Mankind has an unfailing ability to absolutely ruin every new technological advancement that comes along. No sooner had somebody figured out that you could probably generate electrical power with a controlled nuclear reaction, somebody else came along and built a bomb out of it before we could generate enough juice to light up the first small town. The internet was supposed to revolutionize the world, becoming a shared, global knowledge base where the free sharing of expertise and airing of debates could take place on a global scale. It lasted about a week before it turned into AOL chat rooms.

And then there were the robots. Our mechanical servants who would perform mundane or dangerous tasks, meanwhile freeing human beings to pursue more intellectual and erudite matters. We did alright on that score for a little while with automotive welding machines and pretty much right up through the earlier Roombas. (The ones that didn’t map your house and sell the data to advertisers.) But sure as clockwork, somebody had to create a sex doll in the form of a child for perverts. (The Daily Wire)

Anybody who believes the government should not outlaw the trade of child sexbots, which is surely coming to a future near you, has lost their minds.

Not only will child sexbots allow pedophiles with severely depraved minds to simulate their warped fantasy onto a lifelike humanoid that closely resembles a child, it could become a “gateway drug” that encourages pedophiles to enact their fantasy in real life. The bottom line: pedophilia is a depravity. Should someone have pedophilic tendencies, they need immediate psychiatric treatment before they ever harm an innocent child. Anything, be it child pornography (real or simulated) or a sexbot that encourages the thought should be met with the full penalty of the law.

One professor in Belgium does not believe that, though. In fact, Professor Marc Behrendt of ULB University makes the odious claim that child sexbots will help curtail pedophilia.

I have no intention of undercutting the seriousness of the discussion taking place at The Daily Wire on this topic, but there are some questions jumping immediately to mind. I know there have been debates over realistic, human-looking robots in the past and some prototypes were kind of impressive, but Westworld is still a fiction series, right? I mean, they’re not actually making robots that anyone would want to, you know… are they?

Apparently there are some for sale. And that means that somebody was going to make one that looked like a child I guess. We’re close enough to that apparent eventuality that there’s a piece of legislation pending to ban them in advance. (By the way, for any of you who are already so skeeved out that you’ve bailed on this article or are about to do so, you are completely forgiven.)

This really was inevitable. Everything we have developed over the history of technology which could be put to use for pornography of some sort has almost immediately gone down that route. The earliest printing press was known for producing a lot of bibles, but racier stuff soon followed. We had barely gotten the camera to the point where it would produce recognizable images before someone was photographing naked women. And the internet is, well… you know. The internet. So if there were going to be robots simulating humans I suppose this was inevitable.

But can we actually regulate a robot which resembles a human being? People choose to have sex with all manner of mechanical devices which are frequently marketed by some other name. (Just browse “neck massagers” some time.) And even if we can outlaw such a device, who is going to get stuck with the job of inspecting all of them and making the call as to which robots appear to be “underage” and which are adult enough? I’m not going to debate the merits of how this will curb the actions of pedophiles or accelerate them. I simply don’t have enough data to go on and it doesn’t seem like an obvious question. But new government regulations are always worrisome, not to mention complicated. As disgusting as it obviously sounds, someone needs to examine this question in detail before we go rushing into any new legislation.

Oh, and… ewwwwwwww.