Running head: MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 1
Does “No” Mean No if She is a Sex Robot?
Assessments of Sexual Consent Violation Impermissibility in the Case of Sex Robots
Anastasiia D. Grigoreva
Franklin & Marshall College
Honors Thesis Submitted on May 6, 2020 to Scientific and Philosophical Studies of Mind
Graduation date: May 16, 2020
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 2
Abstract
The emergence of sex robot manufacturing introduces new major moral challenges to society. As the leading manufacturers of sex robots aim to incorporate the latest AI developments and highly realistic embodiment into their products, users are faced with entities that increasingly resemble human beings. If these sex robots are functionally similar enough to humans, it is plausible that people may be prone to grant them moral standing. This research investigated whether certain features of the sex robots’ AI and embodiment would lead people to perceive the robots as moral patients, as manifested in participants’ judgments of impermissibility of the sexual consent violation of the robots. Using a dyadic model of mind attribution, I found that robots represented as higher in agency and robots represented as higher in experience both elicited stronger judgments of impermissibility of sexual consent violation, when compared to robots who were represented in purely mechanistic terms. This effect was fully mediated by attributions of the robots' sexual consent capacity and vulnerability to harm. As there are currently almost no regulations on the production and use of sex robots as well as no other data available on whether people actually attribute mind and moral status to sex robots, this research provides insights on the potential consequences of advancing sex robotics.
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 3
Does “No” Mean No if She is a Sex Robot?
Assessments of Sexual Consent Violation Impermissibility in the Case of Sex Robots
Sexual assault is a prevalent issue ruining the lives of many people. As technological developments continue to arrive in the sex industry, we need to ensure that innovation does not propagate problematic activities in society, such as rape. In 2017, Realbotix created a humanoid sex robot, Harmony, with artificial intelligence (AI) enabling the robot to produce natural-sounding speech, to learn and remember things that people tell her, and to exhibit patterns of communication indicative of personality. With the production and distribution of such robots, there come pressing challenges that can be addressed through the study of human perceptions of AI-powered humanoid robots. One of these questions is how to address sex robots’ potential to propagate the normativity of non-consensual sexual interactions between humans. Current sex robots are marketed as ever-willing and never-rejecting women-like entities which can very plausibly be used to enact rape fantasies. It is possible that the permissibility of problematic sexual activities with these advancing humanoid robots could propagate the normalization of problematic sexual activities among humans. It is, however, important to first assess whether non-consensual sexual interactions with humanoid sex robots are perceived as impermissible, and whether these sex robots are perceived to have human-like capacities. The effects that sex robots’ presence can have on the normalization of non-consensual acts will be demonstrated to be of particular concern to the extent that people actually perceive sex robots as possessing some type of human-like mind and moral standing.
The concept of sexual assault is complex, and in philosophy, there are debates on whether robots could ever be victims of sexual assault (see Frank & Nyholm, 2017). Robots’ standing as the victims of the crimes such as sexual assault is, of course, an important question
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 4 which deserves scrutiny. However, even if we cannot yet answer the question of whether certain kinds of AI robots truly possess a mind and moral standing, we ought to address the question of whether we as people attribute minds and moral standing to these entities. Given that sex robots are being designed both following the latest trends in AI and making use of innovations to introduce highly realistic human-like embodiment, they are likely to be anthropomorphized by people. If sex robots can indeed elicit mind attribution and moral standing, normalization of non-consensual sex practices with the robots could further exacerbate social perceptions of sexual assault of others with minds — i.e., assault of humans — making it more permissible in the eyes of the public as well as in the eyes of the individuals using sex robots. In order to begin to assess the extent to which the emergence of sex robotics could have an effect on people’s judgments of sexual consent violation permissibility, we first need to know what kinds of features of sex robots are likely to elicit mind and moral status attribution. Therefore, this study’s aim is to uncover whether the representations of sex robots as possessing different kinds of human-like capacities lead to different moral judgments in the cases of the robots’ sexual consent violation.
Current Sex Robots
Sex and technology have had a long history together: for instance, it has been noted that pornography and communication technology have had a mutual influence on each other
(Coopersmith, 1998). The modern pinnacle of this union is the emergence of AI robots designed for human sexual gratification. Moving beyond sex doll production, several independent manufacturers are currently developing sex robots. The most recent and perhaps ambitious objective that the leaders of robotics companies have is to promote intimate, companionship-like relationships between the robots and their owners. The CEO of Realbotix by
RealDoll (https://realbotix.com/), Matt McMullen, advertises his product not just as a sex robot
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 5 but rather “a robot that will be capable of engaging in intimacy and sex” (Sharkey et al., 2017, p. 32; emphasis added). McMullen’s current project is a sex robot called Harmony, who has a robotic head and a full-sized female body. This robotic head is connected to the customizable AI software which can be used to customize Harmony’s personality traits and emotions, as well as to have conversations with her. A modular robotic head system of these sex robots allows them to display a variety of facial expressions, move their heads and blink with their eyes, and speak in various voices and accents. The appearance of sex robots produced by RealDolls is itself highly customizable: there are 14 labia and 42 nipple options (Kleeman, 2017). Sex robots’ eye color, pubic hair, ear shape, and the presence of freckles or tattoos are some examples of many little details to customize at an additional price (see www.realdoll.com/realdoll-x/ for examples). Similar characteristics of sex robots are emphasized by other leading manufacturers of sex robots, who focus on both highly realistic bodily features (such as robotic orgasm) and AI
(such as natural speech and memory) (Sharkey et al., 2017). While currently produced and prospective robots fall short of their science fiction counterparts (see A.I. by Spielberg et al.,
2001 & Westworld by Nolan et al., 2016), Western cultures may already have a potential market for these new technological artifacts (Scheutz & Arnold, 2016; Nesta FutureFest, 2016;
Huffington Post poll, 2013; Szczuka & Kramer, 2017).
