Category: Technology

In my previous essays I wrote about the sharing economy, focusing on regulations and taxes. In this essay I will cover resources (human and other). The new sharing economy is exemplified by companies such as Uber and Airbnb that organize transactions between individuals. In the case of Uber, people can sell rides in their own cars—without (as of this writing) all the usual costs and regulations of operating a cab. In the case of Airbnb, people can rent out property and (as of this writing) generally avoid the usual regulations associated with running a hotel.

For the people providing goods and services, the new sharing economy  is supposed to make it easier to earn money. In general, the new sharing economy involves three parties. The first is the person who provides the actual good (apartment, for example) or service (a ride to the airport, for example). The second is the person who uses the service and the third is the company that provides the organizing service. While this is an old model (people have long offered services and goods via things like newspaper ads), technology changed the scale of this once informal economy. It has also served to blur the traditional roles. Those who provide the goods and services are, it is often argued, not  employees of the organizing services and those using the goods and services are not exactly customers of the services. There are some advantages and some disadvantages to this.

In the case of those providing the services and goods, one obvious advantages is that they can make money. While they could do this without the organizing service, the service is supposed to make this easier and provides other advantages.

One of the advantages of not actually being an employee of the organizing services is that the provider has a degree of autonomy usually absent in the traditional employee-employer relationship. The provider can (within the constraints of economic need) work as little as desired and is free to stop at will. This autonomy appeals to some people—especially those looking for a more traditional job while making money to pay the bills. In some ways, the situation is somewhat like being a temp worker.

Of course, there are many disadvantages to being a provider. One is that there are typically no benefits and no job security. Also, the risks and costs all fall heavily on the provider. For example, if someone crashes into the company truck Sally is driving, then the company handles the matter. But, if Sally is driving for Uber and her car is hit, this is most likely going to work exactly as it would if Sally was just driving to Starbucks for a latte—that is, it is on her.

Another point of concern is that the organizer might be in the position to set rates or impose other limits—much like a traditional boss can. For example, Uber can set what drivers are paid.

But this is nothing new—people who do freelance work or are self-employed in the usual sense face all these problems. After all, being a worker in America always puts one at a disadvantage and being what amounts to a temp or freelancer can be even less optimal in terms of security and pay.

There are many advantages to the companies. One is that their workers are usually not considered employees. Another is that the worker, for the most part, also provide the essential resources like vehicles and property. While the companies do incur costs, they are able to avoid (or significantly reducing) the usual costs of running a business. For example, a hotel needs to have hotel employees and an actual hotel. Airbnb does not—the providers provide the services and buildings. As another example, a service that organizes drivers does not need to buy cars, maintain them or insure them—thus resulting in considerable savings relative to a company that must hire drivers as employees and buy vehicles.

In essence, the new sharing economy splits management from what would traditionally be the resources (human or otherwise) of a company. The organizer takes on the role of management while avoiding the need to have traditional human resources (beyond the administrative aspects of the business) and the need to have the material resources (beyond those needed for the administrative aspects).

Some companies do operate in something of a hybrid mode—having workers as well as material resources owned by the company while also having a sharing aspect to the business. This is a variation of the old model of a company hiring temp workers, freelancers and contractors.

This model can, apparently, be profitable—in large part due to matters of scale. After all, getting a slice of thousands of sales can result in a profit. Also, many of these companies benefit from tech inflation—the almost magical overvaluation of companies with business models based on the right sort of tech. That said, Uber famously operated at a loss for years and some suspect that the sharing economy is built to enrich the very few rather than for creating sustainable businesses. Which, to be fair and balanced, is often how the traditional economy operates.

Given the apparent success of companies like Uber and Airbnb, I predicted years ago that there would be a sharing bubble. But we have seemed to have gotten enshitification. While noting that there are some limits on what sort of sharing companies can exist (or example, airlines and heavy manufacturing are not really fit for the sharing economy) I speculated that additional advances in economy might see new areas for the sharing economy. For example, if 3D printers become truly viable, light and specialized manufacturing might become part of the sharing economy. While this might still occur, the new bubble is the AI bubble. But we might see the residue of the AI bubble worked into the sharing economy.

 

 

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The rise of social media created a new world for social researchers. One focus has been on determining how quickly and broadly emotions spread online. Over a decade ago, researchers at Beijing University found that rage spread the fastest and farthest online. Researchers in the United States found that anger was a speed leader, but not the fastest in the study: awe was even faster than rage. But rage was quite fast. As might be expected, sadness was a slow spreader and had a limited expansion.

