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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: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @10:48PM
So, when it comes to sex with robots, is it causing people to mistreat me? If not, then the argument that it is affecting their empathy falls very flat with me and I have no business interfering with their choices.
The idea that having sex with robots will somehow reduce someone's empathy is pure nonsense. It removes a person's sense of responsibility ("It's not my fault I don't have empathy! It's all the fault of that inanimate robot!") and ignores the fact that what they are dealing with are inanimate objects and not real people, so there is no logical connection between empathy felt for a robot and empathy felt for a person. You can't place blame on the activity of having sex with robots, anyway, because it doesn't directly cause anything to happen, if it has any such effect at all.
There's always been an argument to make that solo sexual activity can tend to make the real thing less likely or less fulfilling
That argument has always been foolish. It's someone's business whether they want to have sex with others or not. If they want to masturbate alone, that's up to them. And plenty of people masturbate and have relationships with others.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday November 07 2015, @11:47PM
It's someone's business whether they want to have sex with others or not. If they want to masturbate alone, that's up to them.
Certainly it is, but I don't think that has any bearing on that argument. Just because something might have negative side effects for some people is no reason that it isn't their business.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 08 2015, @12:24AM
Well, I meant that some people do not want relationships with others, so not having the "real thing" is not actually a negative side effect even if such a side effect exists.