Are Sex Robots And Self-Driving Cars Ethical? - Sven Nyholm - #287

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, wonderful people. welcome back. My guest today is Sven Nyholm. He's an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at the Eindhoven University of Technology. And we are talking about whether sex robots and self-driving cars are ethical. Robots are all around us. They perform actions, make decisions, collaborate with humans, be our friends, perhaps fall in love and potentially harm us. What does this mean for our relationship to them and with them? Expect to learn why robots might need to have rights, whether it's ethical for robots to be sex slaves, why self-driving cars are being programmed to drive with human mistakes built in, who is responsible if a self-driving car kills someone, and much more. Being honest, I've thought long and hard about so many of the questions that I got to bring up with Sven today. I find ethics, particularly around emerging technologies, so fascinating, and I really hope that you enjoy it as well. I'm going to put a warning out there. We do get into some discussions around child sex robots and the ethics of that. If that is the sort of topic which is going to make you uncomfortable, please go and enjoy one of the other 286 episodes which are available on the show. I thought I would put that out there. It's a fascinating and slightly uncomfortable conversation to have. It really challenges our principles around what does it mean to have sex? Can we divorce the act of sex from the meaning behind it? I would really be interested to hear what you think. Leave a comment on the YouTube channel or just get at me at chriswillx. Also please don't forget to press subscribe. It is the best way that you can support this show. Not only does it mean that I continue to find bigger and better guests to deliver to you, but it creates this family of curious, radically sensible humans, all of whom are improving themselves by having conversations with fascinating people. So open your podcast app and press that subscribe button. In other news, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Surfshark VPN. Have you got yourself a VPN yet? If not, go and get one right now. Protect your browsing online and get access to the entire world's Netflix library for less than the price of a cup of coffee per month. It takes one minute to download. It takes no time to install. You can use it across unlimited devices. Your laptop, your iPad, your phone, your dog's phone, if your dog has a phone, the robot, the Roomba, if that's got some sort of VPN service on it, even that can be used. It means that you don't get split tested on prices for products that you are already buying. Every website is doing this to you. It means that hackers can't track what you are doing and it means that you can access everything that every country's Netflix library has available. All of the movies and series and cartoons that are available in America, which is like 10 times what everyone else has, and then anywhere else in the world, Germany perhaps or Japan. Simply head to surfshark.deals.modernwisdom for 83% off, three months free and a 30 day money back guarantee. That's surfshark.deals.modernwisdom, 83% off, three months free and a 30 day money back guarantee. So go and try it out. You will be able to install it in one second, and if you don't like it after 29 days, just give it back. It's fine. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Sven Nyholm.
Sven Nyholm, welcome to the show.

**Sven Nyholm** (3:54)
Thank you.

**Chris Williamson** (3:55)
Pleasure to have you here, man. Why is the relationship between humans and robots interesting?

**Sven Nyholm** (4:01)
Oh, okay. Well, it's interesting for a bunch of different reasons. I mean, one reason is that people are, in a certain sense, not well-prepared to deal with or respond to robots, because our brains, our psychology, developed before we had any robots, before we had any AI. I mean, it developed during human evolution for hundreds of thousands of years. And then suddenly we have this enormous jump in technological development, and now we have robots, we have AI, we have all sorts of interesting technology. But we're responding to it with the brains, the human psychology that developed during this long time. So that sometimes means that we respond to things that look or act like humans, which some robots do. Sometimes in humorous ways, sometimes in ways that might be dangerous for us, but very often in fascinating ways. And so that's one good reason, I think, to think about the relationship between humans and robots.