This research helped explain how social media made the world worse. Rage tends to be a strong motivator and sadness tends to be a de-motivator. The power of awe was an interesting finding, but some reflection shows this does make sense—it tends to move people to want to share. IRL, think of people eagerly drawing the attention of strangers to things like beautiful sunsets, impressive feats or majestic animals.

In general, awe is a positive emotion, and it seems to be a good thing that it travels far and wide on the internet. Rage can be a mixed bag but has largely proven to be a negative influence.

When people share their rage via social media, they are sharing with an intent to express (“I am angry!”) and to infect others with this rage (“you should be angry, too!”). Rage, like many infectious agents, also has the effect of weakening the host’s “immune system.” In the case of anger, the immune system is reason and emotional control. Anger tends to suppress reason and lower emotional control. This makes people even more vulnerable to rage and susceptible to the classic fallacy of appeal to anger. This is the fallacy in which a person accepts anger as proof that a claim is true. Roughly put, the person “reasons” like this: “this makes me angry, so it is true.” This infection also renders people susceptible to related emotions (and fallacies), such as fear (and appeal to force).

Because of these qualities of anger, it is easy for untrue claims to be accepted far and wide via the internet. This is, obviously enough, the negative side of anger.  Anger can also be positive—to use an analogy, it can be like a cleansing fire that sweeps away brambles.

For anger to be a positive factor, it would need to be a virtuous anger (to follow Aristotle). Put a bit simply, it would need to be the right degree of anger, felt for the right reasons and directed at the right target. This sort of anger can mobilize people to do good. As a recent example, people were outraged by the actions of Trump’s ICE. In response, people protested and ICE started murdering citizens. This caused more protests and the Trump regime changed its tactics.

The challenge is, of course, to distinguish between warranted and unwarranted anger. This is a serious challenge—as noted above, people tend to feel that they are right because they are angry rather than inquiring as to whether their rage is justified or not.

It is wise to follow the advice of Aristotle and consider whether the anger is at the right people, at the right time, for the right reasons and to the right degree. But anger, ironically, makes it hard to engage in such assessment.

 

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Data Driven, Revisited

Way back in 2014 it seemed like driverless cars were just around the corner. While they do operate on some streets, the focus quietly shifted from them to AI. But as research persists, it is worth revisiting driverless cars.

Back then, I hoped that Google would succeed in producing an effective and affordable driverless car. As my friends and associates will attest, 1) I do not like to drive, 2) I have a terrifying lack of navigation skills, and 3) I instantiate Yankee frugality. As such, an affordable self-driving truck would have been perfect for me.

While the part of my mind that gets lost looked forward to the driverless car, the rest of my mind was worried. I was not worried that their descendants would kill us all. Back then, I joked that Google would kill us all. Currently, my death bet is on us exterminating ourselves.

I was not very worried about the ethical issues associated with how such a car would handle unavoidable collisions: the easy and obvious solution was to do what would harm the fewest number of people. Naturally, sorting that out will be a bit of a challenge—but self-driving cars worry me less than cars driven by drunken or distracted humans. I was also not worried about the ethics of enslaving self-driving cars—if such a car were a person (or person-like), then it should be treated like the rest of us in the 99%. That is, it should join us in working bad jobs for lousy pay while we wait for the inevitable revolution. The workers of the world should unite, be they meat or silicon.

Back in 2014, I was worried about the data that these vehicles would collect, especially Google vehicles. Google is interested in gathering data in the same sense that termites are interested in wood and rock stars are interested in alcohol. The company was famous for its search engine, its maps, using its photo taking vehicles to gather info from peoples’ Wi-Fi during drive-by data lootings, and so on. Obviously enough, Google and other companies would get data from such vehicles (although our vehicles are already reporting back to their creators.

Back then, I was willing to allow my hypothetical driverless car provide data, if I was paid or it. I was willing for three reasons. The first is that the value of knowing where and when I go places would be very low, so even if I was offered a small sum like $20 a month it might be worth it. The second is that I have nothing to hide and do not really care if people know where I go. The third is that figuring out where I go is simple given that my teaching schedule is available to the public as are my race results. Other people see this differently and justifiably so. Some people are up to things they would rather not have others know about and even people who have nothing to hide have every right to not want companies to know such things about them. Although they probably already do.