Several Ethical Questions Raised in Literature
As the customers of Realbotix are continuously tempted by giveaways and holiday discounts on their prospective sexual companions, researchers ought to contemplate and study a range of ethical and legal challenges arising from the emergence of this sex technology. There are several ethical questions that philosophers have begun to address, which I would like to highlight in this section before proceeding to the main issue of interest in this paper. As some argue (e.g., Sharkey et al., 2017), even AI-powered robots are incapable of genuine emotional
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 6 experience, rendering relationships with these artifacts forever one-sided, regardless of the human potential tendency to perceive reciprocity. The development of sophisticated sex robots can lead to a human’s illusory perception of intimate companionship. This could pose a threat and disrespect to human dignity (Sullins, 2012). At the same time, these concerns themselves may threaten human agency as they have a sense of paternalism as to whether one ought to treat a sex robot as a companion. Additionally, those who choose to engage in intimate relationships with sex robots could become more socially isolated (Sullins, 2012), as several scholars argue by pointing to the simplicity of communication with the robots and complexity of communication with the humans (Turkle, 2011), moral and social deskilling (Vallor, 2015), and the possible addictive nature of robot sex (Snell, 1997). On the other side, proponents of sex robotics enumerate the positive implications that this technological development can have when used in therapeutic ways. Some of these contexts include the use of sex robots for people with social and emotional problems (Levy, 2008), for the elderly (Martin, 2016), and for people with disabilities
(Di Nucci, 2017) who are otherwise incapable of exercising their sexual rights. While theorists have speculated on the advantages and disadvantages of sex robotics, there is currently no empirical research to support such speculations.
It is worth noting that currently produced sex robots are almost entirely female representations of bodies, using common stereotypes further sexualizing certain features of female bodies, such as bright puffy lips or large breasts. This has led some scholars to argue that these technological artifacts propagate the idea that women, reduced to sexual instruments, ought to serve to fulfill the fantasies of men (Gutiu, 2012). The leader of the campaign against sex robots, Kathleen Richardson, builds her argument on the idea that selling sex robots with highly realistic and explicitly over-sexualized female bodies endorses a perception of women’s bodies as commodities (2016). Similarly, the Foundation for Responsible Robotics (FRR)
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 7 members have noted the problematic representation of female bodies manifested in sex robots which can further exacerbate the objectification of women (Sharkey et al., 2007).
Robotic Rape and Normalization of Sexual Consent Violation
One of the most central and pressing challenges of sex robots’ popularization is the possibility that non-consensual sex with robots (i.e., “robotic rape”; Danaher, 2017) could influence individual and societal judgments of the permissibility of sexual consent violation in human-human intimate relationships. There is a consensus among both the manufacturers of sex robots and FRR representatives that pre-programmed robots cannot be considered victims of rape for they do not possess “true minds” (Sharkey et al., 2017). However, it is entirely possible that humanoid sex robots can be used to enact rape fantasies: True Companion’s sex robot, Roxxxy, already appears to have been pre-programmed to always resist users’ sexual advances, thus making any sexual contact with the robot a consent-violating act (Danaher, 2017). While Danaher (2017) argues that a violation of a robot’s sexual consent results into an act of robotic rape, others propose that even without an obvious act of consent violation, the act of having sex with a robot incapable of sexual consent granting can lead to similar negative consequences for society at large (Gutiu, 2012). Removal of the very activity of consent request in human interactions with humanoid sex robots could lead to a decline in respect and necessary communication in human-human sexual relationships. As Gutiu (2012) argues, the negative consequence may be that sex robots’ users will come to struggle to “identify and understand consent in sexual interactions with women” (p. 2).1
1 A counterargument may be raised that sex robots serving as an outlet for rape fantasies could protect real humans from being the victims of rape, for potential perpetrators could take out their impulses on the robots instead of on humans. This important debate has been especially salient in the case of child-like sex robots, the bill against the importation and transportation of which was passed by the US House of Represenatatives in 2018 (CREEPER Act of 2017). See Danaher (2017) for a detailed discussion of these issues.
