At the start of this year, the third ‘International Conference on Future Robot Technologies‘ took place in London – also known as the sexbot conference. It had actually intended to be held in Malaysia a few months before, but was forcibly cancelled by the Conservative Muslim authorities there.
The man behind the conference was David Levy, the author of ‘Love and Sex with Robots‘ – a book that explores the ethics of human/robot sexual relationships and that uses various arguments and historical evidence to make the prediction that society will consider such relationships normal by the year 2050. But if Dr Kathleen Richardson has her way, love with sexbots will be a criminal act long before then. She is the world’s leading professional ‘anti-sexbot campaigner’ and seeks to make the sale and ownership of sexbots illegal worldwide. One of the highlights of the London conference was a debate between her and David Levy. You can watch David Levy’s contribution, consisting of a 6 point rebuttal of Richardson’s ‘arguments’. I’ve also screen grabbed each of Levy’s rebuttals below the video for reference. It might be useful to remember them, as well as to consider the issues yourself and form your own defence of sex with robots. It might be tempting to see the likes of Dr Kathleen Richardson as a joke, but unfortunately women like her have a somewhat perplexing power to successfully ban anything they don’t like.