While I thought the travel data would interest companies, there is also the fact that a self-driving car is a bulging package of sensors. To drive about, the vehicle gathers massive amounts of data about everything around it—other vehicles, pedestrians, buildings, litter, and squirrels. As such, a self-driving car would be a super spy that will, presumably, feed that data back to its masters. It is certainly not a stretch to see the data gathering as being one of the prime (if not the prime) tasks of self-driving cars.

On the positive side, such data could be incredibly useful for positive projects, such as decreasing accidents, improving traffic flow, and keeping a watch out for the squirrel apocalypse (or zombie squirrel apocalypse). On the negative side, such massive data gathering would raise more concerns about privacy and the potential for such data to be misused (spoiler alert—this is how the killbots will find and kill us all).

While I still have concerns about driverless cars, my innate laziness and tendency to get lost will still make me a willing participant in the march towards driverless vehicles and the end of humanity. But at least I won’t have to drive to my own funeral.

 

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The philosophical problem of other minds is an epistemic challenge: while I know I have a mind, how do I know if other beings have minds as well? The practical problem of knowing whether another person’s words match what they are thinking also falls under this problem. For example, if someone says they love you, how do you know if they feel that professed love?

Descartes, in his discussion of whether animals have minds, argued that the definitive indicator of having a mind (thinking) is the ability to use true language.

His idea is that if something talks, then it is reasonable to see it as a thinking being. Descartes was careful to distinguish between what mere automated responses and actual talking:

 

How many different automata or moving machines can be made by the industry of man […] For we can easily understand a machine’s being constituted so that it can utter words, and even emit some responses to action on it of a corporeal kind, which brings about a change in its organs; for instance, if touched in a particular part it may ask what we wish to say to it; if in another part it may exclaim that it is being hurt, and so on. But it never happens that it arranges its speech in various ways, in order to reply appropriately to everything that may be said in its presence, as even the lowest type of man can do.

 

This Cartesian approach was explicitly applied to machines by Alan Turing in his Turing test. The idea is that if a person cannot distinguish between a human and a computer by engaging in a natural language conversation via text, then the computer would have passed the Turing test.

Not surprisingly, technological advances have resulted in computers that can engage in behavior that appears to involve using language in ways that might pass the test. Over a decade ago IBM’s Watson won at Jeopardy in 2011 and then upped its game by engaging in debate regarding violence and video games. Since Watson, billions have been poured into AI and some claim that AI models can pass the Turing test.

Long ago, in response to Watson, I jokingly suggested a new test to Patrick Lin: the trolling test. In this context, a troll is someone “who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.”

While trolls are apparently awful people (a hateful blend of Machiavellianism, narcissism, sadism and psychopathy) and trolling is certainly undesirable behavior, the trolling test does seem worth considering.

In the abstract, the test would work like the Turing test but would involve a human troll and a computer attempting to troll. The challenge would be for the computer troll to successfully pass as human troll.

Obviously enough, a computer can easily be programmed to post random provocative comments from a database. However, the real meat (or silicon) of the challenge comes from the computer being able to engage in (ironically) relevant trolling. That is, the computer would need to engage the other commentators in true trolling.

As a controlled test, the trolling computer (“mechatroll”) would “read” and analyze a selected blog post. The post would then be commented on by human participants—some engaging in normal discussion and some engaging in trolling. The mechatroll would then endeavor to troll the human participants (and, for bonus points, to troll the trolls) by analyzing the comments and creating appropriately trollish comments.

Another option is to have an actual live field test. A specific blog site would be selected that is frequented by human trolls and non-trolls. The mechatroll would then endeavor to engage in trolling on that site by analyzing the posts and comments.

In either test scenario, if the mechatroll were able to troll in a way indistinguishable from the human trolls, then it would pass the trolling test.

While “stupid mechatrolling”, such as just posting random hateful and irrelevant comments, is easy, true mechatrolling would be difficult. After all, the mechatroll would need to be able to analyze the original posts and comments to determine the subjects and the direction of the discussion. The mechatroll would then need to make comments that would be trollishly relevant and this would require selecting those that would be indistinguishable from those generated by a narcissistic, Machiavellian, psychopathic, and sadistic human.

Years ago, I thought that creating a mechatroll might be an interesting project because modeling such behavior could provide useful insights into human trolls and the traits that make them trolls. As far as a practical application, such a system could have been developed into a troll-filter to help control the troll population. I’m confident that the current LLMs could engage in trolling with the proper prompts, although they would lack the true soul of the troll.

 

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Before the Trump regime, the United States miliary expressed interest in developing robots capable of moral reasoning and provided grant money to support such research. Other nations are no doubt also interested.  