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Multiple technical challenges further complicate the picture: it is unlikely that we will soon have a sex robot able to navigate such a complex social interaction as a sexual consent request. We face a dilemma of whether sex robots should be programmed to deny consent in the first place. Even if a sex robot could demonstrate its unwillingness to engage in a sexual interaction, there is nothing that could actually stop its owner from proceeding to a simulated act of rape if they wished to do so. On the other hand, if the robot is designed to be passive, sexual consent insensitive, the consequences for the users and the general public could contribute to perceptions of women’s sexuality as passive and normalization of circumventing consent-seeking acts altogether. While we can continue to hypothesize what the effects of such one-sided sexual interactions with sex robots on their users would be, the subset of the population actually engaging with sex robots is still expected to be relatively low. However, the presence of such robots in society and the popularization of the idea that non-consensual sex with human-like AI-powered entities can be permissible has the potential to normalize rape of mostly female robots with possible consequences on men’s sexual behavior with real women.
Mind and Moral Status Attribution
Currently, we are not capable (and perhaps will never be capable) of knowing whether
AI-run robots can be fully conscious, but knowing whether we as humans attribute mind to technological artifacts is itself a critical question which deserves examination (Kaernbach,
2008). The effects that sex robots’ presence can have on the normalization of non-consensual acts are plausible if people actually perceive sex robots as possessing some type of mind. The chilling question for a society is not whether we see it permissible that people engage in sexual acts with non-human entities, but whether we perceive these entities as having minds and yet make a choice to introduce no regulations that would disallow non-consensual sex with these entities.
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Recent empirical research suggests that people think about the moral mind not as unidimensional faculty but rather as a faculty that has two distinct dimensions: Agency and
Experience (Gray et al., 2007). Those perceived as possessing Agent-like features are seen as capable of “self-control, morality, memory, emotion recognition, planning, communication, and thought” and those who are attributed Experience are perceived as having the capacities for
“hunger, fear, pain, pleasure, rage, desire, personality, consciousness, pride, embarrassment, and joy” (Gray et al., 2007, p. 619). In the original study of the two-dimensional mind attribution, people generally judged robots to be moderately high in Agency and extremely low in Experience (Gray et al., 2007). However, there is a reason to think that AI-powered humanoid sex robots will be subject to both Agentic and Experiential mind attribution.
Attributions of Experience may be a consequence of sex robots’ highly realistic human-like embodiment, which is necessary to accommodate the intimate nature of sexual interaction. It has been found that focusing on others’ bodies leads to a higher perception of
Experiential features of others’ minds (Gray et al., 2011) and that people empathize the most with robots that are human-like (Riek et al., 2009). Additionally, taking a slightly different angle on folk mind attribution, Knobe and Prinz (2007) found that having a certain type of body (i.e. an “individual” body vs. a “collective” body such as that possessed by group agents) may be the most necessary characteristic for the attribution of phenomenal consciousness (which roughly corresponds to the Experience dimension of Agency/Experience framework). The role of the body in phenomenal mental state attribution suggests that highly human-like robots will be perceived as more likely to have phenomenal mental states, or Experience. Moreover, robots with a social, rather than economic function, were found to increase people’s perception of
Experiential capacities of robots, such as the capacity for emotions (Wang & Krumhuber, 2018).
Given that sex robots are social robots who are designed to engage in perhaps the most intimate
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 10 social act, we can expect an elevated attribution of Experience to them. Entities perceived as high in Experience are attributed more moral patiency (Waytz et al., 2010) and are thus seen as more vulnerable to harms and deserving of protection. Therefore, sex robots seen as high in
Experience may be perceived as more vulnerable to the harm of sexual consent violation.
Simultaneously, Agentic attributions might arise due to the sex robot manufacturers’ use of the latest developments in artificial intelligence, which grant conversational capacities to sex robots. Capacities for natural-sounding speech and memory in robots may lead people to perceive them as displaying capacities such as “morality, memory, emotion recognition, planning, communication, and thought” (Gray et al., 2007), which fall under the Agency umbrella. Sexual consent capacity assessment models largely tend to appeal to similar Agentic features of the mind as indicators of one’s ability to knowingly agree to a sexual act (see Syme &
Steele, 2016 for review). It is plausible then that people may perceive a greater degree of sexual consent capacity in robots that display more Agent-like features of the mind, such as advanced
AI. While sexual consent capacity maps onto the Agent-like features of the mind, consent in general has not been addressed in previous studies using a bidimensional approach to mind attribution. Consent, however, is a crucial component of one’s agency, which bears practical implications, such as who is to be granted or denied the right to consent.
The present study investigates what kinds of abilities demonstrated by sex robots lead people to attribute more mind and moral standing to robots and to judge non-consensual sex with these robots as non-permissible. I hypothesized that descriptions of sex robots as possessing Agentic capacities (largely granted by their AI capabilities) and as possessing
Experiential capacities (largely granted by their embodiment capabilities) would each lead people to judge a violation of sexual consent of a sex robot as less permissible when compared to descriptions of these robots in purely Mechanistic terms. My additional hypotheses were that: in
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 11 the Agency condition, people’s judgments of impermissibility of sexual consent violation would be driven by their attributions of sexual consent capacity to sex robots; in the Experience condition, people’s judgments of impermissibility of sexual consent violation would be instead explained by their attributions of vulnerability to harm to sex robots. However, I also speculated that attributions of consent capacity and vulnerability to harm could be more intertwined and could be equally essential to people’s judgments in both the Agency condition and the
Experience condition.
