Great post, upvoted!
- Sex robots could cure over-population by diverting the focus of sex reducing the birth rate.
- Sex robots could liberate people working in the sex industry to being employed to monitor, clean, and repair (endless tech possibilities away from being forced to perform sex acts)
- Using various robot designs might reduce rape and other sexual crimes
- Sex robots could create new fetishes in a seemingly never-ending industry of perversion
I'm sure how much they would enjoy monitoring and maintaining robots, compared to what they usually do. I heard that some European prostitutes complained and shut down the first robot brothel in Europe (stealing business), not sure if that was true. It may reduce rape, but ill be worried about sombody taking advantage of the coffee machine, then demanding a cappuccino when they are done.
That's a fair point I guess it depends if people assume they're losing their jobs they're not going to think they're being "liberated". But people take comfort in steady employment and dislike change so I think it depends on your worldview in order to define the good or bad of the situation. Yeah like should/could a machine have rights types of argument?
Yeah that's what the lady in tue video was eluding to. How do we "treat" machines.
In terms of of the morality of how we treat machines it's really unexplored territory. Asimov's Laws really only cover the machine's behaviour and trying to teach people to see it as anything more than a tool to be used (literally) is going to be pretty difficult. Movies like to imagine what such interaction would look like but when it's done in private I think the results are going to be different to what Hollywood has in mind. But I still think it's a good thing towards combating overpopulation.
There are a few things that are working towards reducing over population. Japan are having a population crisis as the population ages and dies off there is little interest in starting families and having children with the young people for instance. I think you are right, that people will just not bother with having kids and sex robots will exacerbate this. I dont see it as bad or good, just interesting to observe
Japan is just about the only country with a population issue; but, holistically speaking, the entire globe is over populated so Japan might represent a return to a more sustainable mean. Definitely it's neither good nor bad but just a change. More to the point, raising the standard of living generally lowers the birth rate anyway as women become empower and seek employment over families etc. This might just be another element of the wider issue.
We have an aging population here in Australia too. It is just at the early stages. Thats why Over population is not really a concern for me at this stage. Plenty of homosexuals will also not procreate. You're right that a lot of women (and therefore men) will miss the opportunity to procreate due to work comments or economic hardship as well.