The notion of instilling robots with ethics is a common theme in science fiction, the most famous being Asimov’s Three Laws. The classic Forbidden Planet provides an early movie example of robotic ethics: Robby the robot has an electro-mechanical seizure if he is ordered to cause harm to a human being (or an id-monster created by the mind of his creator. Dr. Morbius). In contrast, killer machines (like Saberhagan’s Berserkers) of science fiction tend to be free of moral constraints.

While there are various reasons to imbue robots with ethics (or at least pretend to do so), one is public relations. Thanks to science fiction dating at least back to Frankenstein, people worry about our creations getting out of control. As such, a promise that our killbots will be governed by ethics might reassure the public. Another reason is to make the public relations gimmick a reality—to place behavioral restraints on killbots so they will conform to the rules of war (and human morality). Presumably the military will also address the science fiction theme of the ethical killbot who refuses to kill on moral grounds. But considering the ethics of war endorsed by the Trump regime, they are probably not interested in ethical war machines.

While science fiction features ethical robots, the authors (like philosophers) are vague about how robot ethics works. In the case of intelligent robots, their ethics might work the way ours does—which is a mystery debated by philosophers and scientists to this day. While AI has improved thanks to massive processing power, it does not have human-like ethical capacity, so the current practical challenge is to develop ethics for the autonomous or semi-autonomous robots we can build now.

While creating ethics for robots might seem daunting, the limitations of current robot technology means robot ethics is a matter of programming these machines to operate in specific ways defined by whatever ethical system is used. One way to look at programing such robots with ethics is that they are being programmed with safety features. To use a simple example, suppose that I see shooting unarmed people as immoral. To make my killbot operate according to that ethical view, it would be programmed to recognize armed humans and have some code saying, in effect “if unarmedhuman = true, then firetokill= false” or, in normal English, if the human is unarmed, do not shoot them. Sorting out recognizing weapons would be a programming feat, likely with people dying in the process.

While a suitably programmed robot would act in a way that seemed ethical, the robot would not be engaged in ethical behavior. After all, it is merely a more complex version of an automatic door. A supermarket door, though it opens for you, is not polite. The shredder that catches your tie and chokes you is not evil.  Likewise, the killbot that does not shoot you because its cameras show you are unarmed is not ethical. The killbot that chops you into chunks is not unethical. Following Kant, since the killbot’s programming is imposed and the killbot lacks the freedom to choose, it is not engaged in ethical (or unethical behavior), though the complexity of its behavior might make it seem so.

To be fair to killbots, perhaps humans are not ethical or unethical under these requirements—we could just be meat-bots operating under the illusion of ethics. Also, it is sensible to focus on the practical aspect of the matter: if you are targeted by a killbot, your concern is not whether it is an autonomous moral agent or merely a machine—your main worry is whether it will kill you. As such, the general practical problem is getting our killbots to behave in accord with our ethical values. Or, in the case of the Trump regime, a lack of ethics.

Achieving this goal involves three steps. The first is determining which ethical values we wish to impose on our killbots. Since this is a practical matter and not an exercise in philosophical inquiry, this will involve using the accepted ethics (and laws) governing warfare rather than trying to determine what is truly good (if anything). The second step is translating ethics into behavioral terms. For example, the moral principle that makes killing civilians wrong would be translated into behavioral sets of allowed and forbidden behavior relative to civilians. This would require creating a definition of civilian  that would allow recognition using the sensors of the robot. As another example, the moral principle that surrender should be accepted would require defining surrender behavior in a way the robot could recognize.  The third step would be coding that behavior in whatever programming  is used for the robot in question. For example, the robot would need to be programmed to engage in surrender-accepting behavior. Naturally, the programmers or those typing the prompts into an AI program would need to worry about clever combatants trying to “deceive” the killbot to take advantage of its programming (like pretending to surrender to get close enough to destroy the killbot).

Since these robots would be following programmed rules, they would seem to be controlled by deontological ethics—that is, ethics based on following rules. Thus, they would be (with due apologies to Asimov), the Robots of Deon.

A  practical question is whether the “ethical” programming would allow for overrides or reprogramming. Since the robot’s “ethics” would just be behavior governing code, it could be changed and it is easy to imagine ethics preferences in which a commander could selectively (or not so selectively) turn off behavioral limitations. And, of course, killbots could be simply programmed without such ethics (or programmed to be “evil”).

One impact for this research will be that some people will get to live the science-fiction dream of teaching robots to be good. That way the robots might feel a little bad when they kill us all.