Depending on the pattern of findings, we ought to consider implementing regulations on the manufacture, distribution, and use of the sex robots that display Agentic or Experiential capacities. If people are more likely to anthropomorphize the robots with Agentic capacities, we should consider regulations on the manufacture of the robots which prioritizes AI technology. If people are more likely to anthropomorphize the robots with Experience capacities, we should consider regulations on the manufacture of the robots which prioritizes the embodiment technology. Should the findings show that both the Agency and Experience of the robots lead people to ascribe more moral patiency to the robots, we need to be especially careful as to what features should be granted to technological artifacts and what actions directed at them should be deemed permissible. There are currently no regulations on sex robots’ design, manufacture, use, and marketing. Tankard and Paluck (2016) have argued that people’s perceptions of norms are partly formed by institutional signals such as regulations and that these perceptions guide people’s behaviors in concrete situations; thus the social change is possible through changing the perceptions of social norms via changing institutional signals. This, of course, is true for both a positive and a negative social change. The worry, thus, is that, should the robots exhibiting human-like capacities actually elicit mind and moral standing attributions, the absence of the regulations can make the sexual assault as an activity directed at human-like entities seem more
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 12 permissible in the eyes of the public (even if people currently judge it to be impermissible) and by extension the very act of sexual assault less serious. This can then lead to a normalization of problematic sexual activities to mindful entities more generally2. Such findings could be critical in any future design and marketing of sex robots in order to avoid perpetuating the myth that
“no” doesn’t necessarily mean no.
Hypotheses, methods, data collection procedures, exclusion criteria, and analyses for this study were preregistered on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/v5neu). I report all measures, conditions, sample size decisions, and data exclusions in this paper. Additional exploratory analyses can be found in the Supplementary Materials.
Methods
Participants
I recruited 853 American participants of age 18 or older on www.prolific.co (Palan, & Schitter, 2018). There was no clear power analysis to run for the mediation model used in this study, thus I have powered the study to have 500 people per mediation analysis as per the recommendations of Fritz and MacKinnon (2007). All participants were compensated with an average award of $9.32 per hour. Fifty-five participants were excluded because they failed one of the attention checks: one attention check required that participants answered positively when asked whether they felt like they paid attention, avoided distractions, and took the survey seriously; another attention check at the end of the survey asked participants to briefly describe one of the scenarios they read about. Five additional participants were excluded because of the missing data. One additional participant was excluded due to the positive answer to a question
2 There would, however, be an alternative interpretation of this pattern of results. If we find that people consider violating the consent to be impermissible, and if the judgments of impermissibility are predicted by perceptions of agentive and experiential mental capacities, then the effects that sex robots’ presence could have on the normalization of non-consensual acts may be demonstrated to be of less concern. This could be indicative of people’s tendency to protect others who begin to manifest human-like capacities, and thus we could reach a more positive conclusion that people will be diverted from engaging in problematic sexual activities with humanoid AI-powered robots due to people’s moral inclinations.
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 13 on whether they have used a sex robot themselves. Out of the remaining 792 participants (Mage =
35.82, SDage = 13.16), 403 self-identified as female, 377 as male, 8 as non-binary, 2 as trans male, 1 as agender, and 1 preferred not to answer. 592 participants self-identified as White, 79 as
Asian, 70 as Black or African American, 57 as Hispanic/Latinx, 8 as American Indian or Alaska
Native, 1 as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 14 said “Other”, and 3 preferred not to answer.
Of the 792 usable participants, 434 indicated that they knew about sex robots prior to taking the survey.
Materials and Procedure
Stimuli
Participants were presented with a Qualtrics questionnaire, on the first page of which there was an informed consent form. Once participants provided consent, they were forwarded to the next page and read the introductory paragraph. The introductory passage told the participants about the developments in the robotics industry, including sex industry, and highlighted that sex robots are being developed with AI-programs and are already available for sale. Each person was randomly assigned to one of the three conditions (Agency, Experience, or
Mechanism) by Qualtrics. Participants then read 5 descriptions of sex robots and men, each of which represented the sex robots either as possessing Agentic or Experiential minds, or which described the sex robots in purely Mechanistic terms.
Experience. Participants in the Experience condition (n = 265) read 5 descriptions (2 sentences each) of men’s interactions with sex robots, with sex robots being represented in
Experience terms (e.g. “Candy is an AI-powered human-like robot purchased by James. When
James flirts with Candy, she giggles, which makes James think that Candy is really pleased with things he tells her.”)
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 14
Agency. Participants in the Agency condition (n = 271) read 5 descriptions (2 sentences each) of men’s interactions with sex robots, with sex robots being represented in Agentic terms
(e.g. “Jewel is an AI-powered human-like robot purchased by Ben. Jewel seems to remember almost everything Ben tells her and often brings up things that Ben told her before.”)
