Abstract
It is likely that sex robots will exist in the near future, making the effect they might have on human relationships a pressing concern. In this future world, we can imagine sex robots shaping our personal and social relationships through their unique access to, and potential for influencing, our most intimate of behaviours. We investigate whether they might be employed to influence social behaviours in a positive way. The paper begins with an account of the state of the art, acknowledges powerful feminist criticisms that have been made of sex robots, and evaluates suggestions that it might be possible to design sex robots which do not raise these concerns and which might even work to influence social behaviours in a positive way. It then outlines a number of ways that sex robots might be used to educate, “nudge”, and influence people in positive ways. It defends the idea that it would be ethical to use sex robots to promote socially positive behaviours — behaviours that benefit others and improve social cohesion, such as fostering respect and empathy for persons — but not to promote commercial products for parochial interests. We argue that the former project could advance individual and social welfare, while preserving personal autonomy — a minimum requirement of which is the ability to make informed decisions — whereas the latter depends on a lack of transparency and democratic (public) control for its success, targets the vulnerability of the user to achieve its ends, and reinforces the problematic symbolism of negatively gendered sexuality. If sex robot design and application meet public requirements of transparency — enabling informed consent and reflective decision making — and democratic oversight — promoting accountability and the sharing of power with the public — it is conceivable that sex robots might assist, rather than harm society.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Kirby, Forlizzi, and Simmons (2010, p. 323) for an explanation of this concept.
- 3.
- 4.
Schmidt (2017) speaks at length of the importance of democratic control and transparency to personal autonomy. He also elaborates why these two conditions are necessary, if nudges are to be morally defensible against the charge that they exert uncontrolled influence over agents.
- 5.
We follow the default in the literature and expect sex robots will predominantly be presented as female and their users will be men. This reflects the current state of the market, which is primarily aimed at meeting the expectations of heterosexual males. Preliminary research also reports that men are more likely to consider the use of sex robots as appropriate (Scheutz and Arnold 2016, 2017).
- 6.
Currently, despite the hype, the “sex robots” commercially available are little more than “tricked-out” sex dolls. TrueCompanion.com have previously claimed to sell sex robots that can actively participate in conversation and respond to your touch. See http://www.truecompanion.com
- 7.
Others, including David Levy (2008), Frank and Nyholm (2017), and Danaher (2017b) provide a comparable list of sex robot features, including being functionally autonomous, adaptive to their environment through artificial intelligence, and capable of learning. They also consider sex robots with this range of capabilities a near-future reality.
- 8.
Kate Darling (2016, pp. 214–215) defines a social robot as “a physically embodied, autonomous [functionally] agent that communicates and interacts with humans on a social level.”
- 9.
Coeckelbergh (2010) builds on this position and outlines how sex robots might use “vulnerability mirroring” to encourage the forming of human-robot bonds.
- 10.
See Frank and Nyholm (2017) on the literature dealing with the ethics of sex robots.
- 11.
- 12.
See David Levy (2008).
- 13.
Frank and Nyholm (2017) extend this argument and connect Richardson’s concern to the further problem of consent.
- 14.
While Sparrow is focused on the representation of women, he also acknowledges that similarly representing men would be morally problematic.
- 15.
See Borenstein and Arkin (2017, p. 500), who detail these capabilities.
- 16.
Emerging communications technologies have become an important site for social interaction and the maintenance of social relationships (Prot et al. 2015; Rideout, Foehr, and Roberts 2010). In fact, Nicole Bluett-Boyd and her colleagues (2013, p. ix) assert they fulfil an essential function in socialisation, “creating a space for the exploration and construction of the social self” (Bluett-Boyd et al. 2013, p. ix) . On socialisation see (Grusec and Hastings 2015, p. xi; Maccoby 2015, p. 3) .
- 17.
There is empirical evidence that people do recognise a range of emotional expressions in robots, and that this shapes their subsequent behaviour (Kirby, Forlizzi, and Simmons 2010).
- 18.
Affective computing is “computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotion or other affective phenomena … [and] includes giving a computer the ability … to respond intelligently to human emotion...” (Picard 1997, p. 3).
- 19.
- 20.