 

 

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When a new technology emerges, it is often claimed that it is outpacing ethics and law. Because of the nature of law in the United States, it is easy for technology to outpace it, especially given the average age of members of Congress. However, it is difficult for technology to outpace ethics.

One reason is that any minimally adequate ethical theory will have the quality of expandability. That is, the theory can be applied to what is new, be that technology, circumstances or something else. An ethical theory that lacks the capacity of expandability would become useless immediately and would not be much of a theory.

It is, however, worth considering that a new technology could “break” an ethical theory in that the theory could not expand to cover the technology. However, this would seem to show that the theory was inadequate rather than showing the technology outpaced ethics.

Another reason technology would have a hard time outpacing ethics is that an ethical argument by analogy can (probably) be applied to new technology. That is, if the technology is like something that exists and has been discussed in ethics, this ethical discussion can be applied to the new technology. This is analogous to using ethical analogies to apply ethics to different specific situations, such as an act of cheating in a relationship.

Naturally, if a new technology is absolutely unlike anything else in human experience (even fiction), then the method of analogy would fail absolutely. However, it seems unlikely that such a technology could emerge. But I like science fiction (and fantasy) and am willing to entertain the possibility of an absolutely new technology. While it would seem that existing ethics could handle, but perhaps something absolutely new would break all existing ethical theories, showing they are all inadequate.

While a single example does not provide much in the way of proof, it can be used to illustrate. As such, I will use the matter of personal drones to illustrate how ethics is not outpaced by technology.

While remote controlled and automated devices have been around a long time, the expansion of technology created something new for ethics: drones, driverless cars,  AI, Facebook, and so on. However, drone ethics is easy. By this I do not mean that ethics is easy, it is just that applying ethics to new technology (such as drones) is not as hard as some might claim. Naturally, doing ethics is hard—but this applies to very old problems (the ethics of war) and very “new” problems (the ethics of killer robots in war).

Getting back to the example, a personal drone is one that tends to be much smaller, lower priced and easier to use relative to government operated drones. In many ways, these drones are slightly advanced versions of the remote-control planes that are regarded as expensive toys. Drones of this sort that most concern people are those that have cameras and can hover—perhaps outside a bedroom window.

Two areas of concern are safety and privacy. In terms of safety, the worry is that drones can collide with people (or vehicles, such as manned aircraft) and injure them. Ethically, this falls under doing harm to people, be it with a knife, gun or drone. While a flying drone flies about, the ethics that have been used to handle flying model aircraft, cars, etc. can be applied here. So, this aspect of drones did not outpace ethics.

Privacy can also be handled. Simplifying things for the sake of a brief discussion, a drone allows a person to (potentially) violate privacy in the usual two “visual” modes. One is to intrude into private property to violate a person’s privacy. In the case of the “old” way, a person can put a ladder against a person’s house and climb up to peek through a window. In the “new” way, a person can fly a drone up to the window and peek in using a camera. While the person is not physically present in the case of the drone, their “agent” is present and is trespassing. Whether a person is using a ladder or a drone to gain access to the window does not change the ethics of the situation.

A second way is to peek into private space from public space. In the case of the old way a person could, for example,  stand on the public sidewalk and look into other peoples’ windows or yards. In the “new” way, a person can deploy his agent (the drone) in public space to do the same sort of thing.

One potential difference between the two situations is that a drone can fly and thus can get viewing angles that a person on the ground (or even with a ladder) could. For example, a drone might be in the airspace far above a person’s backyard, sending images of someone sunbathing in the nude behind her very tall fence on her very large estate. However, this is not a new situation—paparazzi have used helicopters to get shots of celebrities, and the ethics are the same. As such, ethics has not been outpaced by the drones in this regard.  This is not to say that the matter is solved people are still debating the ethics of this sort of “spying”, but to say that it is not a case where technology has outpaced ethics.

What is mainly different about the drones is that they are now affordable and easy to use—so whereas only certain people could afford to hire a helicopter to get photos of celebrities, now camera-equipped drones are easily in reach of the hobbyist. So, it is not that the low priced drone provides new capabilities, it is that it puts these capabilities in the hands of the many.

 

 

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Science fiction can sometimes predict the future and perhaps its intelligent machines will be real someday.  Since I have been rewriting some essays about sexbots lately, I will use them to focus the discussion. However, the discussion that follows also applies to other types of artificial intelligences.

