Related Experiment Videos
Regulating Child Sex Robots: Restriction or Experimentation?
1School of Law, NUI Galway, Galway, Ireland.
Medical Law Review
|April 3, 2019
Summary
Child sex robots, proposed as a treatment for pedophilia, face regulatory scrutiny. Research suggests this hypothesis may not be testable, warranting extreme caution with this technology.
Area of Science:
- Ethics
- Robotics
- Sociology
Background:
- The concept of using child sex robots as a therapeutic tool for individuals with pedophilic tendencies was proposed by roboticist Ronald Arkin in 2014.
- This proposal has generated significant debate regarding the regulation of such technologies, with legal authorities in the UK and US moving to ban them.
Purpose of the Study:
- To critically examine the regulatory attitudes towards child sex robots.
- To propose a framework for evaluating regulatory options for this technology.
- To assess the viability of using child sex robots as a treatment for pedophilia.
Main Methods:
- Critical analysis of existing regulatory approaches.
- Development of a conceptual framework for regulatory options.
- Evaluation of the testability of Ronald Arkin's hypothesis regarding therapeutic use.
Main Results:
- A framework for considering regulatory options for child sex robots is presented.
- A conditional case for restrictive regulation is established, dependent on the testability of Arkin's hypothesis.
- The hypothesis that child sex robots can treat pedophilic predilections is deemed unlikely to be successfully tested.
Conclusions:
- Proceed with extreme caution regarding the development and regulation of child sex robot technology.
- The therapeutic application of child sex robots for pedophilia lacks a reasonable prospect of successful testing.
- Current regulatory trends toward prohibition may be justified given the unproven nature of the proposed therapeutic benefits.