Sex with robots: Should we?


I wrote about sex robots, some ethical dimensions, highlighted my own concerns and managed to talk about male sex toys in the Guardian.

Heh, I said “dildos” on their website.

Comments

  1. badgersdaughter says

    If the apparatus appears to the person interacting with it to have the ability to grant or withhold consent, then the issue of consent is relevant. I am going to make the bold statement that it doesn’t matter, in this case, whether the robot is judged “sentient” or not; what counts is whether the “user” perceives it as consenting or not and interacts with it accordingly.

  2. busterggi says

    If I need to get consent from a sex-bot I’m going to have trouble – its been so many years that I’ve been out of action that I’m really rusty and that might count as an std.

    Still I feel I could enter the uncanny vulva.

  3. says

    Realistic robots are going to have to be pretty advanced. I imagine the whole human experience will have changed by the time that technology comes around, making prediction quite difficult.

  4. StevoR : Free West Papua, free Tibet, let the Chagossians return! says

    I think Isaac Asimov already answered that title question in his ‘Foundation’series -and it was Bliss.

  5. Chaos Engineer says

    I don’t see why a robot would want to have sex with something as inefficient and short-lived as a human being. I think they’d find it far more fulfilling to have sex with other robots.

    A more interesting question would be: Should a robot with an Apple O/S be allowed to marry a robot with a Microsoft O/S? I can’t decide: On the one hand, I think the relationship is doomed to wind up just like Romeo and Juliet once the copyright lawyers have gotten involved, and of course the real victims will be the robot children. But, on the other hand, who am I to stand in the way of True Love?