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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
In recent years, sex dolls have become increasing sophisticated and realistic in their resemblance to human beings, including mechanized components, and are thus now referred to as humanoid sex robots. Some media outlets have gone as far as to suggest that sex robots and other social robots will eventually become almost indistinguishable from humans.
This has sparked a number of interesting ethical and philosophical debates related to the significance of these robots and the possibility that future machines will replicate the physical intimacy between two people. In a recent study featured in Springer's International Journal of Social Robotics, two researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Bergamo in Italy have taken a closer look at some of the current arguments and predictions about sex robots, carrying out an ethics-based and critical discourse analysis.
"We started our joint research to debunk some myths and misunderstandings in the media regarding the future of artificial intelligence," Deborah Johnson and Mario Verdicchio, the two researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "We were struck by how fundamentally flawed some of the ideas were and especially the assumption that the computational version of some aspects of reality are the same as the real thing."
In their paper, Johnson and Verdicchio essentially challenge the perception of humanoid sex robots as robotic substitutes of lovers and companions. They argue that although humanoid robots may look and act more and more like human beings in the future, the claim that they will eventually replace humans is far-fetched and far from a certainty.
"Our research is aimed at showing that humanoid sex robots could come to be understood in ways that keep their status as machines, albeit technologically very sophisticated machines." Johnson and Verdicchio said.
Deborah G. Johnson et al. Constructing the Meaning of Humanoid Sex Robots, International Journal of Social Robotics (2019). DOI: 10.1007/s12369-019-00586-z
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @06:01PM (4 children)
Butbut without incels, I don't have a hated enemy to live to struggle against! Statistics show that the availability of pr0n decreases sexual assault, and there's no reason to believe sex bots wouldn't have even more of an effect! We must ban pr0n and sex bots! We must control the sexual habits of men so that they will seek to control and possess the lives of women!
Sex bots are as bad as human women having access to family planning services! We must runaway from such possibilities! Human women would become eunuchs!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29 2019, @06:13PM (3 children)
This is actually partially true. I'm not sure this would help incels any, because it's pretty obvious that incels are about hate, not sex. Sex dolls wouldn't do anything, they'll just say it "doesn't count," the same way they say that about prostitutes now.
Where they would help would be with pedophiles. But because most people would rather express their disapproval than actually protect children from pedophiles, sex dolls that simulate children will almost certainly be banned (if they haven't been already), thereby guaranteeing the actual abuse of actual children instead.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 01 2019, @11:47AM (1 child)
Word definitions are changing so fast, I have no idea what incel means this week. Generally its drifting toward some kind of anti-male hate word, mostly.
Its hilarious, really, how just a couple months ago it meant involuntarily celibate in the /r9k/ or /r/foreveralone sense, then for awhile it meant normies who are dateless this weekend because they broke up two days ago, now there's a strong highly centrally organized push to make it merely a synonym for healthy main street mainstream republican, kinda like the slur-ification of alt-right or neo-nazi.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01 2019, @03:17PM
What are you blathering on about?
It's possible to be all of those things (as well as a healthy, main street democrat, a communist, a non-political type and many other things) and either be an incel or not.
I'd also point out that Neo-nazi isn't a slur. It's a political ideology. If someone is, in fact, a neo-nazi, they believe in hating those that are different (usually brown folks and jews) and doing political and physical harm, up to and including murder to their enemies. A *real* neo-nazi is proud to be a vicious, amoral piece of shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01 2019, @09:00PM
Ah, the incel problem. Demonize a large group of sad people, then whine when a small number of them react the way you expect them to.
If incels, volcels, and MGTOWs don't want advanced sex robots, and if the robots are no better than cheap masturbatory aids, then the market will determine that and there won't be any huge societal shifts caused by the devices. That is if we get to run the experiment without them being banned because.. the patriarchy is bad mmkay?
Pedo sex dolls will succeed because it is a lot easier to traffick doll parts than live human beings. Chris Hansen style takedowns of doll part traders won't generate much interest because it is a literal fucking doll and who really cares? I wish the pedos good luck and godspeed.