| Summary: | <p>The academic and public debate surrounding the ascription of legal personhood—viz., the capacity to hold legal rights and/or to bear legal responsibilities—to autonomous robots has so far focused on developing an appropriate legal framework to regulate wrongs caused by those robots. In this thesis, I shift the focus: I argue that we need to develop an appropriate legal framework to regulate wrongs inflicted on those robots.</p>
<p>I focus on sexual autonomous robots (SARs)—viz., humanoid AI-based autonomous robots which enact sexual relationships with humans—because the imminent emergence of this kind of sexual technology introduces a troubling new way to enact sexual violence. Robotic sexual violence (RSV) cases share the following general structure. There is some human agent A, a SAR B and some action φ such that A φ-s B and, if B were human, A’s φ-ing B would be a sexual offence. What is the appropriate legal response to RSV?</p>
<p>There appear to be two classes of responses to this question. On the one hand, there are those who argue for the legal permissibility of RSV by appeal to politically liberal principles. On the other hand, there are those who argue for the legal proscription of RSV by appeal to moral conceptions of the good. My contribution to this literature is to articulate and defend an argument for the legal proscription of RSV by appeal to politically liberal principles which all free and equal citizens in a pluralistic society can reasonably accept. In particular, I argue that there is a Rawlsian “public reasons” justification for the legal proscription of RSV as part of the cultivation of those political virtues which are required by reciprocity in the just society. I show that the attribution of legal personhood to SARs, including legal rights against RSV, would be part of an appropriate legal response to RSV. I conclude with some reflections on the wider ramifications of my thesis for the AI ethics literature.</p>
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