The world is gaining momentum campaign against sex with robots. Moreover, its initiators are not at all visionary fighters for the equality of machines, but quite serious scientists. And they are not disturbed by robots at all, but by people. Is there really cause for concern?
In 1886, the French writer Auguste Villiers de Lisle-Adan composed the fantastic story “Future Eve”, in which the kind inventor Thomas Edison, at the request of a friend, creates a mechanical woman for him. And 120 years later, one of the leading experts in the field of artificial intelligence, David Levy, wrote another book – Love and Sex with Robots. And it’s not even fantastic.
“A person who feels the need for sex and is unable to satisfy it will almost inevitably pay for the satisfaction of his sexual desires to professionals. And the time will come when, in the same way, people will pay money to have robots satisfy their sexual needs. In fact, that time is almost here,” writes Levy, predicting that sex with robots will become quite common in the coming years.
How is a sex robot different from a washing machine
And he is not alone in this conviction. Australian researchers, for example, predict that female prostitution will virtually disappear by 2050 as female sex workers will be almost completely replaced by robots. It is all the more interesting to observe that a campaign against sex with robots is increasingly unfolding in the world. And it is headed by scientists who are concerned about the fate of women. But by no means in connection with the possible unemployment among the priestesses of love.
According to British researcher Kathleen Richardson, a specialist in the field of robotics (a discipline that studies the ethical aspects of robotics) and one of the initiators of the Campaign Against Sex Robots movement, sex with robots develops and consolidates the sad trend of modern society: the attitude towards a woman as an object.
“By turning sex into an object of trade, we thereby deprive a woman who provides sexual services of her humanity, relegating her to the level of a soulless object. And the appearance of sex robots only captures the further triumph of this attitude, ”said Richardson.
Relations of power and coercion based on money do not always become dominant in the field of sex services
Curiously, representatives of the sex industry and advocates of their rights do not agree with this logic. For example, Katherine Coster, an activist in the Sex Workers Outreach Project, which advocates for the rights of sex workers, argues with Kathleen Richardson.
“Relationships of power and coercion, based on money, do not always become dominant in the field of sex services, as many people think. And I don’t think that the appearance of robots for sex allows us to talk about the dehumanization of women who are engaged in prostitution, about their transformation into an object. After all, we are not saying that the appearance of the washing machine dehumanizes and turns into objects women who are busy with the housework.
The temptation of a new experience
The argument is perhaps sly, because there is a definite difference between washing clothes and having sex. And yet, the anxiety of the fighters against sex robots about the desensitization of women seems to be somewhat exaggerated. Like their other fear, supposedly sex robots will inevitably lead to a deformation of human sexuality and our ability to experience empathy.
Similar concerns have already been raised about many technological innovations. Social media has also been accused of killing empathy, for example. However, users of social networks regularly raise huge funds for operations on sick people they don’t know, which indicates quite the opposite.
The growing number of those who find it increasingly difficult to have sexual relations with a living partner should be of primary concern to psychologists.
It seems that it would be most correct to say that the appearance of sex robots does not so much affect human sexuality and attitudes towards women in the future, but fixes the state of affairs in the present.
A certain number of people who experience certain difficulties in sexual relations willingly use any help that new technologies offer them. A sexy female robot named Roxxxy has been produced since 2010, constantly improving, by True Companion.
By the way, he also has a male counterpart – Rocky, but the statistics clearly show that the vast majority of buyers of sexual robots are heterosexual men. The same goes for sex dolls.
The number of consumers of such goods is still, in principle, insignificant. However, it is growing steadily. A 2014 UK poll showed that 41% of participants found the idea of sex with a humanoid robot repulsive, and 14% thought that robots should not be used for such purposes.
However, 17% of Britons said they would not mind such an experience. And it is the growth in the number of those who find it increasingly difficult to enter into sexual relations with a living partner, and not the emergence of substitutes for these partners, that should worry psychologists in the first place.