Sometimes science can be wonderful, giving us reasons why we don’t have to shower or eat more than a Big Mac’s amount of calories in a day. Other days, their logic can take the fun out of some things people take great joy from, like revealing the actual contents of a Big Mac or telling us that the up and coming trend of sex robots could really be bad for us.
“We’ve joked about robots being the future of sex, but for these two researchers, it’s no laughing matter.
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Kathleen Richardson and Erik Billing on Tuesday launched the Campaign Against Sex Robots, an effort to draw attention to what they see as the potential societal harm of human-like robots created for the purpose of having sex with humans. While these products are not yet widely available, they “seem to be a growing focus in the robotics industry,” Richardson, an ethics of robotics research fellow at England’s De Montfort University, told the BBC.
Billing, a lecturer at the University of Skovde in Sweden, told The Huffington Post in an email that he and Richardson “did not launch this campaign to protect the rights of the robots.” Instead, he explained, they are concerned that using sex robots could foster unhealthy attitudes towards sex and gender relations.”