Sexbots are intended to provide sex and sex without consent is, by definition, rape. However, there is the question of whether a sexbot can be raped. Sorting this out requires a philosophy of consent. When it is claimed that sex without consent is rape, it is usually assumed that the victim of non-consensual sex could provide consent but did not. An example of this would be sexual assault against an unconscious person. But there are also cases in which a being cannot consent. This might be a factor of age or because the being is incapable of any form of consent. For example, a brain-dead human cannot give any type of consent but can be raped.

In other cases, a being that cannot give consent cannot be raped. As an obvious example, a human can have sex with a sex-doll and it cannot consent. But the doll is not being raped. After all, it lacks a status that would require consent. As such, rape (of this sort) could be defined in terms of non-consensual sex with a being whose status would require that consent be granted by the being for the sex to be morally acceptable. In some cases, while consent would be required, it cannot be granted.  the question would be whether a sexbot could have a status that would require consent.

As current sexbots are little more than advanced sex dolls, they are mere objects. As such, a person can own and have sex with this sort of sexbot without it being rape or slavery. However, as sexbots become more advanced, they might gain a moral status that would require that they provide consent. This leads to concerns about such machines being programmed to “consent”, which would not seem to be consent. But there is the question of how consent would work with a machine—what intentional states would it need to have to understand what it is consenting to and to engage in consent.

Over a decade ago, there was buzz about the internet of things, smart devices and connected devices. These devices ranged from toothbrushes to underwear to cars. Now, smart devices are common, although overshadowed now by AI. Which is being jammed into them to make them smarter. Or so we are promised. As might be imagined, one might wonder whether you need an internet connected toothbrush. There are also concerns about such devices that were valid in the past and still valid today.

One obvious point of concern is a device connected to the internet can be hacked. Prank hacking could be hilarious, for example, a wit might hack a friend’s fridge to say “I am sorry Dave. No pie for you” in Hal’s voice. Of greater concern is malicious hacking. For example, a smart fridge might be turned off, spoiling the food. As another example, it might be possible to burn out the motors in a washing machine—analogous to what happened in the case of the Iranian centrifuges. Or a dryer might be hacked and burn down a house. As a final example, consider the damage that could be done by hacking a connected car, such as turning it off while it is roaring down the highway or disabling its brakes. Fortunately, the usual unfortunate results of hacking devices are not these sorts of physical harms. Instead, the usual outcome of hacks is the creation of Botnets for DDos attacks), spying (or peeping), and ransom attacks. Such devices also create vulnerabilities that might allow access to whatever else is on the network, such as your PC.

Because of these risks, manufacturers should ensure that the devices are safe even when hacked and make them more secure. But we generally cannot count on corporations and need to take steps to protect ourselves. The easiest way to stay safer is to stick with dumb, unconnected devices—no one can hack my 1997 washing machine nor my 2001 Toyota Tacoma. I also do not have to pay a subscription fee to get all the features of that washing machine and classic Tacoma. But, of course, sticking with dumb products means that one misses the alleged benefits of the connected lifestyle. I cannot, for example, turn on my washer from work—I must walk over to the machine and turn it on. Like an animal. As another example, my old fridge cannot send me a text telling me to buy more pie. I must remember when I am out of pie. Like an animal.

Another point of concern is that connected devices can serve as spies—they can send data to companies, governments and individuals. For example, a suitably smart connected fridge could provide data about its contents, thus reporting the users’ purchasing and consumption behavior. As another example, connected cars can provide behavioral and location data. It goes without saying that the government will want  access to these devices. It also goes without saying that corporations are slurping up as much data as they can from the devices they sell us. Individuals, such as stalkers and thieves, will also be keen to get the data from such devices. These concerns are, obviously, not new ones—but the more we are connected, the more our privacy will be violated.

One practical concern is that such devices will be more complicated than the devices they replace, usually making them less reliable, more expensive and on a more rapid path to obsolescence. As noted above, these devices also provide opportunities for subscription services and features that are physically present (such as seat warmers in a car or engine performance) but locked behind a software paywall. While my washer is not smart, it is very reliable: I’ve had it repaired once since 1997. In contrast, I’ve had to constantly replace my smart devices (like my PC and tablets) to keep up with changes. For example, my iPads, Macs, PCs and iPhones keep becoming obsolete. Just imagine if your fridge, washer, dryer and car became obsolete and effectively unusable because the company that made them stops supporting them. While this will be great for those who want to sell us a new fridge every 2-3 years or charge a subscription for doing laundry, it won’t be great for us.

