In an age where sexual pleasure devices are increasingly becoming mainstream, child sex-robots may be the next thing to hit the market - but only to help pacify pedophiles so that real children are not harmed.
At a recent seminar on robot ethics in California, a panel of tech experts theorized that robots made to look and act like children "could be used for pedophiles the way methadone is use to teat drug addicts," Ron Arkin, director of Georgia Tech's Mobile Robot Lab, said according to Forbes magazine.
For all we know, society may already be on the cusp of inventing pint-size sex robots. In 2002, the Supreme Court made a distinction between "virtual child porn" and the actual thing. Actual child porn is illegal. But virtual child porn, which involves adults or computer generated images that look like minors, is not illegal, Forbes reported.
Experts on the panel at the University of California at Berkeley took it a step further, pointing out that machines for sexual pleasure are nothing new.
"We've had sex toys for as long as mankind, and womankind, have been around," Akin said at last week's seminar, according to Forbes.
But Arkin said he would go along with a plan to develop the child-bots only if they are used for research.
"I only believe it is worth investigating in a controlled way to possibly provide better protection to society from recidivism in sex offenders," Arkin said according to Forbes. "If we can save some children, I think it's a worthwhile project."
Before any such child robot is created, it may be comforting to know that some at the seminar raised concerns about the moral implications of creating them, even if it would be strictly for research purposes.
"We're poised at the cusp of really being surrounded by robots in daily life," Jennifer Urban, a law professor who led the seminar, said according to the New York Daily News.
