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"Would a BDSM Sex Robot Violate Asimov's First Law " Topic


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Tango0108 Oct 2018 9:43 p.m. PST

….of Robotics?

"The sex robot community—the people who make the sex robots, and the people who want to have sex with the sex robots—suffered a blow this past week, when the Houston City Council voted to preemptively ban what would've been the first sex robot "brothel" in the U.S. But even those council members must know that their gesture was futile. Soon the stigma will fade, and Wal-Mart will sell these things in sixty different flavors. Which of course means that, sometime in the future, you'll almost certainly be able to buy a BDSM robot…."
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Amicalement
Armand

Mithmee09 Oct 2018 1:59 p.m. PST

No

Bowman09 Oct 2018 5:32 p.m. PST

So how would you respond to the following comment?:

"You can argue that there's a difference between "pain" and "harm," and that BDSM seeks to cause the former. In that sense, a BDSM robot would not violate the first law of robotics, which specifically mentions harm.

But sex robotics as they exist now are problematic, because we're not yet at the point where a sex robot could see the difference between the two. The most advanced sex robots implemented with artificial intelligence can only remember simple facts about their users. Therefore it could be fair to say the robot wouldn't know any limits, and so would violate Asimov's first law."

Personal logo etotheipi Sponsoring Member of TMP09 Oct 2018 6:59 p.m. PST

robotics as they exist now

robot wouldn't know any limits, and so would violate Asimov's first law.

In rhetoric, this is called the Inconsistency Fallacy – an argument that includes a contradiction in the argument itself. Since the argument is discussing Asimov's laws of robotics, it is inconsistent, thus inappropriate to discuss the laws in terms of current technology, as opposed to the fictional "positronic brain" of Asimov's robot series.

Beyond that, it's based on the false premise that current robots "remember" things. They are controlled by finite state processors, so they don't "remember", "know", or "think". They just process … sometimes in a manner that can be contextualized to appear to be thought.

Within the realm of current technology and the context of BDSM sex play, with the right sensors, algorithms, and standards applied, the operation could be as safe as any industrial application of robots. So definitely incapable of causing harm, but safe within definable tolerances.

Of course, that has nothing to do with Asimov's three laws, just safety standards applied to robotics.

Also, with a single exception (that was the basis of a story), Asimov positronic robots are incapable of understanding emotional concepts, and thus would probably not understand the difference between "pain" and "harm" or the complex psychological environment of BDSM play. They would likely default to a broader definition of harm that did not include BDSM play as non-harm.

Cyrus the Great10 Oct 2018 7:26 a.m. PST

No, that's what your "safe" word is for!

Waco Joe10 Oct 2018 7:45 a.m. PST

asking for friend? wink

Tango0110 Oct 2018 11:44 a.m. PST

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Mr Elmo13 Oct 2018 6:50 a.m. PST

This is a good use of machine learning. The robot, upon hearing the safe word learns your tolerance.

Personal logo etotheipi Sponsoring Member of TMP15 Oct 2018 1:21 p.m. PST

A safe word is not really a good candidate stimulus for machine learning, which requires many data points for supervised training and many, many more for unsupervised training. It would be better handled with supervised heuristic tuning.

Bowman16 Oct 2018 3:38 a.m. PST

Sex Robot Heuristic Tuning Supervisor. Now there's a job description! My local university has the largest robotics department in the country. Maybe I should take a night school course?

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