When will the sex robot replace humans?
They already exist: sex robots: Not yet in every household or on every street corner, and for various reasons the assumption seems justified that they will never experience a comparable spread as, for example, laptops or smartphones. Nevertheless, as with mobile devices, the rapidly advancing technological development also plays a role for sex toys and, indeed, sex robots.
The sex robot differs from the “conventional sex doll” because artificial intelligence (A.I.) is built into it, and this is where it gets exciting: A.I. only works really well if it is well fed with data. With lots of data! Data collected via cameras, microphones or sensors. The data collected in sex robots is almost without exception data that can be unproblematically subsumed under Article 9 of the GDPR. But the topic of data protection impact assessment (or better: privacy impact asssessment) also takes on a piquant significance here.
In addition, the possibility that a sex robot can be created as desired by means of customization has further ethical implications. Should every form of human fantasy be permitted? Should it not be possible/be made possible for socially undesirable sexual practices to be lived out on a sex robot (an object)?
Why we should not leave the legal and ethical standards applied in the construction of sex robots to the producers alone will be explained and discussed in this paper/session.
Iris Phan is
Fulltime lawyer at the IT Law Department of Leibniz Universität Hannover, additionally she is lecturer for robot ethics at the Institute of Philosophy, besides she is doctoral student at the Center for Law and Ethics in the Life Science (CELLS), editor of the data protection law journal Privacy in Germany (PinG)