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Modern Wisdom

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

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.74.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2021

⏱️ 69 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sven Nyholm is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at Utrecht University.

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, who is responsible if a self driving car kills someone and much more...

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello wonderful people, welcome back. My guest today is Sven Nyholm, he's an assistant

0:06.7

professor of philosophy and ethics at the Eindhoven University of Technology and we are

0:11.1

talking about whether sex robots and self-driving cars are ethical.

0:16.7

Robots are all around us, they perform actions, make decisions, collaborate with humans, be

0:21.0

our friends, perhaps fall in love and potentially harm us. What does this mean for our relationship

0:27.8

to them and with them? Expect to learn why robots might need to have rights, whether

0:33.7

it's ethical for robots to be sex slaves, why self-driving cars are being programmed to

0:38.4

drive with human mistakes built in, who is responsible if a self-driving car kills someone

0:44.6

and much more. Being honest, I've thought long and hard about so many of the questions

0:51.7

that I got to bring up with Sven today. I find ethics particularly around emerging

0:55.6

technologies so fascinating and I really hope that you enjoy it as well. I'm going to put

1:01.1

a warning out there, we do get into some discussions around child sex robots and the ethics

1:06.4

of that. If that is the sort of topic which is going to make you uncomfortable, please

1:10.6

go and enjoy one of the other 286 episodes which are available on the show. I thought

1:15.6

I would put that out there. It's a fascinating and slightly uncomfortable conversation to have.

1:21.1

It really challenges our principles around what does it mean to have sex? Can we divorce

1:27.4

the act of sex from the meaning behind it? I would really be interested to hear what

1:33.0

you think. Leave a comment on the YouTube channel or just get at me at Chris Will X. Also,

1:39.5

please don't forget to press subscribe. It is the best way that you can support this

1:43.4

show. Not only does it mean that I continue to find bigger and better guests to deliver

1:48.0

to you, but it creates this family of curious, radically sensible humans, all of whom are improving

1:55.9

themselves by having conversations with fascinating people. So open your podcast app and press

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