The Confusing Ethics of Sex With Robots

Can you consent to sex with a robot? Can it consent to having sex with you?

sex robots
Sex dolls being made in China. (FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images)
AFP/Getty Images

Sex tech is a growing industry. It is currently a $15 billion-a-year business and is starting to look a lot like Silicon Valley. Patent trolls have been sitting on a famous 2002 patent on vibrators connected to other devices and each other, using it to extract licensing fees from sex tech startups, writes Wired. However, the patent expires in August, which means there is about to be an explosion of internet-connected sex devices. A lot of the world is open to the idea of algorithm-enabled, internet-connected, virtual-reality-optimized sex machines. The technology is evolving really quickly, so two big problems are bound to exist: privacy and security. But the biggest questions on the table are instead about ethics. Can a robot consent to having sex with you? Can you consent to sex with it? Wired writes that the first question is whether robots will desire sex back. Even with advanced learning and algorithms, no one really expects a horny robot anytime soon. But there could be a solution: The robot does not need to look human.

“Humanoid robots freak everyone out because of the uncanny valley. Whether you’d want to have sex with something that looked almost human is up for debate,” Sarah Jaime Lewis, a computer scientist, told Wired. “But we’re already in the realm of devices that look like alien tech. I looked at all the vibrators I own. They’re bright colors. None of them look like a penis that you’d associate with a human. They’re curves and soft shapes.”

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