Just as men get tired of their real women (yes, and vice versa we know), they also can get tired of their silicone girlfriends. But what to do when you are done with them? It’s not like you can just send them out the door. What to do?

A man in Izo, Japan found out the hard way that it’s not really a great idea to dump her in a public area. The 60 year old, on the verge of moving in with one of his children, needed to rid himself of the love doll he acquired when his wife died. He says he did not have the heart to slice her up and put her in the trash dumpster. So, he wrapped her up in a sleeping bag and proceeded to dump her in a wooded area. This became a problem when someone stumbled upon the “corpse” and contacted the police, who vowed to pursue what they thought was a prankster until caught. Frightened, he turned himself in and now faces fines for violating Japan’s Waste Management Law, not to mention public embarassment.

Source: PinkTentacle.com

Author David Levy has worked in the field of Artificial Intelligence since graduating from St. Andrews University, Scotland, in 1967, and is the author of the book, Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age. Read his recent interview here .

The trend of robotics research and development, from industrial robots to service robots to companion and carer robots for the elderly, has as its logical continuation the design and construction of partner robots, sufficiently human-like and sufficiently appealing in various ways to take on the role of a partner in a relationship with a human being. This trend immediately raises many questions relating to humans loving and being loved by robots, treating robots as life partners and being similarly treated by them, marrying robots and having sex with robots.

Love and Marriage with Robots

Nowadays scientists, psychologists and philosophers are asking, more and more often, questions such as “Can robots fall in love?” Such questions might seem to be unnecessary because love is an experience peculiar to warm-blooded mammals—anything in a programmed entity is merely a simulation. But if a robot exhibits all the same signs and behaviours of a human in love, and if it professes its love for a human, then surely, so far as the recipient is concerned, their robot is indeed in love with them, whatever being in love means to a robot.

An even more challenging psychological, sociological and ethical question for the future is “Will people fall in love with robots?” I believe the answer to be an unqualified “Yes”, even though this idea will be abhorrent to many people. But consider the millions of people who develop extremely strong emotional attachments to their pet animals, and the rapidity with which millions developed emotional attachments to their Tamgotchis, both of which are indications as to the strength of emotion that can be felt by humans for non-humans, and as to the feelings that millions will develop for robots when they are more emotionally sophisticated than both animals and Tamagotchis.

Let us now consider this notion, that people can fall in love with a robot. In the past, before the Internet was invented, many people had pen friends with whom they exchanged letters. Through this type of correspondence some people developed long-term friendships, occasionally falling in love with their pen friends and agreeing to marriage even without having met them. Moderately unusual, yes, but only moderately. In recent years this phenomenon has been replicated countless times in cyberspace romances. It is easy to understand how two people can fall in love on the basis of their communications with each other, even without physical contact. Much of the emotional basis for love is based on your feelings about your partner’s character, their personality, their interests, ideas, how your partner talks (or writes) to you, . . . so many things that can be communicated verbally.
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There has been much talk recently of robots and ethics—well, in particular—sex with robots and ethics. And beyond ethics, as robots become more life-like, legal issues.

As it is right now, we don’t have real “sex robots” so there’s really no ethical or legal questions to answer. But, with the exponential acceleration of technology, human-like robots will emerge soon enough.

What people do now to their own beautiful, silicone dolls is their own business, as it should be. But at what point along the evolution of robots do we start applying human laws of protection to them? An absurd thought? I don’t think so.

Let’s make it simple to understand, and move forward to the time when robots will respond with appropriate human reactions to the input they receive. Not only will they respond with pleasure when they are having sex with you, but they will respond with pain if you hurt them. For all intents and purposes, they will seem real to you. So inflicting pain to, or performing illegal activities with them, will cross the lines of ethics. But should it cross the lines of the law?

Robots will move towards mimicking humans, in all their senses. And humans will evolve toward robots, beginning with implants, limbs and finally brain augmentations and complete replacements. What will be robotic and what will be human?

Given this meeting of evolutions, here are some specific examples of questions to ponder:

Can a robot doll owner film the torture and “murder” of a sex robot and place it on the internet? Sell it as a robot snuff film?

Should it be a crime to have sex with a 12 year old robot? Should it be a crime simply to make such a doll?

Can you kick around your robot puppy?

Can a robot be made into a sex slave, forced to live in the closet, chained up, when not in use.

All these things are illegal with humans, but legal with the “robots” or “dolls” of today.

I think it’s obvious to most rational people that as the distinction between robots and humans blur, these should be treated just as are crimes against humans. And, I think we can also agree, that with the today’s primitive technology, no such actions should yet be criminal. So the question is, at what point do we criminalize these actions? How do you define this point in their evolution?

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Roboticists recently held a meeting in Genoa, put on by the European Robotics Research Network (Euron), in which they examined potential problems that could arise as robots become smarter. Among the comments:

“Security, safety and sex are the big concerns,” said Henrik Christensen, a member of the Euron ethics group. How far should robots be allowed to influence people’s lives? How can accidents be avoided? Can deliberate harm be prevented? And what happens if robots turn out to be sexy?

and

Other dilemmas may arrive sooner than we think, says Christensen. “People are going to be having sex with robots within five years,” he said. So should limits be set on the appearance, for example, of such robotic sex toys?

And why should this concern us? Sounds like good news to me. Make them sexy and make then soon.

Times Online Original article

Technorati Tags: robot, sex robot, sex