Job Invitations From Adult Industry Are Welcome, but Not in the Way You Are Thinking Of

I have received several job invitations from the adult industry. They said they are in a blooming market with the popularity of LLMs and chatbots, which I have no doubt. They all also mentioned Replika in our chats, which was not surprising at all – I did an internship there in 2021, and they had already worked on sexting for years.

My pitch

Since this is kind of a sensitive topic, I think it’s important to set the pitch first.

• Although I have received higher education, I don’t despise at all the legitimate adult industry.
• Although I’m from a country that is very famous for its strictness over the adult industry, I have no prejudice over sex-related work, thanks to my experience in NL, Amsterdam especially.
• Business is business. I respect every profession as long as they are legal and ethical.
• Sex is part of human nature, so many professions around it are ethical in the right context.
• I respect sex-related workers even further if they donate part of their (expectedly high) profit to social good.
• I interned at Replika, but my work was not related to the erotic part.
• I have no intention of stepping into this industry yet, and the reason is that it’s not the time yet.

As you see from the teaser image, I adapted the catchword a bit, which suits my lifelong mission perfectly: I want to cleverly die as a responsible adult. Please hear me out.

My story with Replika

When I started my internship at Replika, I didn’t know that the company was working on erotic roleplay. I received the offer because of two reasons:

1. The perfect match with my PhD research topic
2. Its emotional-support aspect, which I think Replika has been doing a decent job

In my opinion, Replika has been a very responsible company. They separated very well the subscribe-only, erotic part from the free, normal, and emotional support part. Besides, they were happy that some users used their app to learn English. What more can you expect from a for-profit company/startup? They charge nothing for the part they influence society positively; they deepen the emotional support part further for people who are suffering from the lack of intimate relationships. Agreeably, having both adult and children-safe content in the same app can pose some harm to juveniles.¹ But dangerous as adult content to children as fire and blade, are everywhere in life. It’s the responsibility of many parties to protect juveniles from such harmful things. Besides, Replika is working on separating the erotic part,² which in my opinion is another responsible action/response.

Why do I think it’s not the right time for me to do adult business?

The short answer is that my value can be better utilized in a way more beneficial to society. Going against the prosperity of the LLMs and chatbots, my team at Huawei working on the exact topic is experiencing adversity. This offered me a chance to reconsider the value of my work on a broader scope: how did I perform responsibly as an Earth citizen? Although I believe Huawei is in general a responsible and honorable company, it doesn’t mean that every division of it is responsible. My work more specifically, hasn’t had much chance to carry out its responsibility towards the social good. I need a recalibration of my compass, therefore, I wouldn’t accept any distraction to my long-term goal: social responsibility.

What I would be happy to see?

Neither am I ready to devote myself to the adult business nor is the business ready for me, it seems. I would definitely be happy to contribute my knowledge and experience in the following aspects of the adult business:

• Fight human trafficking and abusing
• Anti-harassment
• Privacy protection
• Anti addiction
• Etc.

If you’re such a team, I’ll highly appreciate it if you reach out to me. I’m a believer in compounding power: a good deed, be it small, can have an overturning effect with enough time. Some other related industries I’m passionate about are:

• Educational games, so that we can help channel game-addiction into the addiction to something that brings real value to the world
• Healthcare, which might lead to a future of chatbots saving lives every day, which is already happening³

I want to elaborate a bit more on the anti-addiction part. There are many bad examples in real life other than sex-related addiction. Here I want to mention some products that are creating new, unhealthy addictions, such as YouTube and TikTok. Interestingly, if you search Google with the keywords “TikTok’s effort in fighting addiction”, you will see a lot of articles on using TikTok for fighting substance addiction, but you won’t see ANY of TikTok’s effort in dealing with addiction to its own app. I’m not happy with the finding, especially given the context that my parents, together with many friends and relatives, are TikTok addicts. Yet these companies have spent little to no effort in fighting the unhealthy addiction they caused.

I have a dream

Here is how I want the world to remember me after I pass away: He is a man who cleverly died as a responsible adult. By “cleverly”, I mean not to just die being mentally responsible, do something!