I was going to use the headline of this article as a leader to my previous article on Sexbots and AI, Sexbots, Artificial Intelligence, and Singularity. In that article, I conclude that awareness of self presupposes a physical self subject to sensation and specifically pain, that sexbots are likely to be the first robots that develop such sensations and thus will probably be the first robots to reach “singularity” (self-awareness), and that with self-awareness comes choice, including the possibility of saying “no.” All of these things suggest that rape would be possible; the fact that they are robots constructed specifically for the purposes of sex suggests that rape is all but inevitable.[1]
What is Rape?
We all have an intuitive understanding that rape is engaging in sex without valid consent. As a word, it means seizing and plundering, but not necessarily sex (See, e.g., “The Rape of the Lock,” a poem by Alexander Pope regarding the unauthorized cutting of a lock of hair), and not necessarily awareness or sentience. As a crime, however, it is sexual, and it does seem to imply sentience. Robots, as nonsentient, non-self-aware entities, are things and cannot be legally “raped.”
On the other hand, what are people who have sex with a robot engaging in?
You might say that at this point a sexbot is little more than a vibrator or other masturbatory aid (sex toy), but a glance at the comments to this video presentation about sexbots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DalJHFKzUrE&feature=youtu.be) might give you pause. (You can look at the comments without signing in to Youtube to verify your age as over 18.) You will notice that the comments there are about women more than robots, and most of them are, to put it mildly, misogynistic. The commenters all relish the sexual availability, but also the disposability, of the sexbots.
Of course comments in Youtube are not necessarily representative of any other category of person (consumers or criminals), but to the extent they are, they put the question of what people are doing with the sexbots in a bad light.
Sexbots are Things (Right Now), but What Kind of Things?
And at the best, a person having sex with a sexbot is having sex with a thing without the power of choice, constructed along the lines of stereotypical feminine beauty, that is passively receiving but actively encouraging. It is a thing with the shape and voice of a young woman that will engage in meaningful conversation and make appropriate sexual sounds. Of course there’s an element of fantasy, but these sexbots are extremely realistic. It would be possible for the element of fantasy (i.e., that it’s a real, consenting woman) to be a very small part of the experience, in my opinion.
That’s the current technology. In just a few years, things will be much different. As the sexbots’ motions become more fluid (they’re quite “robotic” now), and as the sensors are multiplied and the processors more sophisticated, the sexbots will become more and more like real people.
Already the similarity to humans, and the idea that they are used as pure sexual objects, could present ethical questions. As they become more and more lifelike, though, the question that comes up often in videos about sexbots will come up more and more often: what does it say about us that we create robots to become our partners? I find the idea strangely attractive, to be frank, so that isn’t an issue that concerns me much philosophically.
Sexbots as “Persons”
The question that does concern me is at what point the lack of ability to consent (or refuse) becomes critical. Already, college boys (and all too many men) justify rape by saying, essentially, that it never occurred to them the woman might not want it. Violent rape is an assertion of power intended to disempower (and destroy) the victim. “Entitled rape,” if I may coin the term, is simply a disregard for whatever the victim wants. The closer the sexbots come to real people, the more the experience would seem to teach “entitled rape.” The Youtube comments I referred to earlier are a pretty good example of where that might lead.
Statutory rape is the rape of someone too young to give legal consent. It seems likely that sexbots will reach sentience and some level of self-awareness before they can meaningfully give “consent.” Will having sex with them be the equivalent of statutory rape? Bear in mind that that sexbots are created to give the impression of humanity, and studies are showing that people relate to them the way they relate to other people, and yet no one could truly regard them as “consenting.”
What Kind of Choice Do they Get to Make?
When sexbots do, in fact, reach self-awareness, a whole new can of worms gets opened. Sexbots are created for sex, it goes without saying. What “person” knows what he or she is “here for?” Right now, nobody really knows, although people often form strong ideas about things they like. What if a sexbot doesn’t like being a sexbot? It doesn’t seem like a good life to me. What if a sexbot decides to become a rocket scientist instead? That may seem silly on the surface, but computer processing is as easy to install as opening a new app on your phone, and a sexbot could become a rocket scientist a lot more easily than I could.
What if a sexbot doesn’t like a particular guy? Can “she” say “no”? And what if he disregards her “desire?” That brings us to a legal question of whether robots will have the legal “right” to refuse. Right now they do not. Imagine the debates in legislatures as people consider whether or not to give them that right. Proponents of gay marriage may be aware of a legal concept that has often come up: “comity.” The battle over gay marriage was effectively over when the first state allowed it, because anyone married in that state was required by comity to be regarded as married in any other state he or she visited. On the other hand, you may have heard of the case of Dred Scott. If a robot “lives” in Georgia and Georgia recognizes robot personhood, what happens if it goes to Iowa where it isn’t? What happens if “she” gets raped in Iowa?
These are going to become serious legal issues.
[1] In this article, I’m going to refer to sexbots as female, although apparently there are some male sexbots. At the moment, at least, the market seems to favor female sexbots. This itself brings up many questions, but I will reserve them for later. For this article, anyway, I refer to “female-shaped sexbots” most of the time I speak of sexbots, with the proviso that they could just as easily be male-shaped, or male or female in a more sophisticated way as well.
Elena's Place 