This essay was the winner in the Graduate Category of the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2017

Written by University of Oxford student, Romy Eskens

On The Permissibility of Consentless Sex With Robots

Recent movies and TV-series, such as Ex Machina and Westworld, have sparked popular interest in sex robots, which are embodied AI systems designed to provide sex for humans. Although for many it may seem absurd to think that humans will ever replace their human bedpartners with artificial machines, the first sexbots have already entered the commercial market. In 2010, TrueCompanion introduced Roxxxy, a sexbot with synthetic skin and an AI system that allows her to interact with her user through speech and affective communication. Another example of sexbots currently for sale are the RealDolls, which are silicone sexbots available in different models and upgradable with insertable faces and body parts. The question I address in this essay is: do humans require consent from sexbots for sexual activity to be permissible?

There are convincing ethical reasons to create sexbots. To begin with, sexbots can replace human sex workers, thereby reducing harmful practices such as sex slavery and sexual abuse.[i] Moreover, they can provide satisfying alternatives for individuals with sexual desires that could harm human beings if brought into practice, such as the desire to have sex with children or to engage in extremely violent or degrading sex. Furthermore, sexbots can provide a solution for individuals who experience difficulty in finding sexual partners, and can provide intimate companionship for those who feel lonely or isolated. Finally, sexbots can satisfy the sexual needs of convicts or soldiers, which is likely to decrease the instances of sexual violence in prison and in the army.

Although Roxxxy and the Real Dolls are still a far cry from the highly sophisticated robots featured in Ex Machina and Westworld, the current acceleration of AI development suggests that it lies within the scope of near future technical possibilities to create interactive sexbots with flesh-like skin, affective computing, highly developed sensory perception, refined language skills, the capacity to learn, and a pre-programmed personality. Such robots will be able to satisfy the sexual needs of their users, as they adapt to the sexual preferences of their users, and base their sexual performance on an amount of data never to be achieved in a single human life. Although sexbots will be programmed to act as if they have qualitative experiences, such as the experience of pleasure when having sex, they will in fact not be sentient. Still, this behavioural characteristic will make it possible for humans to engage in intimate relationships with them, and it is this quality that radically differentiates sexbots from sex toys.

Since sexbots will operate in an open environment, they must enjoy a degree of autonomy. However, it will not be technically possible in the near future, and many experts doubt that it ever will be, to incorporate the capacity for morally autonomous decision-making into the design of robots. For an agent to exercise moral autonomy is for her to act on rules she has imposed on herself, to which end sophisticated intellectual abilities, such as consciousness, reason-responsiveness and future-orientedness, are required. Sexbots will lack these abilities, and their capacity for autonomy will be restricted to decision-making within the action-directing parameters implemented by a programmer.

Since sexbots are thus bound to act within the parameters set by programmers, and they are programmed to provide sex for humans, they cannot choose to have sex. This means that they cannot agree with, or consent to, sexual relationships with their users. But there is a general agreement in both common sense morality and ethical theory that sexual activity that takes place without consent from one of the parties involved is morally wrong, which is also reflected in the juridical characterization of rape as sex without consent. Hence, it seems to follow that sexual relationships between humans and sexbots are impermissible, and that robots are wronged by carrying out the acts they are designed to perform.

Broadly stated, someone who agrees to have sex, either explicitly by speech, or implicitly by commencing sexual activity or performing a sexual act, consents to the act. On the basis of this definition, sexual activity appears wrong if it is forced on an individual who withheld consent, or if an individual has neither explicitly nor implicitly given consent to having sex, such as is the case when someone is unconscious. However, this broad definition leads to the implausible conclusion that cases in which an individual agrees to have sex under pressure, or is coerced to perform a sexual act, are cases in which consent has been given. In addition, incompetent decision-makers, such as persons who are under high influence of alcohol or drugs, as well as children and severely cognitively impaired individuals, sometimes agree to have sex. Yet these individuals lack the capacities for moral autonomy and rational deliberation, which are necessary for acquiring an understanding of the relevant facts, implications and consequences of this act, on the basis of which they can choose to withhold or give consent. Therefore, a narrower definition of sex without consent, defined as sexual activity that includes at least one individual who has not expressed informed and voluntary consent, better fits our moral judgments.

Now, I imagine few are willing to accept the conclusion that it is morally wrong to engage in sexual relationships with robots, whereas most do think that sexual activity is wrong if consent from a human being is lacking. In order to justify this intuition, it must be demonstrated that there is some morally significant difference between consentless sex between humans on the one hand, and consentless sex between humans and robots on the other hand.