Unless, of course, your partner is your therapist. Informal sex therapy with one’s intimate partner is also an option that will remain available, but sex robots could provide an option that some people will find appealing as an alternative to therapy sessions exclusively with a partner, or with a qualified sex therapist.
- 21.
For an example from the “persuasive technology” literature that utilise apps see (Toscos et al. 2006).
- 22.
The pop-cultural example of the episode of the television show Friends’ “Monica-The Sex Teacher”, where Chandler is taught how to satisfy his partner sexually through a system of numbered erogenous zones (1–7) and patterns of attention (1–2–1-2-3-5…), is surprisingly revelatory for current purposes.
- 23.
Scheutz and Arnold (2016) suggest their methodological survey of public thinking about sex and robots provides an empirical examination of conceptions of sex robots that is lacking in existing scholarship on this topic. An example of the questions asked is: “Would it be appropriate to use sex robots to demonstrate forms of sexual harassment for training and prevention?” Such questions were posed to 100 participants in the survey, who were U.S. subjects recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, and were categorised based on the independent variables of age and gender. The original findings of the 2016 survey were confirmed by a 2017 survey (Scheutz and Arnold 2017) with 198 similarly sourced participants. A limitation of this study, as Scheutz and Arnold (2016, p. 357) acknowledge, is that “actual sexual interaction with a robot” may alter attitudes toward appropriate characteristics and applications of future sex robots.
- 24.
- 25.
A classic example of nudging is product placement in retail situations, with the positioning of goods influential on consumer choice s (Borenstein and Arkin 2017; Sunstein 2015). However, the use of nudging in marketing and as a retail strategy is contentious as to whether these applications risk undermining personal welfare, dignity and autonomy (see Sunstein 2015, p. 417).
- 26.
See Langner, Hennigs , and Wiedmann (2013) for further elaboration of the social category of influencer. Note, when speaking of “social influencers”, we mean agents that deliberately affect the behaviour of a target audience.
- 27.
This is an obvious alternative to the dilemma of consent discussed in sect. 4.1, but is contra the commercial imperatives derived from the market for sex robots.
- 28.
It would be morally problematic to argue, in relation to human-human sexual interactions, that by withholding consent women expose themselves to an increased risk of being raped, and thereby should be always-consenting. We adopt a similar position when thinking about the design of sex robots.
- 29.
The “yes” model requires affirmative consent, and does not support the interpretation that in the absence of a “no” sex is consensual, while the “negotiation model” requires a communicative exchange between partners that indicates their shared interest in having sex (Frank and Nyholm 2017, p. 318; see also Anderson 2005) . It is also important to understand that while consent is necessary for ethical sex, it is not sufficient (see Frank and Nyholm 2017, p. 319). One of the authors (Sparrow) remains sceptical that widespread adoption of sex robots under existing social conditions would be compatible with genuine social equality between the sexes.
- 30.
Marketeers already exploit our propensity to anthropomorphise objects in our environment to persuade buyers (Zlotowski et al. 2015, p. 347), and the use of robots for this purpose is an obvious extension of the practice.
- 31.
An example of the conflict between commercial imperatives of marketeers and social good is the public health concern attendant with the advertising of gambling products in environments, such as sporting events, that create an illusion of banality and of social acceptance of the product. See Thomas et al. (2016).
- 32.
See Robert B Cialdini and Goldstein (2004, pp. 598–599) for explication of these aspects of social influencing.
- 33.
Another relevant question for our investigation that we cannot hope to address within the confines of this chapter is whether “the act that is supposed to result from the nudge [is] likely to be beneficial to the person?” (Borenstein and Arkin 2017) . This condition relates to the concept of beneficence introduce earlier, which is central to the socialisation scenarios but not market influencing.
- 34.
See Borenstein and Arkin (2016, p. 36) , who further develop this point. Robotic interventions of this type are a special case of the more general concern with the ethics of nudging that centre on the third-party intervention and paternalism undermining personal independence (see Sunstein (2015); Schmidt (2017)). Similar worries are relevant to the deploying of market influencers, who are also managed by third-party interests.
- 35.
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Howard, M., Sparrow, R. (2021). Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink: Sex Robots as Social Influencers. In: Fan, R., Cherry, M.J. (eds) Sex Robots. Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol 28. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82280-4_4
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