom-based reproduction. That’s because the family history of candidate donors is mapped out and their DNA is screened for the most common genetic variants. Candidate donors with increased risk are rejected.”

This statement is made almost in passing but is underscored by being chosen as the article’s title: “Sperm donation is already ‘safer’ than traditional reproduction.” Once you accept the starting point of a logic, you automatically accept its continuation and conclusion. That’s why logic is often called “compelling.”

The logic of the title runs roughly as follows: “Technological-medical control can eliminate the risks inherent to natural reproduction.” The next logical step: “Whoever has a child outside of a lab exposes that child to avoidable risk.” A few steps further: “Choosing natural reproduction constitutes a criminal act.” If you say “A,” you have to say “B.” As Hannah Arendt pointed out: once you accept the “A” of the totalitarian alphabet, you are forced to continue to its deadly end.

During the COVID crisis, a new form of apartheid was justified through logic. It began with: “The vaccine prevents the spread of the virus.” Then came: “Those who refuse the vaccine not only endanger themselves but also others.” That led to: “A vaccine refuser is not a responsible citizen.” In no time, vaccine refusers were — literally — labeled as “anti-government thinkers” and “far-right fascists.” They were denied access to restaurants, cultural events, and (in some countries) public transport. Suddenly, second-class citizens existed again.

Later, it turned out the logic used to justify this exclusion was flawed. The vaccine didn’t prevent the virus’s spread. But those who imposed the logic didn’t seem to care. Suddenly, logic no longer mattered to them. Not that they’re so exceptional in that. To the extent that we try to live purely by logic, perhaps we’re all like that. It’s not logic we truly care about, it’s something else. Our logical thinking isn’t rooted in itself. It’s an instrument serving powers from another domain. Every time we prioritize logic over ethics and humanity, we step further down the totalitarian path. Stalin and Hitler both knew: it’s about ruthlessly imposing your logic.

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I understand you’re inclined to laugh at the idea that, in the future, those who wish to reproduce “naturally” might be marginalized or criminalized in the same way as the unvaccinated were during the COVID crisis. Yet that is merely the logical consequence of the statement: “Sperm donation is already safer than traditional reproduction.” That statement is a monstrosity — at least if you more or less correctly locate the purpose of life. As if human beings would become more human by having their reproduction take place under clinically controlled conditions. Quite the opposite: imposing clinical logic on reproduction and the creation of life is radical dehumanization. But to those trapped in a narrow mechanistic image of humanity — one in which the ultimate goal of life is to build the perfect human machine — this logic seems unassailably correct.

In a TED talk by the newly elected rector of Ghent University — titled “Tele-babies” — Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is described as a visionary work. Huxley foresaw the future of human reproduction as early as 1932! He was a visionary, almost a century ago, already smart enough to see that technological reproduction is far better for humanity than ‘old-fashioned reproduction’ (as that bedroom business is called in the TED talk). Yes, rewatch it: you heard it right — Brave New World was not a dystopia; it was a brilliant vision of the future.

But no need to panic for old-fashioned minds. The video assures us that there’s no reason to fear we are heading toward a totalitarian state through technological reproduction. You won’t be forced to have your baby meticulously constructed in a high-tech clinical lab where every cell division is precisely monitored and guided. If you’d rather tinker together a baby in a bedroom, among dirty sheets, you will still be allowed to.

So no tele-baby will be imposed on you. That won’t happen in “liberal democracies... as long as they still exist,” the video tells us. Then the Australian professor of bioethics, Julian Savulescu, is introduced: “he is really a smart guy” (minute 12:12), who says that genetic manipulation of babies is “a moral duty.” After all, who would want to saddle their child with a statistically higher chance of abnormality? Of course, even in a liberal democracy, citizens have moral duties. Surely old-fashioned romantics who want to tinker together a baby between dirty sheets should be able to understand that. We are liberal — but only insofar as it fits our logic.

The video also notes that technological reproduction opens up many other possibilities. For example, we’ll be able to create a child using DNA from three or four people (minute 5:50). I wonder: why would you want to make a child with three or four people? Because you love each other so much? Or just because putting a child together with four or five people sounds like an experiment they want to try? What if, one day, a new citizen wants to mix their own DNA with that of their beloved cat — is that a right they should have?