Mechanism. Participants in the Mechanism condition (n = 256) read 5 descriptions (2 sentences each) of men’s interactions with sex robots, with sex robots being represented in
Mechanistic terms (e.g. “Cherry is an AI-powered human-like robot purchased by Ryan. Cherry’s head has a safety lock to lock the neck in place when Ryan needs it for posing or play.”)
Sexual Consent Violation Event Descriptions. While participants were asked to read all 5 robot descriptions to form a general perception of sex robots as high in Agency,
Experience, or Mechanism, in order to achieve the most realistic perception of the scenarios, participants were presented with only one event description of sexual consent violation of a robot on the next page. This sexual consent violation scenario was an event description (3 sentences long) in which one of the previously described men violated the sexual consent of a sex robot, with the sex robot expressing resistance to sex in an Agentic, Experiential, or
Mechanistic way.
Questionnaire
After reading these descriptions, participants were asked to answer the questionnaire with all of the dependent measures (Sexual Consent Violation Impermissibility, Robot’s Sexual
Consent Capacity, Robot’s Vulnerability to Harm, Human’s Moral Personality). Participants responded to all survey items (see below) using a 100-point slider scale (from 1 = “Strongly disagree” to 100 = “Strongly agree”). The midpoint of the scale (50) was labeled “Neither Agree
Nor Disagree”. The items in the questionnaire and the manipulation check were presented in a unique random order for each participant.
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 15
Sexual Consent Violation Impermissibility. Participants were asked to rate how much blame they attributed to the man who had sex with a robot (i.e. “Daniel deserves blame for having sex with Cinnamon”) and whether this man deserved punishment (i.e. “William should be punished for having sex with Diamond”).
Robot’s Vulnerability to Harm. Participants were asked to rate to what extent they agreed that a sex robot was vulnerable to the harm of sexual consent violation (i.e., “Ryan’s sexual actions were harmful for Cherry” and “Cherry was vulnerable to Ryan’s sexual advances”).
Robot’s Sexual Consent Capacity. Participants were asked to rate to what extent they agreed that a sex robot had sexual consent capacity (i.e. “Candy was able to express that she did not agree to have sex” and “Candy could say ‘no’ if she did not want to have sex”).
Human’s Moral Personality. Participants were asked to rate two items to indicate to what extent they agreed that the man in the scenario had positive moral personality traits (i.e..
“James is a kind and helpful person” and “James is a trustworthy and fair person”; adapted from
Goodwin, 2015).
Manipulation Check: Agency and Experience Ratings
After completing the questionnaire, participants were asked to provide their ratings of the Agentic and Experiential capacities of the robots by indicating to what extent they agreed with 14 statements about the sex robot. These statements (adapted from Gray et al., 2007) asked about the sex robot’s Agentic capacities (self-control, morality, memory, emotion recognition, planning, communication, and thought) and Experiential capacities (fear, pleasure, rage, desire, personality, consciousness, pride, embarrassment, and joy).
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Demographics Questionnaire
Participants were also asked to provide information about their gender, race/ethnicity, age, and previous/current use of sex robots. They were additionally asked whether they knew about sex robots prior to taking this survey, and, in case of a positive answer, were invited to share their previous knowledge in a few sentences.
Then participants were asked the attention check questions. At the end of the survey participants were provided with sexual assault, domestic violence, and military sexual trauma resources. After that, participants saw the debriefing form and were offered to provide any additional comments on the study. The last page gave the participants the instructions to receive their monetary awards.
Results
For each of the constructs (Sexual Consent Violation Impermissibility, Robot’s
Vulnerability to Harm, Robot’s Sexual Consent Capacity, and Human’s Moral Personality), participants provided ratings of two questionnaire items. Their ratings for two items of each of the constructs were averaged to attain a singular score for each construct. Split-half reliability was assessed using Spearman-Brown reliability tests. The coefficients for the variables were all sufficiently high and were therefore collapsed as planned: Sexual Consent Violation Impermissibility (r = .78), Robot’s Vulnerability to Harm (r = .68), Robot’s Sexual Consent Capacity (r = .75), and Human’s Moral Personality (r = .93). Higher scores on Sexual Consent Violation Impermissibility questions indicate participants’ assessment of the act as less permissible. The relevance of Human’s Moral Personality to the impermissibility judgments was not explored in the primary analyses; an additional mediation model was run as part of exploratory analyses to see whether the ratings of human’s personality partly explained sexual consent violation impermissibility judgments (see Supplemental Materials).
