A revolution in sex education using sex robots

International Journal of Social Robotics, 2019

We propose that virtue ethics can be used to address ethical issues central to discussions about sex robots. In particular, we argue virtue ethics is well equipped to focus on the implications of sex robots for human moral character. Our evaluation develops in four steps. First, we present virtue ethics as a suitable framework for the evaluation of human–robot relationships. Second, we show the advantages of our virtue ethical account of sex robots by comparing it to current instrumentalist approaches, showing how the former better captures the reciprocal interaction between robots and their users. Third, we examine how a virtue ethical analysis of intimate human–robot relationships could inspire the design of robots that support the cultivation of virtues. We suggest that a sex robot which is equipped with a consent-module could support the cultivation of compassion when used in supervised, therapeutic scenarios. Fourth, we discuss the ethical implications of our analysis for user autonomy and responsibility.

Asian Bioethics Review, 2018

The manufacture of humanoid robots with embedded artificial intelligence and for sexual purposes has generated some debates within bioethics, in which diverse competing views have been presented. Themes such as sexuality and its deviations, the objectification of women, the relational problems of contemporary life, loneliness, and even the reproductive future of the species constitute the arguments which have emerged in relation to this subject. Based on these themes, this article presents the current state of the use of female sex robots, the bioethical problems that arise, and how bioethics could serve as a medium for both thinking about and resolving some of these challenges.

Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 2019

Sexbots are coming. RealDoll announced that in 2017, sex dolls with basic AI (vibrate in response to touch, and basic conversation) will be released. Ethical issues like abuse, crime prevention, and others arise. I unpack them.

Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics, 2021

For the sake of this chapter, we will assume that sexbots of the future will be non-sentient and lack moral standing: they will be neither moral victims nor moral agents. That is, we will assume that sexbots are ‘mere’ machines that are reliably identifiable as such, despite their humanlike appearance and behaviour. Under these stipulations, sexbots themselves can no more be harmed, morally speaking, than your dishwasher. As we will explore, however, there may still be something wrong about the production, distribution, or use of such sexbots.

Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications, 2017

This chapter examines a common objection to sex robots: the symbolic-consequences argument. According to this argument sex robots are problematic because they symbolise something disturbing about our attitude to sex-related norms such as consent and the status of our sex partners, and because of the potential consequences of this symbolism. After formalising this objection and considering several real-world uses of it, the chapter subjects it to critical scrutiny. It argues that while there are grounds for thinking that sex robots could symbolically represent a troubling attitude toward women (and maybe children) and the norms of interpersonal sexual relationships, the troubling symbolism is going to be removable in many instances and reformable in others. What will ultimately matter are the consequences of the symbolism but these consequences are likely to be difficult to ascertain. This may warrant an explicitly experimental approach to the development of this technology.

M/C Journal, 2019

Being and Value in Technology

A number of companies have started to developed humanoid robots that (1) bear some physical resemblance to human beings, (2) have some ability to initiate movements (e.g. blinking; head-turning, gyration, etc.) and (3) possess some AI functionalities enabling quasi-intelligent environment-responsiveness and linguistic expression. The robots I am speaking of are sex robots. A promise frequently voiced by sex-robot developers (and some academics) is that sex robots will be “good companions” who can enrich and transform the romantic lives of human persons, particularly those who – for various reasons – have trouble entering into traditional love relationships with other humans. Curbing this technological enthusiasm, many philosophers have offered more critical anticipations of sex robots (sex-robot-anticipation hereafter) and the idea that they can, will, or should become good companions to human users. While these critical sex-robot-anticipations alert us to some of the potential harms that may follow from a proliferation of sex robots into society, the overarching aim of this chapter is to show that, by and large, these anticipations fall short. Specifically, they continue to frame the anticipation of sex robots around the question of their potential as good companions. In doing so, I argue that many sex-robot-anticipations at best marginalise key ethical questions pertaining to our potential future with sex robots. At their worst, these sex-robot-anticipations are inadvertently contributing to the potential realisation of a technology that they are precisely worried about. In the process of critically engaging with much of today’s philosophical sex-robot-anticipation, I will introduce two criteria I take to be of central importance for good sex-robot-anticipation; what I call ‘reflective anticipation’ and ‘technological groundedness.’

Governing the Future: Digitalization, Artificial Intelligence, Dataism, ed. Henning Glaser, Pindar Wong, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, forthcoming 2023.

This paper explores a line of concern underrepresented in the emerging debate about sex robots, arguing for caution in their development. Today's sex robots cannot suffer because they lack sentience. However, future sex robots that may be sentient could suffer harm due to precedents set today regarding behaviors toward their non-sentient predecessors. The challenge emerges from our lack of philosophically uncontested criteria for sentience in a robot. This paper discusses the phenomenon of spillover, described by Robert Nozick as a situation in which members of one moral category are treated in ways appropriate to another. In the case of sex robots, spillover occurs when robots that could be sentient are treated in ways appropriate to robots that are certainly not sentient. Sex robots could cause harmful spillover.