21st Century Wire
Back in 2016, 21WIRE filed a somewhat shocking report about a high-profile robotics professor who sounded a dystopian alarm – warning that in the very near future people will be losing their virginity to robots.
Noel Sharkey, professor of robotics at Sheffield University, warned that many teens in the future may have their first sexual encounters with specially-designed robotic dolls. The implications of this would be devastating for society and perhaps even civilization as we know it. In short, they have the potential to ruin human relationships.
Futurologist Dr Ian Pearson released a report on trends in sex robots, claiming that by the year 2050 western society will see robot sex overtaking human-to-human sex.
The ethical and legal implications of this technology are no less astounding, and will challenge the current legal system in ways that may be hard to envisage in today’s world. Whereas social justice activists, like Obama advisor Cass Sunstein, are campaigning for animals to be given the legal right to sue a human in a court of law, will robots which possess an artificial intelligence ‘agency’ also be awarded rights like humans? Undoubtedly, there are enterprising lawyers who are looking at this as a potential market for legal services.
Some of these paradigm shifts have been alluded to in the 2015 film, Ex Machina, and also in the British Channel 4 TV series Humans, where life-like, humanoid robots were marketed as a replacement for human domestic workers, and as sex workers in the newly regulated cybernetic-based adult entertainment industry. Much of it comes down to economics, however. In his feature, The Android Affair: Humanity Outsourced, 21WIRE writer Randy Johnson talks about the ethical and social dilemmas that this new technology will introduce into the mix. He identifies some of the economic realities which will be driving the emerging ‘sex bot’ industry. Johnson explains:
“A robot will not call in sick or ask for a wage increase. It will not fight with others—unless programmed to. It will not complain, throw a fit, collect unemployment, leave early, or join the workers union to fight the corporation. Once integrated and a part of industry, it will save money. It will not require an annual review. When it becomes irrelevant to newer technology, it will be replaced.”
Watch as legal and media analyst Lionel of Lionel Media talks with RT America, giving his analysis of the coming age of sexbots, including the ethics and legality of child or animal sexbots, and the prospect of sexbots being weaponized:
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