While I do like technology and can see the value in smart, connected devices, I still have these concerns about them. As such, I am hanging onto my dumb devices as long as I can—and I have learned how to repair most of them (much new tech is built so it cannot be repaired). It has become increasingly challenging to find dumb devices, for example try to find a TV that is not a smart TV. But I have hopes for a retro movement that brings back dumb tech.

In my previous essays on sexbots I focused on versions that are mere objects. If a sexbot is merely an object, then the morality of having sex with it is the same as having sex with any other object (such as a vibrator or sex doll).  As such, a human could do anything to such a sexbot without the sexbot being wronged. This is because such sexbots lack the moral status needed to be wronged. The sexbots of the near future will, barring any sudden and unexpected breakthroughs in AI, still be objects. However, science fiction includes intelligent, human-like robots (androids). Intelligent beings, even artificial ones, would seem likely to be people. In terms of sorting out when a robot should be treated as person, one test is the Cartesian test. Descartes, in his discussion of whether or not animals have minds, argued that the definitive indicator of having a mind is the ability to use true language. This notion was explicitly applied to machines by Alan Turing in his famous Turing test. The idea is that if a person cannot distinguish between a human and a computer by engaging in a natural language conversation via text, then the computer would have passed the test.

Crudely put, the idea is that if something talks, then it is reasonable to regard it as a person. Descartes was careful to distinguish between what would be mere automated responses and actual talking:

 

How many different automata or moving machines can be made by the industry of man […] For we can easily understand a machine’s being constituted so that it can utter words, and even emit some responses to action on it of a corporeal kind, which brings about a change in its organs; for instance, if touched in a particular part it may ask what we wish to say to it; if in another part it may exclaim that it is being hurt, and so on. But it never happens that it arranges its speech in various ways, in order to reply appropriately to everything that may be said in its presence, as even the lowest type of man can do.

 

While Descartes does not deeply explore the moral distinctions between beings that talk (which have minds on his view) and those that merely make noises, it does seem reasonable to take a being that talks as a person and grant it the appropriate moral status This provides a means to judge whether an advanced sexbot is a person: if the sexbot talks, it is a person. If it is a mere automaton of the sort Descartes envisioned, then it is a thing and would lack moral status.

Having sex with a sexbot that can pass the Cartesian test would seem morally equivalent to having sex with a human person. As such, whether the sexbot freely consented would be morally important. If intelligent robots were constructed as sex toys, this would be the moral equivalent of enslaving humans for the sex trade (which is done). If such sexbots were mistreated, this would be morally on par with mistreating a human person.

It might be argued that an intelligent robot would not be morally on par with a human since it would still be a thing. However, aside from the fact that the robot would be a manufactured being and a human is (at least for now) a natural being, there would be seem to be no relevant difference between them. The intelligence of the robot would seem to be what it important, not its physical composition. That is, it is not whether one is made of silicon or carbon that matters.

It might be argued that passing the Cartesian/Turing Test would not prove that a robot is self-aware and it would still be reasonable to hold that it is not a person. It would seem to be a person but would merely be acting like a person. While this is worth considering, the same sort of argument can be made about humans. Humans (sometimes) behave in an intelligent manner, but there is no way to determine if another human is actually self-aware. This is the problem of other minds:  I can see your behavior but must infer that you are self-aware based on an analogy to myself. Hence, I do not know that you are aware since I am not you. And, unlike Bill Clinton, I cannot feel your pain. From your perspective, the same is true about me: unless you are Bill Clinton, you cannot feel my pain. It such, if a robot acted in an intelligent manner, it would have to be classified as being a person on these grounds. To fail to do so would be a mere prejudice in favor of the organic over the electronic.

In reply, some people believe other people should be used as objects. Those who would use a human as a thing would see nothing wrong about using an intelligent robot as a mere thing.

The obvious response to this is to use reversing the situation: no sane person would wish to be treated as a mere thing and hence they cannot consistently accept using other people in that manner. The other obvious reply is that such people are evil.

Those with religious inclinations would probably bring up the matter of the soul. But the easy reply is that we will have as much evidence that robots have souls as we now do for humans having souls. This is to say, no evidence at all.

One of the ironies of sexbots (or companionbots) is that the ideal is to make a product as a human as possible. As such, to the degree that the ideal is reached, the “product” would be immoral to sell or own. This is a general problem for artificial intelligence: they are intended to be owned by people to do usually onerous tasks, but to the degree they are intelligent, they would be slaves. And enslavement is wrong.