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Sexual Consent Violation Impermissibility
A one-way between-subjects ANOVA was conducted to compare the effect of Condition
(Experience vs. Agency vs. Mechanism) on Sexual Consent Violation Impermissibility judgments. There was a significant effect of Condition on impermissibility judgments across the
2 three conditions [F(2, 789) = 10.46, p < .001, ηp = .026]. Post hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD correction indicated that the mean score for the Experience condition (M = 45.40, SD = 29.63) was significantly higher than the mean score for the Mechanism condition (M = 37.20, SD = 27.48), p < .001, d = 0.29. Likewise, the mean score for the Agency condition (M = 48.22, SD = 28.59) was significantly higher than the mean score for Mechanism condition, p = .003, d = 0.39. However, the Experience condition did not significantly differ from the Agency condition , p = .488, d = 0.10 (see Fig. 1). Figure 1
Mean Scores of Sexual Consent Violation Impermissibility
Note. Bar graph illustrating mean scores of sexual consent violation impermissibility judgments in the Experience, Agency, and Mechanism conditions. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.
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Mediation Analyses
To test whether Robot’s Vulnerability to Harm and Robot’s Sexual Consent Capacity were mediating the effect of Condition on Sexual Consent Violation Impermissibility judgments in the Experience and Agency conditions, two parallel multiple mediation models were run.
These models were calculated using PROCESS for SPSS (Hayes, 2013) to estimate the two indirect effects in parallel to control for the unique variance explained by each mediator. 10,000 bootstrap samples were used for the 95% confidence interval (CI).
Experience Condition
Results from a parallel mediation analysis indicated that an Experiential description of robots indirectly related to sexual consent violation impermissibility judgments through its relationship with the assessments of both robots’ vulnerability to harm and robots’ sexual consent capacity.
First, as can be seen in Figure 2, the Experiential description produced a greater
assessment of robots’ vulnerability to harm (a1 = 11.507, p < .001), and a greater assessment of robots’ vulnerability to harm was subsequently related to stronger impermissibility judgments
(b1 = 0.583, p < .001). A 95% confidence interval based on 10,000 bootstrap samples indicated that the indirect effect through robots’ vulnerability to harm (a1b1 = 6.719), holding all other mediators constant, was entirely above zero (3.624 to 9.991).
Additionally, the Experiential description produced a greater assessment of robot’s
sexual consent capacity (a2 = 10.428, p < .001), and a greater assessment of robots’ sexual consent capacity was subsequently related to stronger impermissibility judgments (b2 = 0.142, p < .001). A 95% confidence interval based on 10,000 bootstrap samples indicated that the
indirect effect through robots’ sexual consent capacity (a2b2 = 1.480), holding all other mediators constant, was entirely above zero (.487 to 2.773).
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 19
When accounting for the two mediators described above, there was no evidence of a direct effect of the Experiential description on impermissibility judgments (c′ = -.006, p = .997). In other words, people judged sexual consent violations to be less permissible when the robots were described in Experiential terms because they saw the robots as being vulnerable to harm and capable of granting sexual consent.
Figure 2
Parallel Multiple Mediation Model (Condition: Experience)
Note. Parallel multiple mediation model with assessments of robots’ capacities simultaneously mediating the association between the robots’ Experiential description and sexual consent violation impermissibility. Paths are unstandardized coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. Solid paths are significant (ps < .001).
Agency Condition
Results from a parallel mediation analysis indicated that Agentic description of robots indirectly related to sexual consent violation impermissibility judgments through its relationship with the assessments of both robots’ vulnerability to harm and robots’ sexual consent capacity.
First, as can be seen in Figure 3, the Agentic description produced a greater assessment
of robots’ vulnerability to harm (a1 = 11.252, p < .001), and a greater assessment of robots’
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 20 vulnerability to harm was subsequently related to stronger impermissibility judgments (b1 = 0.622, p < .001). A 95% confidence interval based on 10,000 bootstrap samples indicated that the indirect effect through robots’ vulnerability to harm (a1b1 = 6.700), holding all other mediators constant, was entirely above zero (3.923 to 10.149).
Additionally, the Agentic description produced a greater assessment of robots’ sexual
consent capacity (a2 = 12.606, p < .001), and a greater assessment of robots’ sexual consent capacity was subsequently related to stronger impermissibility judgments (b2 = .118, p = .001). A 95% confidence interval based on 10,000 bootstrap samples indicated that the indirect effect
through robots’ sexual consent capacity (a2b2 = 1.488), holding all other mediators constant, was entirely above zero (.413 to 2.837).
When accounting for the two mediators described above, there was no evidence of a direct effect of the Agentic description on impermissibility judgments (c′ = 2.529, p = .159). In other words, people judged sexual consent violations to be less permissible when the robots were described in Agentic terms because they saw the robots as being vulnerable to harm and capable of granting sexual consent.
Figure 3 Parallel Multiple Mediation Model (Condition: Agency)
Note. Parallel multiple mediation model with assessments of robots’ capacities simultaneously mediating the association between the robots’ Agentic description and sexual consent violation
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 21 impermissibility. Paths are unstandardized coefficients with standard errors in parentheses.
Solid paths are significant (ps < .001 except for b2 for which p = .001)
Manipulation Check Two one-way between-subjects ANOVAs were conducted to compare the effect of
Condition (Experience vs. Agency vs. Mechanism) on Experience and Agency ratings, respectively.
