Sex robots with 'consent modules' being made for ethical sex robots

The world of sex robots is an interesting one where I've previously reported that sex robots with "coding errors" could strangle, and kill you in the act -- but now let's move into the design of "ethical" sex robots.

These ethical sex robots will have to provide their partner with consent before they have sex, with university researchers from Australia and the Netherlands seeing a future where "consent modules" will be used in sex robots. These consent modules would require the sex robot to give consent before sex.

Anco Peeters of Australia's University of Wollongong and Pim Haselager, an associate professor at The Netherlands' Radboud University recently published an article that talked about a future where "ethical" sex robots were a thing. The research article explains: "We propose that virtue ethics can be used to address ethical issues central to discussions about sex robots. In particular, we argue virtue ethics is well equipped to focus on the implications of sex robots for human moral character. Our evaluation develops in four steps".

The article continues: "First, we present virtue ethics as a suitable framework for the evaluation of human-robot relationships. Second, we show the advantages of our virtue ethical account of sex robots by comparing it to current instrumentalist approaches, showing how the former better captures the reciprocal interaction between robots and their users. Third, we examine how a virtue ethical analysis of intimate human-robot relationships could inspire the design of robots that support the cultivation of virtues. We suggest that a sex robot which is equipped with a consent-module could support the cultivation of compassion when used in supervised, therapeutic scenarios. Fourth, we discuss the ethical implications of our analysis for user autonomy and responsibility".