Enlarge / Kindly robot Dolores meets the Man in Black, a vicious human gamer who has brutalized her repeatedly over the past 30 years. Of course, Dolores doesn’t remember that—or does she? (credit: HBO)
If season two of Westworld doesn’t have you rethinking sex and violence with androids, researchers are hoping that some hard and fast data will at least.
Science fiction aside, advanced sex robots are currently heating up the market, with several companies now offering more and more life-like artificial partners, mostly ones mimicking women. Skeptics fear the desirable droids could escalate misogyny and violence against women, ignite deviant urges in pedophiles, or further isolate the sexually frustrated. Sexbot makers, on the other hand, have been pumping their health claims into advertisements, including that the amorous androids’ could reduce the spread of sexually transmitted disease, aid in sex therapies, and curb deviant desires in pedophiles and other sex offenders.
So far, those claims are “rather specious,” according to health researchers Chantal Cox-George, of St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in London, and Susan Bewley, of King’s College London. In an editorial published Monday in BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health, the pair highlight that there are virtually no studies that help bang out the validity of the many health arguments surging around sexbots—arguments both for and against them.
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Source: Ars Technica – Sex robots with health benefits are a giant tease, experts warn