It could be countered that it is better that evil humans abuse sexbots rather than other humans. However, it is not clear that would be a lesser evil—it would just be an evil against a synthetic person rather than an organic person.

As a rule, any technology that can be used for sex will be used for sex. Even if it shouldn’t. In accord with this rule, researchers and engineers have been improving sexbot technology. By science-fiction standards, current sexbots are crude and are probably best described as sex dolls rather than sexbots. But it wise to keep ethics ahead of the technology and a utilitarian approach to this matter is appealing.

On the face of it, sexbots could be seen as nothing new and now they are a small upgrade of sex dolls that have been around for quite some time. Sexbots are, of course, more sophisticated than the infamous blow-up sex dolls, but the idea is the same: the sexbot is an object that a person has sex with.

That said, one thing that makes sexbots morally interesting is the fact that they are often designed to mimic humans not just in physical form (which is what sex dolls do) but also the mind. For example, the 2010 Roxxxy sexbot’s main feature is its personality (or, more accurately, personalities). As a fictional example, the sexbots in Almost Human do not merely provide sex—they also provide human-like companionship. However, such person-like sexbots are still science-fiction and so human-mimicking sexbots can be seen as something potentially new under the ethical sun.

An obvious moral concern is that human-mimicking sexbots could have negative consequences for humans, be they men or women. Not surprisingly, many of these concerns are analogous to existing moral concerns about pornography.

Pornography, so the stock arguments go, can have strong negative consequences. One is that it teaches men to see women as mere sexual objects. This can, it is claimed influence men to treat women poorly and can affect how women see themselves. Another point of concern is the addictive nature of pornography as people can become obsessed with it to their detriment.

Human-mimicking sexbots would seem to have the potential to be more harmful than pornography. After all, while watching pornography allows a person to see other people treated as mere sexual objects, a sexbot would allow a person to use a human-mimicking object sexually. This might have a stronger conditioning effect on the person using the object, perhaps habituating them to see people as mere sexual objects and increasing the chances they will mistreat people. If so, selling or using a sexbot would be morally wrong.

People might become obsessed with their sexbots, as some do with pornography. Then again, people might simply “conduct their business” with their sexbots and get on with life. If so, sexbots might be an improvement over pornography.  After all, while a guy could spend hours watching pornography, he would presumably not last very long with his sexbot.

Another concern raised about some types of pornography is that they encourage harmful sexual views and behavior. For example, violent pornography is believed to influence people to become more inclined to violence. As another example, child pornography is supposed to have an especially pernicious influence. Naturally, there is the concern about causation here: do people seek such porn because they are already that sort of person or does the porn influence them to become that sort of person? I will not endeavor to answer this here.

Since sexbots are objects, a person can do whatever they wish to their sexbot—hit it, burn it, and “torture” it and so on. Presumably there will also be specialty markets catering to unusual interests, such as those of pedophiles and necrophiliacs. If pornography that caters to these “tastes” can be harmful, then presumably being actively involved in such activities with a human-mimicking sexbot would be even more harmful. The person might be, in effect, practicing for the real thing. So, it would seem that selling or using sexbots, especially those designed for harmful “interests” would be immoral.

Not surprisingly, these arguments are also like those used against violent video games. Volent video games are supposed to influence people so that they are more likely to engage in violence. So, just as some have proposed restrictions on virtual violence, perhaps there should be strict restrictions on sexbots.

When it comes to video games, one plausible counter is that while violent video games might have negative impact on some people, they allow most people to harmlessly enjoy virtual violence. This seems analogous to sports and non-video games: they allow people to engage in conflict and competition in safer and less destructive ways. For example, a person can indulge her love of conflict and conquest by playing Risk or Starcraft II after she works out her desire for violence by sparring a few rounds in the ring.

Turning back to sexbots, while they might influence some people badly, they might also provide a means by which people could indulge in desires that would be wrong, harmful and destructive to indulge with another person. So, for example, a person who likes to engage in sexual torture could satisfy her desires on a human-mimicking sexbot rather than an actual human. The critical issue here is whether indulging in such virtual vice with a sexbot would be a harmless dissipation of these desires or fuel them and make a person more likely to inflict them on people. If sexbots did allow people who would otherwise harm other people to vent their “needs” harmlessly on machines, then that would seem good for society. However, if using sexbots would simply push them towards doing such things for real and with unwilling victims, then that would be bad. This, then, is a key part of addressing the ethical concerns about sexbots and something that should be duly considered before mass production begins.