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from the some-topics-are-just-too-weird-for-words dept.
The folks over at CNBC have dug up some experts to explore the question should you have sex with robots:
Should we be having sex with robots?
It's a question that has sparked fierce debate among moralists and the robotics industry. And it turns out, they're all split on what role machines should play in future relationships.
During a discussion at the Web Summit technology conference in Dublin on Wednesday, experts warned about the dangers of getting intimate with robots.
"It's something we should be very concerned about...because if people feel they can have an intimate relationship with a machine, that is saying something serious about how we're experiencing empathy with each other," Kathleen Richardson, senior research fellow in the ethics of robotics at the U.K.'s De Montfort University, said during the panel.
The academic, who launched the "campaign against sex robots" earlier this year, added that "we are losing our sense of humanity."
How, exactly, do you get to be an expert on banging robots? Just saying...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday November 07 2015, @03:41PM
What exactly are the anti-sex robot crowd afraid of? That people will prefer robots to each other, and we'll stop having children, and go extinct? Or, that we'll stop caring about each other, which will lead to wars, and we'll go extinct that way? Is it that sex should remain mysterious until marriage, that virginity and innocence (aka ignorance) are precious? Or is it plain fear of the new and unknown? What's to know about it? No worrying about catching a disease or starting a pregnancy, getting roped into a shotgun wedding or having to get past the anti-abortion fanatics on the way to an abortion clinic, no having to bother with contraceptives... sounds like a winner!
If some people weren't so uptight about everything to do with sex, trying their damndest to keep their own children in the dark, the world would be a better place. I think that's what's behind this controversy. No one thinks twice about robots doing chores around the house. Sex though, watch out! Sex ed class was pathetic, talking all around the subject without ever telling the high school students what it is like, so that the only way to really learn was to do it. Unintended pregnancies are a big problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @03:49PM
I think one concern is that if machine intelligence advances enough, robots will have rights.
If that is the case, having sex with a "dumb" robot may be considered rape since they can not consent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @03:56PM
Then the robots might prefer each other and exchange genetic information when they mate.
Uh oh, I just gave away the big idea for my screenplay.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday November 07 2015, @07:06PM
Just call it R.U.R.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @05:24PM
Well the female ones are afraid that when it comes between their lackluster personality vs a sex robot a man might take the robot over their harpy attitude.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Saturday November 07 2015, @05:35PM
and does this battery make me look fat? :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 07 2015, @05:53PM
What exactly are the anti-sex robot crowd afraid of?
Just look at movies like AI. Humanity goes into a fertility nosedive and starts running robot fight arenas. Then a few thousand years later after global cooling hits, the robots complain that there's no more humans around to mother - even though they not only have the tech to breed a zillion humans from residual human cells, they can reincarnate people by name only thousands of years after they die.
Basically, this crowd has this stereotype fantasy that you need a couple of people, usually a mommy and daddy, to raise kids and if you deviate from this formula in any way (other than the approved variations which expand in number and extent with each generation), bad things happen like the extinction of people - which is a bad thing even when the people dying off are all acting like evil idiots.
Basically, the outspoken complainers have a small comfort zone and they want everyone to stay in that small comfort zone.
My view on this, let's find out for ourselves what works and what doesn't rather than depending on a bunch of idiots to tell us what to do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @06:37PM
Oh, the problem is that someone can't hold power over you for having pleasurable sex with someone, in or out of marriage. That someone typically being robed men of some kind, preferably also of their belief system. It is easier to oppress if the message is the same to all of those being oppressed. Otherwise, you are an abomination of some kind; there's a scoring system with names and general platitudes of what it takes to be a good person. We can find a way to make sure you have something wrong with you.
Also, if you are very much unlike the others already cowed into service, then you are unclean and need righteous salvation through oppression. Your eternal reward comes later, but for now, 10% tithe monthly.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 07 2015, @10:08PM
Well, maybe they are actually prostitutes and/or pimps, and fear that the robots will take away their business. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.