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posted by martyb on Wednesday June 06 2018, @04:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the positronic-incel dept.

Health researchers have published an editorial examining research related to the use of sex robots:

Science fiction aside, advanced sex robots are currently heating up the market, with several companies now offering more and more life-like artificial partners, mostly ones mimicking women. Skeptics fear the desirable droids could escalate misogyny and violence against women, ignite deviant urges in pedophiles, or further isolate the sexually frustrated. Sexbot makers, on the other hand, have been pumping their health claims into advertisements, including that the amorous androids could reduce the spread of sexually transmitted disease, aid in sex therapies, and curb deviant desires in pedophiles and other sex offenders.

So far, those claims are "rather specious," according to health researchers Chantal Cox-George of St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in London and Susan Bewley of King's College London. In an editorial [DOI: 10.11336/bmjsrh-2017-200012] [DX] published Monday in BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health, the pair highlight that there are virtually no studies that help bang out the validity of the many health arguments surging around sexbots—arguments both for and against them.

That data dry-spell doesn't let doctors off the hook, though, Cox-George and Bewley write. They call for researchers to get busy setting up studies that will nail the answers. In the meantime, "an absence of evidence does not excuse the medical profession from discussing and debating the issues, as there will inevitably be consequences for physical, mental and social well-being."

Sex technology is already an estimated $30 billion industry, they note. At least four companies are now making adult female sexbots, costing $5,000 to $50,000, and at least one is making "pedobots." The mannequins come with variable ages, features, and even programmable personalities, along with customizable oral, vaginal, and anal openings. Male sexbots are said to be in the works.

An Australian forensic criminologist goes further, speculating that "pedobots" may be illegal down under (archive):

Sexbots, and that includes pedobots, have been developed to allow users to play out sexual fantasies. In the child sexual abuse cases I have worked on, you see an escalation in activity in some cases—from an offender sourcing online child sexual abuse material, to actively seeking a physical interaction with a child when the online material does not bring the same sexual gratification. Pedobots could easily fit into this continuum of escalation.

It's also worth highlighting that Australia's legal definition of child pornography (material that describes or depicts a person under 16 years of age, or who appears to be less than 16, in a manner that would offend a reasonable adult) does not capture all images or representations that someone with an interest in children may find sexually arousing. With no evidence to the contrary, my experience tells me that the sexualization of children—be that in cartoons, songs, robots, or whatever form—will increase the desires of some who find children attractive, and put more children at risk, not less.

[...] It remains debatable whether pedobots would fall under the category of child pornography. As the law stands, child pornography can be created without directly involving a real person—child sexual abuse material can include images, text, and three-dimensional objects. This would appear to include pedobots. However, the notion of a life-like child robot produced for the sexual gratification of adults, I would argue, would offend most reasonable adults.

Should a harmless activity (fooling around with a sex robot) be banned for its potential to cause "escalation"? Should "pedobot" buyers get added to a watchlist?


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  • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday June 06 2018, @11:33PM

    by Aiwendil (531) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @11:33PM (#689621) Journal

    A few other angles to consider...
    *) In relationships where one part has a _much_ stronger sexdrive than the other, a doll that is a physical replica of the one with lesser sexdrive actually might be good for the purpose of unwinding. (ie, getting the emotional and intellectual needs from the flesh and blood, and getting the needs of the flesh from the mechanics)

    *) Consider the case of the people that doesn't feel comfortable with people (not even themselves) to beign with, in some sense a sexbot might be their only way to reach satisfaction (well, up until we loosen the laws of human genetic modification enough to allow to creation of sufficiently non-human humans).

    *) Where is the "sufficiently humanlike" limit? Some see a face in a smiley, some are creeped out by pixar's movies (I am), some find people without makeup weird-looking, some have fetishes for clowns. So where is the limit? Is a life-size anime pillow close enough? A pac-man pillow? A mannequin? A ball with a smiley face on it? Said ball when put in a leather hood? A geminoid?

    *) Used as a tool to help people to get used to the notion of sex or intimacy after being subjected to sexual trauma, being a tad bit too lifelike but not lifelike enough to be scary could be a good thing.

    *) And let's not forget that sufficiently advanced sex robots will also solve (most of) the engineering/robotics issues to create exoskeletons to allow (partially) paralyzed people to have more varied sex again (if nothing else in order to satisfy their partner, see the first point).

    (Personally I don't really see anything wrong with crashing the human population figures _hard_, but that is besides my point.)

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