https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/06/...d-for-you/
EXCERPT: If season two of Westworld doesn’t have you rethinking sex and violence with androids, researchers are hoping that some hard and fast data will. Science fiction aside, advanced sex robots are currently heating up the market, with several companies now offering more and more life-like artificial partners, mostly ones mimicking women.
Skeptics fear the desirable droids could escalate misogyny and violence against women, ignite deviant urges in pedophiles, or further isolate the sexually frustrated. Sexbot makers, on the other hand, have been pumping their health claims into advertisements, including that the amorous androids could reduce the spread of sexually transmitted disease, aid in sex therapies, and curb deviant desires in pedophiles and other sex offenders.
So far, those claims are “rather specious,” according to health researchers Chantal Cox-George [...] and Susan Bewley [...] In an editorial published Monday in BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health, the pair highlight that there are virtually no studies that help bang out the validity of the many health arguments surging around sexbots—arguments both for and against them.
That data dry-spell doesn’t let doctors off the hook, though, Cox-George and Bewley write. They call for researchers to get busy setting up studies that will nail the answers....
MORE: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/06/...d-for-you/
EXCERPT: If season two of Westworld doesn’t have you rethinking sex and violence with androids, researchers are hoping that some hard and fast data will. Science fiction aside, advanced sex robots are currently heating up the market, with several companies now offering more and more life-like artificial partners, mostly ones mimicking women.
Skeptics fear the desirable droids could escalate misogyny and violence against women, ignite deviant urges in pedophiles, or further isolate the sexually frustrated. Sexbot makers, on the other hand, have been pumping their health claims into advertisements, including that the amorous androids could reduce the spread of sexually transmitted disease, aid in sex therapies, and curb deviant desires in pedophiles and other sex offenders.
So far, those claims are “rather specious,” according to health researchers Chantal Cox-George [...] and Susan Bewley [...] In an editorial published Monday in BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health, the pair highlight that there are virtually no studies that help bang out the validity of the many health arguments surging around sexbots—arguments both for and against them.
That data dry-spell doesn’t let doctors off the hook, though, Cox-George and Bewley write. They call for researchers to get busy setting up studies that will nail the answers....
MORE: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/06/...d-for-you/