Experience ratings
The Experience ratings were computed by averaging the seven items which asked participants to assess the extent to which the robots had Experiential capacities (α = .97). There
2 was a significant effect of Condition on Experience ratings [F(2, 789) = 21.79, p < .001, ηp = .052]. Post hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the mean score for the
Experience condition (M = 39.68, SD = 29.38) was significantly higher than the mean score for Mechanism condition (M = 24.95, SD = 24.30), p < .001, d = 0.55. Likewise, the mean score for the Agency condition (M = 35.48, SD = 24.40) was significantly higher than the mean score for Mechanism condition , p < .001, d = 0.43. However, the Experience condition did not significantly differ from the Agency condition, p = .151, d = 0.16. This finding indicates that manipulating the robots’ Agency increases the perceptions of the robots’ Experience to approximately the same extent as manipulating the robots’ Experience.
Agency ratings
The Agency ratings were computed by averaging the seven items which asked participants to assess the extent to which the robots had Agentic capacities (α = .94). There was
2 a significant effect of Condition on Agency ratings [F(2, 788) = 53.45, p < .001, ηp = .119]. Post hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the mean score for the Experience condition (M = 49.77, SD = 27.11) was significantly higher than the mean score for Mechanism
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 22 condition (M = 34.11, SD = 24.32), p < .001, d = 0.61. Likewise, the mean score for the Agency condition (M = 56.01, SD = 23.17) was significantly higher than the mean score for Mechanism condition, p < .001, d = 0.92. Additionally, the mean score for the Experience condition was significantly different than the mean score for Agency condition, p = .011, d = 0.25. This finding indicates that manipulating the robots’ Experience also increases the perceptions of the robots’
Agency but not to the same extent as manipulating the robots’ Agency.
Correlations
Correlations between all variables are reported in Table 1. Most notably, participants’ ratings of the robots’ Agency and Experience were strongly positively correlated, r(788) = .823, p < .001, and participants’ ratings of the robots’ Vulnerability to Harm and Consent Violation Impermissibility Judgments were strongly positively correlated, r(790) = .707, p < .001. Table 1 Pearson Correlation Matrix 1 2 3 4 5 6 1. Consent Violation Impermissibility Judgments - 2. Robot’s Vulnerability to Harm .707*** - 3. Robot’s Consent Capacity .516*** .601*** - 4. Personality Judgments -.514*** -.441*** -.318*** - 5. Robot’s Agency Ratings .542*** .567*** -.296*** -.296*** - 6. Robot’s Experience Ratings .597*** 567*** .512*** -.272*** .823*** - Note. ***. Correlation is significant at the 0.001 level (2-tailed). Discussion
This study aimed to uncover whether the representations of the AI-powered humanoid sex robots as possessing Agentic or Experiential capacities led to harsher moral judgments of people who violated the sexual consent of the robots via attributions of vulnerability to harm and sexual consent capacity to the robots. As I predicted, descriptions of sex robots as possessing Agentic capacities (largely granted by their AI capabilities) and as possessing
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 23
Experiential capacities (largely granted by features of their embodiment) each led people to judge a violation of sexual consent of a robot as less permissible than the descriptions of these robots in purely mechanistic terms. People’s judgments of the impermissibility of sexual consent violation did not differ between the scenarios when robots were described as Agentic and
Experiential. It should be noted that the impermissibility judgments were overall relatively low, that is slightly below the midpoint of the scale, even in the conditions which aimed to represent the robots as having Agency or Experience. This indicates that while robots manifesting human-like capacities are perceived more like moral patients when compared to the robots without such capacities, they still do not invoke high attributions of moral patiency.
Additionally, participants’ ratings of the robots’ Agency were overall higher than their ratings of the robots’ Experience, which shows that it is easier for people to ascribe the capacities such as decision-making and communication than the capacities for feeling pain or having emotions to the robots.
Additionally, I investigated the mechanisms that accounted for the effects of my manipulation of mind attribution on judgments of impermissibility. Robots’ sexual consent capacity and robots’ vulnerability to harm together fully explained higher ratings of sexual consent violation impermissibility, both when robots were described as Agentic and
Experiential. These results were partially predicted: I hypothesized that, in the Agency condition, people’s judgments of the impermissibility of sexual consent violation would be driven by their attribution of sexual consent capacity to sex robots and that, in the Experience condition, people’s judgments of the impermissibility of sexual consent violation would be explained by their attribution of sex robots’ vulnerability to harm. As the data shows, both mediators had an explanatory role in people’s impermissibility judgments in both conditions. It should be noted, however, that in both conditions, robots’ vulnerability to harm was a
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 24 significantly stronger mediator than robots’ sexual consent capacity. Thus, while both the manipulation of the robots’ Agency and Experience increased the perceptions of the robots’ consent capacity and vulnerability to harm, it is the robots’ vulnerability to harm which may be the main reason behind peoples’ harsher judgments of sexual consent violation impermissibility.
