Can a sexbot be a murderer?

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Yep!

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God, she’s beautiful.

Oh O Spaghettios!

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I’ve enjoyed his other books incl. the short story collection and The Windup Girl, so I will mos def be checking this one out!

As an aside, does anyone know if Gibson has revealed whether or not The Peripheral is kicking off another trilogy? God I hope so.

Well, cinema has already established that they can be FRAMED for murder at any rate…

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French sexbots are incompatible with the first law of robotics.

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Huh. Sounds like an intriguing mix of Ex Machina and ST:TNG “The Positronic Man”. I’m trying to think of the short story the TNG story copped for that; I kept thinking Adam Link but I don’t think it’s that.

I remember several reviewers dinging Ex Machina for the hoary old murderous AI trope, but few of them picked up on the robots being more sentient than they appeared, and just what a creep Oscar Isaac’s character was, and completely miss that the story isn’t really about AI. Anyway, I digress.

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This message brought to you by the Space Pope.

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Thematically, it reminds me of this novel, about the trial of a robot who kills it’s rapist.

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The Beast ARG…

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Surprised that book was not written by Piers Anthony!

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If one walks down to the station and confesses to having planned and executed a killing and requests an attorney; I’d be inclined err on the side of ‘probably a moral agent’, barring evidence to the effect that it was just scripted to do that.

This question is deeply nontrivial because we don’t really have anything approaching clear boundaries for agency in humans(it is more or less agreed, at least for operational purposes, that humans are agents; but push any of the boundaries and it devolves into vague hand-waving pretty quickly: how old is old enough to be an ‘adult’ and thus a full agent? How drunk is too drunk to be considered to be exercising agency? What, if any, dumb mistakes are caused by bounded rationality that the person should be protected from, rather than merely indicating economically irrational preferences? etc, etc.); but I don’t see any reason why sexbots would be considered any differently than SCADA systems, aliens, or rats of NIHM for the application of “Well, did it kill somebody and is it a moral agent?”

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Paolo doesn’t need sex robots to get my money!

Dogs get put down.

Robots get…

Pris didn’t kill anybody. It was only Leon and I don’t personally consider him to be a “Basic pleasure model”.

edit: oh yeah forgot that Roy killed JF

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Faced with the potential lawsuit, a large company would want it defined as liability, a small company would want murder. The large company would survive, the small company would fold regardless of the cases outcome. Redefining it as murder would get the company off the financial hook. Other companies would step in however and file amicus briefs arguing that it is not murder because if it is murder the entire industry has to deal with the consequences of being digital slavers.

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I would figure that owning a sexbot is akin to owning any other kind of slave or even a pet.

That after the sale, the seller’s liability to the buyer is waived, barring some unknown problem or defect which was known to the seller at the time of purchase but concealed.

I am sure there is some law on the subject from before 1861. A case involving someone returning a defective slave or a wrongful death lawsuit against a slave seller when a buyer’s property went “Full Nat Turner” on them. .

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Not for lack of trying. But superhuman acrobatics is no match for a freaky huge pistol.

She tried to kill Deckard. Made a pretty good fist of it, too.

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If we consider Mika non-sentient, the device is still part of evidence under investigation of a suspicious death. Deactivating the device while the investigation is pending would be tampering with evidence, wouldn’t it?

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