Sleepless at about 2AM, I was surfing around (do people still say that?) with my IPad, and I came across an article about sex robots being designed to give, or withhold, consent to intercourse.
The ethicist who was interviewed sees two problems: if the sex bot is designed with the ability to say yea or nay, won’t there be a temptation to rape it? and also, IF it is designed so as to always be “in the mood”, isn’t THAT unethical?
The ethicist indicated it would be, because of what that implies about human women. Most of the sex bots are feminine, or were. In 2017, Saudi Arabia granted full citizenship to a droid designed to look like Audrey Hepburn (or rather, like Audrey H on chemo, since it has no hair; its “cranium” is transparent) . It/she of course has more rights than human Saudi women do. I don’t think it’s a sex bot, although I assume it’s fully equipped. It goes around making speeches and appearing on late night TV.
It occurred to me that women had sex bots first, admittedly primitive, mindless ones, called vibrators (or dildos? But those didn’t have any power source of their own, did they?)
(What if those proletarian little machines could choose when or whether to have sex? “Not until you change these sheets—-they’re filthy! And also, when was the last time you shaved?”)
But we’re already beyond that. There is now at least one prototype male sex bot named……Henry. (No, I know: surely it should be named “Dick”…..?) It’s a great big beautiful boy-toy and when he/it becomes widely available, the customer will be able to choose the size and shape of the penis. Such are the dreams of the everyday housewife…
Can Henry “see” his..owner? Shakespeare said fancy ( desire) is engendered in the eyes, by gazing fed…would the purchaser have to put on her makeup? Wait: “Her”? This raises another problem, which for some reason wouldn’t occur to me in the case of the feminoid bots: is Henry bisexual? Does he care which orifice his bot-boy penetrates?
This leads me to another question which I haven’t yet seen discussed: if robots CAN have volition, can they or can they not “experience” “pleasure”? And I put both those words in “ because ………well, I hope everyone reading this can understand why. It’s gonna take some getting used to before these complicated, uniquely human ideas can be applied, without qualification or irony, to machines.
Yet another possible application os sex bots has occurred to me, and this one, I think, could truly be beneficial. There are evidently many people who want to have sex with children. I say evidently because it can’t be denied that the underage sex trade is huge, worldwide.
Let’s say those desires,—which everyone claims to abhor, despite the fact that many people are in the market for sex with kids (or there would be no market)—could be assuaged with sex bots designed to look, sound, feel (to the customer) like children?
If they have the outward form of a child, since all “infants” are-presumed in law to be incapable of consent, what kinda ethical issues does that pose?
But whatever those may be, wouldn’t they be outweighed by the fact that millions of living, breathing, conscious human children could be spared the physical and emotional anguish they undergo now, at the hands (and other organs) of pedophile adults?
I kinda wish (and maybe you do too, Reader, if you’ve gotten this far!) that I had never followed up last night on that headline about consenting sex bots .
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
Here’s the issue I didn’t clarify in my mind in time to include it in the foregoing post: under any, some, or what circumstances, are we going to privilege biological humanity over mechanisms?
Okay, sex is sexy. But let’s take a forklift. It can lift things much heavier that a human can, it can sense the weight of the load and where to deposit it. It was created to do that. But it’s not going to last, or “live”;as long if it works nonstop to fulfill those purposes as it would if it did NOT perform those tasks. Should it get to choose whether it wants to do this work and wear out sooner, or whether it wants to limit itself to lighter loads and “enjoy” a longer existence? If not why not?
Is it only the fact that a sex bot looks like a human, and a forklift doesn’t, which accounts for the fact that these ethical issues come to mind in connection with the dolls? What if the forklift were designed with the form and features of a “gentle giant”? Or like King Kong?
If we don’t concern ourselves with the “rights” of a forklift or a simple sex machine like a vibrator, why do we go all mushy if its outward form is in the image of a man, woman or child?
Are we ever going to get to , or get back to, drawing a line between the human and the mechanical ?
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In Ashcroft v.Free Speech Coalition (2002) the US Supreme Court held that virtual child pornography (no real children used or harmed to make the film) cannot be outlawed,, under the First Amendment. Those two-dimensional images are virtual creations, and the three dimensional bots are, too. If the two dimensional images cannot be “abused” as a matter of law, why should we worry about the rights of the three-dimensional models?
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Sexbots creep me out. They probably creep most people out. Having said that, I wish that the “ethicists” who are so concerned with the rights of robots had some concern for human rights. Whenever I hear the word “ethicist”, it’s usually followed by some morally reprehensible idea that the ethicist says is just fine. I am thinking Peter Singer, and his suggestion that it is acceptable for parents to kill children under the age of 2.
I just find it impossible to trust anyone who calls himself an ethicist.
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