IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016 - 49

"You pay for the convenience, a bit like going to a
public loo" [16, p. 8].
Hugh Loebner endows the $100 000 Loebner Prize.
The Prize is a text-based challenge between an artificial
chatbot and a human. The prize is awarded if judges cannot tell the difference between a human and machine
responses in text-based conversational dialogue, according to the criteria set by Alan Turing in his original 1950
paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" [51]. In
Turing's paper, the Turing Test is about fooling a person
into believing something is human when it is not. Loebner has explained his views on the buying of sex, making
comparisons between the buying of sex from a human
body and the other commodities he buys:
I pay for sex because that is the only way I can get
sex. I am not ashamed of paying for sex. I pay for
food. I pay for clothing. I pay for shelter. Why
should I not also pay for sex? Paying for sex does
not diminish the pleasure I derive from it [Hugh
Loebner cited in [29, p. 223].
Levy [30] also draws on the human propensity to
anthropomorphize machines, and to attribute humanlike
characteristics to machines, while he simultaneously
describes a practice where access to a women's body is
treated as a legitimate tradeable commodity. At first sight
it seems that sex robots (objects) are a preferable alternative to the violence regularly experienced by living
prostituted women [17].
A frequent question I receive as Director of the Campaign Against Sex Robots, is "why do you care about
sex robots, they are only things? What does it matter if
inanimate objects perform roles than humans once
did?" I agree that machines, robots, and AI are not
human, even if they are created by humans and even as
they mimic some human functions. Levy [30] suggests
that robots could help address "the myth of mutuality"
that is present in the buying and selling of sex [30,
p. 207], a myth created in the minds of the buyers. Here
is another parallel between humans and robots:
The enjoyment and benefits derived by their owners
or renters from the sex they experience with robots
can reasonably be expected to bring as much overall satisfaction as those same people enjoy as the
clients of "human" prostitutes [30, p. 193].
In my own work I argue that the buying of sex promotes a disruption to empathy, because the buyer of
sex is not relating to the person as a subject, but an
object [44].* This is further evidence sex robots are
inspired by inherently non- empathetic huma n
june 2016

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practices. If the practices that inspire sex robots are
not ethical for humans, they are not ethical for extending into machines. Let us take a comparative look at
industrialization and the automation of the workplace.
There is no evidence at all that introducing more automation into the workforce reduces human inequalities. In fact, computer scientist Moshe Vardi recently
proposed that robots will put over "half of the world's
population out of a job in the next 30 years" [54]. Jobs
including bankers and lawyers are under threat [28].
Automation, machines, and robots do not, in of themselves, reduce or end inequalities. In fact, as wealthy
elites primarily drive robotics, the purpose of these
developments is to generate new forms of capital.
There is already ample wealth owned by today's elites.
Even paying taxes is avoided at all costs by elites
through offshore accounts and creative marketing.
According to the international development charity
Oxfam, currently the wealth owned by the richest 1%
of the world's population is equal to that owned by the
other 99% [4].

The Turing Test is about fooling a
person into believing something is
human when it is not.

Human Rights
What it means to be human is not constant over time
and space, and we know from our cultural record that
who is given the status of human depends very much
on class, race, and gender [2], [49]. I take the position
articulated in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, which was adopted by the United National General Assembly on 10 December 1948:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason
and conscience and should act towards one
another in a spirit of brotherhood [1].
Human rights codify what it means to be human, and
offer political protections. The UN's Declaration of
Human Rights recognizes the rights of all humans to
live a particular form of existence regardless of their
class, race, or gender. It builds on earlier declarations,
such as the American Declaration of Independence that
promoted "unalienable Rights, that among these are

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