How Prostitution Will Survive the Rise of the Sexbots
As every year goes by, robots are becoming more useful to humans. They’re doing jobs that are too dangerous for us, taking care of our elderly, and even helping give us part of our bodies back. But robots are also developing to fulfill our more primal urges in the form of fully functioning sexbots—something that's already edging it way into reality.
Ethically, the concept of robosex is a somewhat contentious subject. On the one side, some robotics researchers say sexbots could be a boon to certain people, like those who have a disability that gets in the way of achieving physical relationships. They further argue that sexbots could do a lot of good by disrupting the human prostitution industry. But on the other side, some purveyors of social morality (and those who generally think people spend too much time with their smartphones already) fear that sex with machines will lead to the breakdown of human-to-human bonding on any level.
But one scholar from the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies is throwing a spanner into both those arguments. John Danaher holds a PhD from University College Cork and is a lecturer in law at Keele University. He’s recently published a controversial paper in which he argues that sexual robots could actually promote human-to-human relationships. And human prostitution? That could be the hottest gig in town after the robots have taken all our other jobs. I talked to John Danaher at length about everything from the legal issues around robosex to robots displacing human jobs—and where regular prostitution will fit in. Here are the highlights of our discussion.
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