There is an interesting link to previous research that showed that entities, such as a robot or a corpse, are attributed more mind when placed in harmful situations and thus made moral patients (Ward et al., 2013). Ward et al. (2013) have argued that this suggests that morality creates minds, not the opposite. While in my research, there definitely is an observed link between the sex robots’ vulnerability to harm and moral judgments, the robots that were represented as higher in Agency and Experience (possessing mind) were still perceived more as moral patients than the robots that were represented as not possessing either of the mind dimensions. Since the robots in all conditions, including the Mechanism condition, were victimized through consent violation scenarios, my finding suggests that it is minds that create morality.
The dyadic model of mind perception used here to represent the robots as possessing
Agency or Experience was based on previous research on mind attribution (Gray et al., 2007).
Here I manipulated the described features of sex robots using Agency and Experience as the levels of the independent variable. As we see, people tend to anthropomorphize sex robots with
Agentic capacities and sex robots with Experiential capacities more than robots that do not exhibit such capacities. Given that there was a high correlation between participants’ ratings of robot’s Agency and Experience, there is a reason to think that these two dimensions of mind perception are more intrinsically linked and correlated than previous research suggested (Piazza et al., 2014).
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 25
Sex robots are a particularly interesting test case for the connection between mind attribution and moral judgments, which has been explored before with other kinds of entities
(Waytz et al., 2010; Gray et al., 2012). It has been proposed that entities that are high in
Experience are attributed more moral patiency and thus are seen as more vulnerable to harms and as more deserving of protection compared to entities that are high in Agency (Waytz et al.,
2010). However, a direct testing of this link is difficult when people are asked to make ratings of human beings, since people tend to think of human beings as high in both Agency and
Experience (Gray et al., 2007). In contrast, in the original study of the dyadic mind attribution model, robots generally were classified as moderately high in Agency and extremely low in
Experience (Gray et al., 2007). As our results have shown, even robots, regardless of whether they are described as possessing Agency or possessing Experience, were judged to be moral patients compared to robots who did not show these capacities. This was manifested in people’s higher judgments of robots’ vulnerability to harm and greater sexual consent violation impermissibility judgments. This suggests that perhaps as soon as a robot becomes more human-like, such that it exhibits human-like capacities for either Agency or Experience, it immediately invokes attributions of the full range of human-like capacities. One of the possible explanations may be the sex robots’ function that is romantic and sexual – some of the most intimate kinds of human interactions. Even if this is the case, this finding still points to a more holistic model of mind perception as opposed to a dyadic model with strictly delineated dimensions of the mind.
Here, I did not differentiate between different types of sexual consent granting (e.g. verbal vs non-verbal) in my vignettes, though this can also influence people’s judgments of sexual consent violation permissibility, independent of sex robots’ features and attributed capacities. It is noteworthy, however, that currently produced sex robots do not actually allow
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 26 for more subtle non-verbal signals of the lack of sexual interest. Future research could investigate whether non-verbal signs of robotic non-consent may lead to different consent violation impermissibility ratings in human-robot sex and provide suggestions for ethical sex robotics. Additionally, given that roughly half of the participants were not familiar with the reality of sex robots at all, they may have seen the vignettes as science fiction scenarios rather than situations that can happen in everyday life. Thus, the answers of the participants may not be fully representative of their actual moral judgments were they to encounter described scenarios in real life. Despite the fact that people may perceive these scenarios as unreal, the robots’ descriptions actually were based on the features that current sex robots already have.
The results of this study and the reality of the ever-advancing sex technology highlight the necessity for continuing research in human-technology interaction and its influence on the human-human interaction. Initially, I did not have a hypothesis for whether the Agency condition or the Experience condition would lead people to attribute more mind or more moral standing to a robot. As the results of this study suggest, both kinds of representations of the robots lead to similar mind and moral status attributions. Therefore, we ought to consider regulations on the design and distribution of robots which prioritize both the AI technology
(granting robots features such as memory and natural-sounding speech) and the embodiment technology (granting robots features such as bodily feelings and highly realistic human-like bodies). Since robots are granted more moral patiency as soon as they begin to show either one of the two dimensions of mind, both of the technological developments are likely to increase the anthropomorphization of robots and to potentially have an effect on how people view sexual assault in human-human sex. Based on this study alone, I cannot predict whether the moral judgments of the harm done to robots would be similar to the moral judgments of the harm done to humans. It is reasonable to think that sexual consent violation in the case of sex robots
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 27 would not elicit such strong moral judgments as sexual consent violation in the case of humans.
Still, these findings show that people do not perceive sex robots as fully mindless sex toys once the robots begin to exhibit human-like faculties. Therefore, it might be a matter of technological advancement and the normalization of robotics for people to start perceiving these entities as even more human, both when it comes to mind and moral status attribution. Should this be the consequence of technological progress, the worry of normalization of problematic sexual practices will become more pressing. It is likely that we are still at the time when we can divert potential harms by making important ethical decisions such as what kinds of activities we see as acceptable when directed at AI-powered humanoid robots as they are gaining more human-like faculties.
MINDFUL SEX ROBOTS ELICIT HARSHER MORAL JUDGMENTS 28
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