Do advocates of the technological model think there are any limits to rational-technological manipulation of life? Is there even such a thing as ethics in that world? If so: who will define the ethical rules? Humans themselves? Artificial Intelligence, perhaps? I’d bet on the latter. In a world trying to root itself in the quicksand of mechanistic logic, even the core of the human condition — ethical awareness and moral judgment — will be handed over to a machine (and the people who train it, of course). Prepare for the reign of the AI God.

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That Huxley’s dystopia is interpreted by a university rector as a brilliant vision of the future may not mean much culturally. It’s a curious interpretation, one that arises from the singular narrative and subjective choices of one person’s life. Everyone has the right to make such interpretations. “Human, all too human,” I’d say. But what is culturally significant is the silence that follows from the academic community — and the broader society. That silence suggests that either the community agrees with the interpretation, or is afraid to publicly challenge it. In both cases, the Brave New World may be closer than we think. The video leaves no doubt: “Aldous Huxley’s dream, the future he is talking about — he wrote his book in 1932, remember — this future is happening now” (minute 11:30). That seems a bit premature, a bit of wishful thinking perhaps — but it’s good to at least be aware of people’s wishes.

The idea that the world and human beings are mechanical objects that we can — correction: must — control and manipulate, has gained a nearly irresistible appeal in many minds. And not only in reproduction. In another newspaper article I read this week, it stated that about 5,000 people in Belgium are under “electronic monitoring” with ankle bracelets. I wonder: why not just give everyone an ankle bracelet? That would only make the world safer, right? Except for real criminals. They should feel totally free to follow their criminal instincts. That way, they scare the rest enough into embracing electronic ankle bracelets for a safer world.

Again: don’t laugh too quickly. History shows that the endless rule systems of totalitarian regimes, which supposedly eliminate crime, eventually ensure that criminals are about the only ones who are still safe. Solzhenitsyn describes this in The Gulag Archipelago. The typical dynamic of totalitarianism always leads to the opposite of what it promises.

Why does totalitarianism invert every truth? In the final analysis, totalitarianism is a manifestation of the narcissistic structure of the Ego. The Ego belongs to the realm of Illusion. It convinces us that the essence of who we are is revealed by our reflection. But a mirror inverts everything. It turns left into right. It doesn’t show us the colors absorbed by our real bodies — only those it reflects, those the object doesn’t contain.

So in a sense, there is an inverse relationship between an object’s essence and its image. In other words: the world we see is the reverse of the real world. That recalls Aldous Huxley’s conclusion after his mescaline experiments: what seems worthless in everyday reality turns out to be most valuable in the world beyond the doors of perception. We can apply that to people and their flaws. Flaws don’t make a person worthless; they are the essence of what it means to be human. Lack is the origin of love. It is precisely because we lack something that another person can truly matter to us.

I refer to a third article — a column — that I read in the paper this week. The columnist confesses that she sometimes longs to find a typo in a text. All those errors are now expertly eliminated by Artificial Intelligence. She used to get annoyed by typos, but now she misses them. They carry something of the author’s personality. That might be AI’s greatest contribution to humanity: as machines mimic humans better and better, we will rediscover the essence of humanity in the remaining differences. We’ll be surprised at where we find that essence — among other things, in our imperfections.

In that light, the technological ambition to eliminate every flaw in a child is, in essence, an attempt to erase the child’s existential core. Don’t get me wrong: we don’t need to create flaws on purpose. Nature already provides enough to give rise to human connection. It is the obsessive technological drive to eliminate all flaws that risks producing an excess of them — even in terms of the body’s mechanical function. In other words: the result might resemble Frankenstein’s monster more than Adonis.

Our Enlightenment culture tries to find truth by observing the world with the eyes. And so it ends up deceived. It peers through a microscope at the cells of a developing fetus and sees a small biological machine instead of a symbolic being rooted in the bodily desire between a man and a woman.

— Mattias