Do women dream of having sex with robots?

If only more women would get into computer science and robotics!

No, it is not because I think they will create better sex robots.  It is because of the exact opposite--I feel they will spend less time on how to dehumanize us humans that male scientists seem to want to do by merging us humans with robots.

In one of the paired opinion pieces in the NYT, Sherry Turkle, whom I have referred to a lot in this blog (like here) writes that there will never be an age of artificial intimacy.  Why?  For a simple and profound reason that I often write about: Empathy.

Robots can some day effectively fake empathy, yes.  But, it can never be the real thing.  And the loss of the real thing worries me, and worries Turkle too:

We diminish as the seeming empathy of the machine increases. It is technology forcing us to forget what we know about life.
In life, you are struck by the importance of presence, of the small moments of meaning, the miracle of your child’s breath, the feelings of deep human connection. When you are thinking about technology, your mind is not on all of that. We program machines to appear more empathic. Being human today is about the struggle to remain genuinely empathic ourselves. To remember why it matters, to remember what we cherish.
These days, to be human is to keep one’s mind on the glory that one is.

In the other commentary, Andy Clark argues that it is a good thing that we are merging with robots.  Guess what word never appears in his piece? Clark has nothing to say about empathy!

While I have no evidence to back me up here, I believe that Clark's commentary fits well with the stereotypical male approach to feelings and emotions.  Even sex, which he writes about, is apparently not about feelings and emotions and intimacy.

If indeed these male/female stereotypes do feed into robotics, then that is one more argument in favor of recruiting capable females into computer science and engineering.

In the meanwhile, all we can do is reflect on what it means to be human, especially if we are not going to promote the importance of empathy.  We have one clear example of what happens when we lose sight of empathy!