Populism in Robots

Populism has rarely been discussed in the context of robotics. This chapter will explore how intimate relationships, such as love and sex, between human and robots, will bring populism to the populist masses. Intimacy between humans and robots was first raised and discussed by David Levy in his book titled Love and Sex with Robotics published in 2007. As a result, the subject of human-robot romantic and intimate relationships rapidly developed into an academic research discipline in its own right. Since then, researchers have come up with many implementations of robot companions like sex robots, emotional robots, humanoid robots, and artificial intelligent systems that can simulate human emotions. This chapter presents a summary of significant activity in this field during the recent years, predicts how the field is likely to develop, and its ethical and legal background. They also discuss their research in physical devices for human-robot love and sex communication.

Constructions of Moral Values in Reader Comments of the Samantha Sex Robot Discourse in East African Newspapers

Although artificial intelligence (ai) has been touted as revolutionary, this technology has sparked ethical concerns, with man accused of attempting to create a ‘play God’ with it. While creators of sex robots have been hailed for reigniting sexual relationships, they have received flack in equal measure for their apparent moral absurdity. From a Christian values perspective, this study interrogates how the Samantha sex robot invention was framed in 129 online reader comments in two East African newspapers – The Standard and The Daily Monitor. Findings showed that comments fell under the value themes of ‘family bond’, ‘compromised conscience’, and ‘apocalypse’. While a few positioned sex robots as a panacea to domestic instability, the majority opinion viewed the robots as ‘destroyers’ of the God-ordained family unit and tools of dehumanizing women, and thus morally contradictory to Christian teachings. Justifying sex robots was considered to be ‘negotiating’ or ‘rationalizing’ with established Christian values and therefore ‘rebelling against God’. Man’s extremity with the creation and use of sex robots sparked predictions of a self-fulfilling prophecy of his extermination for inciting the wrath of God. The preservation of culture also underpinned the ethical evaluations of robots by some commenters.

The Ethics of Sex Robots

What, if anything, is wrong with having sex with a robot? For the sake of this chapter, we will assume that sexbots are ‘mere’ machines that are reliably identifiable as such, despite their human-like appearance and behaviour. Under these stipulations, sexbots themselves can no more be harmed, morally speaking, than your dishwasher. However, there may still be something wrong about the production, distribution, and use of such sexbots. In this chapter, we examine whether sex with robots is intrinsically or instrumentally wrong and critically assess different regulatory responses. They defend a harm reduction approach to sexbot regulation, analogous to the approach that has been considered in other areas, concerning, for example, drugs and sex work.

Men with paraphilic interests and their desire to interact with a sex robot

Sex robots may present an opportunity for a clinical management of individuals with paraphilic interests whose realisation would result in infliction of harm and/or legal consequences. We explored the prevalence of desire for sex robot experience in a control group and two target groups: one with paraphilic interests in minors, the other with interest in non-consent/violence. We expected both target groups to express a greater desire for sex robot experience than the control group, because sex robots would enable them to express paraphilic sexuality within legal limitations. We used data from two samples of male respondents. The control sample consisted of respondents from a representative online Czech sample (N = 806). Target groups of individuals with paraphilic interests consisted of 48 subjects sexually interested in minors and 57 subjects sexually interested in non-consent/violence against adults. Sex robot experience was desired by 18% of respondents in the control group, 37.5% of respondents in the group interested in minors, and 26% of respondents interested in non-consent/violence. This indicates that individuals with paraphilic interest in minors are slightly more open to the idea of sex robot experience. Studies exploring preferred features of sex robots and interest in their use in therapy are needed.

Curiosity and other attitudes towards sex robots: Results of an online survey

As artificial intelligence and technology advance, mobile robots capable of human intimacy are an inevitable consequence of this progress. Such a profound shift in sexual technology will herald both advantages and disadvantages for human intimate relationships, yet a paucity of research exists on the study of human-robot sexual relationships. We believe a greater understanding of attitudes toward sex robots will be of value as this emerging technology progresses from its currently incipient stage. We conducted an online survey exploring potential gender differences in attitudes and opinions about sex robots. Survey responses were analyzed by gender, age, relationship status, relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction. Results confirm our hypothesis, that men report more positive reactions to sex with robots than women. Indeed, on no question did women report more enthusiasm or optimism about the arrival of sex robots than did men. This conclusion begs the question, what will sex robots mean to the future of gender relations, and in particular, sexual relationships? Engaging one another in a dialogue about the increasing impact technology will have on human intimacy can only strengthen our efforts to mold its effect into a primarily positive one. In addition, it is our expectation that dialogue about these gender differences can assist psychologists, sex therapists, anthropologists, roboticists and couples in navigating technological advancements as they increasingly impact human intimacy. Indeed, this dialogue may be increasingly urgent as the sudden and severe impact of COVID-19 raises increasing safety concerns for human/human sexual relationships.

Phenomenology and Sex Robots

Engineering develops technologies that shape the way of relating to ourselves and others, and the last developments in robotics force us to focus on the effects of their introduction. New robots have been designed to be intimate and even potential sexual partners. Many studies work on the ethical implications of sex robots by providing a normative approach to ethically assess their introduction in the society. However, few works focus on the effects they have on the relations binding people in general, and even fewer works focus on these effects from a phenomenological perspective. This paper aims at analyzing how technologies shape the relationships from a phenomenological perspective by highlighting the process of the constitution of subjects in a love relationship. More specifically, this work shows what happens when a human being is in a love relationship while the partner uses sex robots through the analysis of texts by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. In conclusion, this paper wants to provide a novel application of phenomenological concepts to intimate relationships with robots.