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TopBackground: Technoethics Robotics, Social Robots & A Potential Role For Sexbots In Moving Beyond The Master/Slave Dynamic
Technoethics fosters iterative relations between technology and ethics, benefiting both and hence enhancing social flourishing. Its interdisciplinary focus on actual and potential technological impacts in real world contexts leverages ethical analysis, risk analysis and technology evaluation, delineating underlying ethical complexities to raise novel, challenging questions (Luppicini, 2012 2013). Technoethical inquiry into social robots encourages thinking about how we can theorise the moral standing of non-humans (Gunkel, 2017), aids the critical integration of affective elements into robots (Stahl et al, 2014), enriched by the feminist-inspired, contextually-oriented ethics of care (Johansson, 2013; Van Wyberghe, 2016 2013). TR also feeds into responsible research and innovation practices: social robots in caring contexts, like carebots for the elderly, require negotiated ethical deliberation from all stakeholders on their appropriate form, function, role and relationship capabilities if they are to benefit all parties rather than diminish social flourishing (Stahl & Coeckelbergh 2016; Stahl et al, 2014; Van Wynsberghe, 2016 2013).