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The Rape of Robots

When a robot tells you he loves you, should you believe it? In recent years, technology has made great progress. Some scientists claim that there is nothing about human love and sex that could not be engineered in the relatively near future. Some go even further and argue that the bots would not only be psychologically pleasing, but that humans would prefer them to human relationships.

Nowadays we’re able to build the kind of machine that is extremely similar to a human-being, so it’s rather difficult to tell them apart. Nevertheless, it’s not a big deal to create a bot that engages the user in an emotional and irresistible way. The famous Tamagotchi, a virtual pet in a mini portable Gameboy, is a good illustration. Although Tamagotchi and a sexbot have little in common, it shows that people can get emotionally affected to an unhuman object. Lots of people have spent many hours on feeding and taking care of the artificial pet.

Latex “Sex Dolls” have existed for many years. Recent advances can design a humanoid robot with behavioral responses and fulfill sexual fantasies. With this progression of robots, publications about ethical and physical issues increase. For example, should sexbots be equipped with a behavioral repertoire, can they refuse sex as a result of an explicitly programmed script containing a series of stimuli and should it be possible for sexbots to refuse sex when sexual actions proceed beyond a certain point? Are we talking here about rape? Sexual acts without mutual consent are defined as rape. That may also include sexual actions with robots in which the bot fails to refuse. But where is the limit of a robot? It brings up some ethical questions about human interaction and a virtual world.

“Is it wrong to rape a robot?”, is an ethical question that arises when we talk about sexbots. On the one hand, when a robot explicitly refuses sex, it would be unethical because it is a simulation of having sex with a real woman or man who refuses intercourse and it would facilitate rape fantasy. As a result, it could increase real rape. On the other hand, bots that lack the capacity of refusing can give an unrealistic representation of sexual activity. Both situations cause discussions and create divisions in the ethical debate about having sex with robots.

References

Sparrow, Robert. “Robots, Rape, and Representation”. International Journal of Social Robotics 9, nr. 4 (1 september 2017): 465–77. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-017-0413-z.

Sullins, John P. “Robots, Love, and Sex: The Ethics of Building a Love Machine”. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing 3, nr. 4 (Fourth 2012): 398–409. https://doi.org/10.1109/T-AFFC.2012.31.