One way to do this is to point out that the wrongness of consentless sex depends on membership of the human species. But to ascribe such moral weight to the humanity of the parties involved is not only in itself questionable, it also leads to the implausible conclusion that all sexual activity with non-human animals is morally permissible. To avoid this conclusion, the argument can be modified such that the apparent moral inconsistency between consentless sex with humans and non-human animals on the one hand, and consentless sex with robots on the other hand, is explained by the fact that the former are organic and the latter artificial. However, it seems to follow from the claim that the distinction between organic and artificial is morally relevant for the permissibility of consentless sex that the incorporation of artificial body parts into a human body, such as prostheses or 3D-printed organs, would diminish the moral standing of this human being. Moreover, if the appeal to the distinction between organic and artificial bodies is meant to indicate a morally significant difference between living and lifeless entities, life as such is ascribed intrinsic value, which has the counterintuitive implication that even the lives of bacteria must have such value.

Maybe the morally significant difference between sex without consent from a human being or non-human animal, and sex without consent from a robot, is that it harms the former but not the latter. An act harms a person if this person’s wellbeing decreases as a consequence of this act. Harm often results from the experience of pain, but this is not necessarily the case, as is clear from the fact that some individuals have a preference for violent sex, in which they engage voluntarily and wilfully. However, if an individual undergoes sexual activity that involves pain without having given consent, the experience of pain will harm this individual. Another way in which consentless sex is often harmful for humans is by violating the authority an individual has over her body and denying her autonomous will.

Since sexbots lack both qualitative experiences and moral autonomy, and they seem not to have any claim of authority over their bodies, it is true that they cannot be harmed by consentless sex. However, it does not follow from the fact that sex without consent is harmless that it is therefore permissible. For one thing, painless sexual activity with a non-human animal that lacks a claim of authority over its body, as well as an autonomous will, is morally wrong, even though the animal is not harmed by the activity. Similarly, instances of painless sexual activity that involve severely cognitively and physically impaired individuals, who lack authority over their body, as well as an autonomous will, do not harm these individuals, yet such activity is seriously wrong.

A more plausible argument to support the intuition that there is a moral inconsistency between consentless sex with humans and non-human animals on the one hand, and consentless sex with robots on the other hand, would be that in contrast to most non-human animals and human beings who have withheld consent, or are incapable of expressing consent, robots are devoid of the capacities necessary to consent. That is, their capacities are not just rudimentary, distorted, or underdeveloped, as is true of non-human animals, children and severely cognitively impaired individuals, but absent in actuality as well as in potentiality. However, since the moral permissibility of a sexual act depends on whether or not the parties involved are capable of withholding or giving consent, differences in cognitive makeup between different entities that fail to meet this threshold appear to be irrelevant.

Nevertheless, the fact that robots do not have the intellectual capacities necessary to consent does become morally significant if it is indicative of moral status. Moral status seems to derive from an entity’s sentience and sapience, which come in degrees and depend on an entity’s inherent features. Sentience is normally defined as the capacity to have qualitative experiences, such as pleasure and pain, and sapience is taken to be the capacity to enjoy a degree of psychological continuity, which originates from certain sophisticated cognitive phenomena such as self-awareness, rationality, and moral autonomy.[ii] Since sexbots of the near future will lack both qualitative experiences and the sophisticated cognitive capacities necessary for sapience, it follows that they will be devoid of moral status.

To say that sexbots will lack moral status is to say that they do not matter morally for their own sake, and that they are not a factor to be considered in moral deliberation. If sexbots do not matter morally for their own sake, they are not the kind of entities that we require consent from in order to do things to them. By contrast, individuals who are under high influence of alcohol or drugs, as well as severely cognitively impaired individuals, children, and non-human animals, do have moral status by virtue of their being sentient and, to different degrees, sapient. Because they have moral status, they are entities that we require consent from in order to engage in morally permissible sexual activity. Since they are in fact incapable of withholding or giving consent, we must refrain from having sex with them. In conclusion, then, the morally significant difference between consentless sex with humans and non-human animals on the one hand, and robots on the other hand, is that we require consent from humans and non-human animals but not from robots, because the former have moral status and the latter do not.

It must be kept in mind that this conclusion depends on the level of technological sophistication likely to be implemented into the design of near future sexbots. If robots acquire some degree of sentience or sapience in the more distant future, although not many scientists working on artificial intelligence and robotics think this a plausible scenario, they would in fact become entities that count morally in their own right. That is, if robots become sentient or sapient, they would constitute a new category of entities with moral status to be considered in moral deliberation, alongside the existing categories of human and non-human animals. In such a future situation, certain ways in which robots have been designed and used – including the design and use of sexbots – may on reflection appear to be seriously wrong.

[i] David Levy, Love + Sex With Robots, (London: Duckworth, 2009).

[ii] The view that moral status somehow depends on sentience and sapience is defended, amongst others, by Shelly Kagan, ‘What’s Wrong With Speciesism?’ in Journal of Applied Philosophy 33 (2016), 1-21, Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems At the Margins of Life, (Oxford: OUP, 2002) and Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, (Cambridge: CUP, 1993). It should be noted, however, that these authors disagree strongly on issues such as hierarchy in moral status and the justifiability of speciesism.