Sex with Robots for Love Free Encounters

This paper considers sex with robots for love free encounters within the context of pornographic experiences. Leisure sex and pornography are briefly outlined, along with the potential of the market. Limited research on both the user experience of pornography and the physical functionality of sex robots is highlighted. The physical embodiment of sex robots is considered, questioning whether we need human-like robots or something else entirely. Technological advances for pornography and their relevance for sex robots are explored examining the potential offered through the integration of Virtual Reality, teledildonics, soft and wearable robots. The potential of categorising sex robots as fantasy hardware is considered seeking to provide a palatable terminology. This paper concludes that researchers need to engage with the Porn Sector in creating innovative sexual experiences with robots, aiming to create a new type of sexual experience, rather than replicating humans as seen in most science fiction

Posthuman desire in robotics and science fiction

This article explores how human-posthuman intimate relationships are thematized in both robotics and in science fiction film, literature and robotic art. While on the one hand many engineers and computer scientists are working hard, albeit in an altogether affirmative way, toward the technological development of anthropomorphic robots which are capable of providing social assistance, emotional support and sexual pleasure, aesthetic representations of intimacy between man and machine give us on the other hand a more nuanced and critical picture of possible future forms of desire. However, these fictional works are themselves very often complicit with the use of familiar dualistic paradigms as male-female or self-other. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas of ‘becoming-other,’ scholars in critical posthumanism counterpose to this as an essentially traditional approach a nondualist reconceptualization of human beings and of the technological other, a reconceiving which is centered on ‘encounters of alterity’ and ‘unnatural alliances.’ The aim of this article is to expand on and to further develop these theories into what can be called a theory of ‘new networks of desire.’ According to this network idea, romantic entanglements between man and machine can better be seen as a specific form of power which does not leave us just where and who we were, but transformed. Desire is thus shown as a site for challenging our restricted self-understanding as humans and for transgressing humans’ self-centeredness

Assistive robotics: research challenges and ethics education initiatives

Assistive robotics is a fast growing field aimed at helping healthcarers in hospitals, rehabilitation centers and nursery homes, as well as empowering people with reduced mobility at home, so that they can autonomously fulfill their daily living activities. The need to function in dynamic human-centered environments poses new research challenges: robotic assistants need to have friendly interfaces, be highly adaptable and customizable, very compliant and intrinsically safe to people, as well as able to handle deformable materials. Besides technical challenges, assistive robotics raises also ethical defies, which have led to the emergence of a new discipline: Roboethics. Several institutions are developing regulations and standards, and many ethics education initiatives include contents on human-robot interaction and human dignity in assistive situations. In this paper, the state of the art in assistive robotics is briefly reviewed, and educational materials from a university course on Ethics in Social Robotics and AI focusing on the assistive context are presented.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Sex With Robots and Human-Machine Sexualities: Encounters Between Human-Machine Communication and Sexuality Studies

Sex robots are a controversial topic. Understood as artificial-intelligence enhanced humanoid robots designed for use in partnered and solo sex, sex robots offer ample opportunities for theorizing from a Human-Machine Communication (HMC) perspective. This comparative literature review conjoins the seemingly disconnected literatures of HMC and sexuality studies (SeS) to explore questions surrounding intimacy, love, desire, sex, and sexuality among humans and machines. In particular, I argue for understanding human-machine sexualities as communicative sexuotechnical-assemblages, extending previous efforts in both HMC and SeS for more-than-human, ecological, and more fluid approaches to humans and machines, as well as to sex and sexuality. This essay continues and expands the critical turn in HMC by engaging in an interdisciplinary exercise with theoretical, design, and use/effect implications in the context of sex robots

The Quantified Relationship

The growth of self-tracking and personal surveillance has given rise to the Quantified Self movement. Members of this movement seek to enhance their personal well-being, productivity, and self-actualization through the tracking and gamification of personal data. The technologies that make this possible can also track and gamify aspects of our interpersonal, romantic relationships. Several authors have begun to challenge the ethical and normative implications of this development. In this article, we build upon this work to provide a detailed ethical analysis of the Quantified Relationship. We identify eight core objections to the QR and subject them to critical scrutiny. We argue that although critics raise legitimate concerns, there are ways in which tracking technologies can be used to support and facilitate good relationships. We thus adopt a stance of cautious openness toward this technology and advocate the development of a research agenda for the positive use of QR technologies

Sexual interaction in digital contexts and its implications for sexual health: a conceptual analysis

Based on its prevalence, there is an urgent need to better understand the mechanisms, opportunities and risks of sexual interaction in digital contexts (SIDC) that are related with sexual arousal. While there is a growing body of literature on SIDC, there is also a lack of conceptual clarity and classification. Therefore, based on a conceptual analysis, we propose to distinguish between sexual interaction (1) through , (2) via , and (3) with digital technologies. (1) Sexual interactions through digital technologies are face-to-face sexual interactions that (a) have been started digitally (e.g., people initiating face-to-face sexual encounters through adult dating apps) or (b) are accompanied by digital technology (e.g., couples augmenting their face-to-face sexual encounters through filming themselves during the act and publishing the amateur pornography online). (2) Sexual interactions via digital technology are technology-mediated interpersonal sexual interactions (e.g., via text chat: cybersex; via smartphone: sexting; via webcam: webcam sex/camming). (3) Sexual interactions with digital technology occur when the technology itself has the role of an interaction partner (e.g., sexual interaction with a sex robot or with a media persona in pornography). The three types of SIDC and their respective subtypes are explained and backed up with empirical studies that are grouped according to two major mediators: consent and commerce. Regarding the causes and consequences of the three types of SIDC we suggest a classification that entails biological, psychological, social, economic, and technological factors. Regarding implications of SIDC we suggest to focus on both opportunities and risks for sexual health. The proposed conceptual framework of SIDC is meant to inform future research

Clarke and Kubrick’s 2001: a queer odyssey

This article is a queer reading of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It begins by situating the film in the context of the careers of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick. Clarke is shown to have been a homosexual or bisexual who explored same-sex desires in a number of his later fictions, whilst Kubrick is discussed as having a fascination with problematising normative masculinity and asserting, by contrast, the superior potency of his artistic vision. The alien monolith is interpreted as a visualisation of the masculine closet. Bowman’s encounter with the monolith in the extra-terrestrial hotel room is presented as a homosexual encounter that leads to the revelation of the sublimity of infantile polymorphous perversion. Finally, the film’s queer liberatory potential is understood to lie in its refusal to provide a didactic framework for a future form of normative sexuality

Uncanny valleys: sex, power, & the artificial person

This paper explores the impact of the creation of hyper-realistic animatronic sex rolls on the way in which the almost exclusively male customers view women’s autonomy. Through an examination of contemporary robotics theory as well as profiles on prospective clients for such dolls, the author outlines the highly gendered power dynamics inherent in their construction, marketing, and sale. Furthermore, this research utilizes three separate speculative fiction narratives to extrapolate out the social impact of the normalization of these dolls’ use. Through both the ethical theory and literary analysis, this paper concludes that the ethical implications of the sex robot is contingent upon its perceived personhood – a status which hinges on their ability to exhibit interiority and subjectivity

Sex Robots: Negative Impact Towards Society

This paper attempts to discuss how sex robots will negatively impact society by questioning how feminism, pedophilia, and human-robot interactions are involved