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'Call For a Ban On Child Sex Robots' (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader shares a BBC report: There should be a ban on the import of sex robots designed to look like children, the author of a new report into the phenomenon has said. Prof Noel Sharkey said that society as a whole needed to consider the impact of all types of sex robots. His Foundation for Responsible Robotics has conducted a consultation on the issue. Only a handful of companies were currently making sex robots, said Prof Sharkey. But, he added, the upcoming robot revolution could change that. The report, Our sexual future with robots, was written to focus attention on an issue barely discussed at the moment, he said. The report acknowledged that finding out how many people actually owned such robots was difficult because the companies that made them did not release the numbers. But, said Prof Sharkey, it was time society woke up to a possible future where humans and robots had sex. "We do need policymakers to look at it and the general public to decide what is acceptable and permissible," he said. "We need to think as a society what we want to do about it. I don't know the answers -- I am just asking the questions."

14 of 597 comments (clear)

  1. Let's do some research first by religionofpeas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First find out if having childlike sex dolls are a stepping stone to abusing real children, or if they are a good substitute so that less children are abused. Depending on the answer, either allow or ban them.

  2. takes one to know one? by ooloorie · · Score: 5, Funny

    There should be a ban on the import of sex robots designed to look like children, the author of a new report into the phenomenon has said. Prof Noel Sharkey

    I think Prof Noel Sharkey is perhaps a little too preoccupied with the dangers of "child sex robots".

    1. Re:takes one to know one? by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

      Remember: If you think of the children all the time, you're likely a pedo.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  3. Seriously? by Mal-2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Take someone who is attracted to children and willing to channel that into fucking a childlike doll (robotic or otherwise) and ban their only harmless outlet. Oh yeah, that's thinking of the children all right.

    --
    How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
  4. Re: There is much, much worse! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why don't we just instead destroy Noel Sharkey instead? It's cheaper to just destroy one pointless human than bother with its attention seeking behaviors.

  5. Re:Make their USE/DISPLAY illegal... by quenda · · Score: 5, Funny

    Won't somebody please think of the robot children?!

  6. Re:Make their USE/DISPLAY illegal... by stealth_finger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Being a pedophile is not illegal (in sane countries, anyway). Like being gay, it's just the way you are. Masturbating with the aid of a robot is not illegal. Masturbating with the aid of a robot that looks like a child should likewise not be illegal.

    I'd much rather a pedo fucked a robot that looked like a kid rather than an actual kid.

    --
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  7. Re:There is much, much worse! by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If only people could get past their middle school snickering when ever sex is brought up.
    Western society is currently expanding its view on sexuality and acceptance of different forms of sexuality as legally and socially acceptable. We are now realizing that sexual preference is not a choice but part of the person.
    Now we have the problem with pedophiles. They have a sexual attraction to kids. There isn't much we can do about that, we can't change them. But unlike many other sexual preferences this leads to dangerous behavior. Because the children who are the object of their affection are not in a position of power to consent, and haven't learned or even considered learning stradigied to avoid unwanted attention. That is why any action can get them in jail and labeled as a sex offender for life.
    However there are a lot of these people who are not in jail, and due to their moral compass they choose to repress their sexual tendencies as they know the harm is in it.
    But that is where the problem is sexuality is a core instinct. We can will off an instinct however it is a lot of work, and a lapse could cause a problem.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  8. A bedroom is private by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the summary:
    "We do need policymakers to look at it and the general public to decide what is acceptable and permissible,"
    The society, policymakers and who ever have no reason, right whatsoever to decide what a human is doing with himself in a bed room. Using his hands, or what ever tool he wants, a vibrator or a bigger thing, the "fucking robot" is a machine. Who cares how it looks, what it does?

    --
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  9. Absurdity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What if I build a robot that looks like a child, and then wait 18 years to fuck it?

    What if I build a robotic donkey to fuck? What if I build a robot that looks like Fifi La Fume?

    What if I build a robot that doesn't resemble any creature in particular, but has plenty of vaginas? What if those vaginas look underage?

    What if my "child sex robot" has the voice and personality of a 35-year-old smoker?

    Banning imaginary abuse is silly. It's only going to get more silly the more you look into it.

  10. Re: There is much, much worse! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A rubber doll is not a person. It doesn't have feelings, or pain, or sex organs. It's a piles of plastic. This is like banning soda bottles because someone probably put their dick in one.

  11. Re: There is much, much worse! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    We wouldn't ban sex with bottles - only sex with underage bottles.

  12. Re: There is much, much worse! by alexgieg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    gateway drugs are real - almost nobody start injecting heroin from day one.

    Actually, it's been shown that social isolation is the trigger for drug addictions. That drug usage developed as a survival mechanism so that brains (not only human one) who would otherwise commit suicide remain active for as long as the condition of isolation remains, until the conditions causing their need are solved, at which point the addiction begins to recede.

    The interesting part is that this applies even to heroin. Many people who get into intensive care while suffering from severe pain receive what amounts to "heroin with another name", sometimes for many months, as an analgesic. And the majority of those, when they leave the hospital and stop using the drug, suffer almost no physical withdrawal symptoms, and no psychological ones. The reason for that is that they have a full life to go back to: family, work, friends, sports, hobbies, church etc. As such, the addiction survival mechanism isn't active and no addiction happened.

    Now, what happens with "gateway" drugs is that the person who doesn't have a full life to keep them addiction free remains in survival mode and needs more and more to keep active, and the brain dead solution of removing the drugs doesn't fix the causes of the issue, it only makes the person more and more and more miserable, until the person dies or suicides.

    Here's the true solution to drug addiction then: care for these people. Care enough that their brains shut the addiction survival mechanism down. Once that's done addiction rates will begin doing down, until all that remains are the few people whose brains have a defective addiction survival mechanism that remains active despite the lack of the environmental triggers. Then treat those few people medically.

    Focusing on the drugs themselves is thus treating the symptoms, and poorly, while ignoring the causes of the illness.

    --
    Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
  13. Re: There is much, much worse! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And in the good ole USA it is always "Think of the Children!!

    It should be "Think about the data". These child-sexbots are legal in Japan, and many psychologists there believe that they help pedos to avoid interactions with real children. But, so far there is no published data.

    In a free society, anything should be legal by default, and the burden should be on the advocates of a ban to provide evidence of harm.

    The moral panic in TFA is justified with some severe cognitive dissonance. It says adult sexboxs will cause "social isolation" as people use them as substitutes for interaction with other people ... yet child sexbots will do the exact opposite, and cause more interaction with children. That makes no sense.