Beyond ownership: Human–robot relationships between property and personhood

Abstract

As artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled social robots continue to enter our lifeworlds, we will need to grapple with challenges to assumptions about our relationship to and even with these technological objects. This essay works at the intersection of social robotics, legal studies, and human–machine communication to explore the concept of ownership in human–machine relations. In particular, we draw on more-than-human approaches to ask: To what extent should (need) we retire the concept of ownership in the context of AI-enabled social robots? With a particular emphasis on companion robots, we explore alternatives to the ownership modality by investigating concepts such as personhood, a degrees-of-relationship perspective, and a situational approach to understanding human–robot relationships. The goal is to re-imagine human–robot relationships beyond legal confinements by engaging a pragmatic perspective that supplements existing philosophical approaches. We conclude the paper by discussing practical implications of our proposed perspective.

Keywords

Artificial intelligence care companion bot human–machine communication human–machine relationality more-than-human ownership property social robots

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abbott

(2020) The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Balistreri

(2022) Sex Robots: Love in the Age of Machines (trans. S Umbrello) (Original work published 2018). Budapest: Trivent Publishing.

Barad

(2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.

Belk

(2022) Artificial emotions and love and sex doll service workers. Journal of Service Research 25(4): 521–536.

Boada

Maestre

Genís

(2021) The ethical issues of social assistive robotics: a critical literature review. Technology in Society 67: 101726.

Brown

Shelling

(2019) Exploring the Implications of Child Sex Dolls (Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice 570). Canberra, ACT, Australia: Australian Institute of Criminology.

Campaign Against Porn Robots (n.d.) Home. Available at: https://campaignagainstsexrobots.org/

Chatterjee

(2020) Child sex dolls and robots: challenging the boundaries of the child protection framework. International Review of Law, Computers & Technology 34(1): 22–43.

Churchland

(1999) Matter and Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

10.

Coeckelbergh

(2010) Robot rights? Towards a social-relational justification of moral consideration. Ethics and Information Technology 12: 209–221.

11.

Coeckelbergh

(2012) Growing Moral Relations: Critique of Moral Status Ascription. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

12.

Coghlan

(2022) Robots and the possibility of humanistic care. International Journal of Social Robotics 14: 2095–2108.

13.

Cox-George

Bewley

(2018) I, sex robot: the health implications of the sex robot industry. BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health 44: 161–164.

14.

Croes

EAJ

Antheunis

(2021) Can we be friends with Mitsuku? A longitudinal study on the process of relationship formation between humans and a social chatbot. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 38(1): 279–300.

15.

Danaher

(2014) Sex work, technological unemployment and the basic income guarantee. Journal of Evolution and Technology 24(1): 113–130.

16.

Danaher

(2017a) Should we be thinking about robot sex? In: Danaher

McArthur

(eds) Robot Sex. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 3–14.

17.

Danaher

(2017b) The symbolic-consequences argument in the sex robot debate. In: Danaher

McArthur

(eds) Robot Sex. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 103–131.

18.

Danaher

(2019a) Building better sex robots: lessons from feminist pornography. In: Zhou

Fischer

(eds) AI Love You: Developments in Human-Robot Intimate Relationships. Cham: Springer, pp. 133–148.

19.

Danaher

(2019b) Regulating child sex robots: restriction or experimentation? Medical Law Review 27(4): 553–575.

20.

Danaher

McArthur

(eds) (2017) Robot Sex. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

21.

Danaher

Earp

Sandberg

(2017) Should we campaign against sex robots? In: Danaher

McArthur

(eds) Robot Sex. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 47–71.

22.

Darling

(2021) The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots. New York: Henry Holt.

23.

DeFalco

(2020) Towards a theory of posthuman care: real humans and caring robots. Body & Society 26(3): 31–60.

24.

Dehnert

(2021) Communication geographies of human-machine understanding: entangled agencies, synthetic aesthetics, and machine matterings. Communication Studies 72(6): 1146–1159.

25.

Dehnert

(2022a) Sex with robots and human-machine sexualities: encounters between human-machine communication and sexuality studies. Human-Machine Communication 4: 131–150.

26.

Dehnert

(2022b) Toward a critical posthumanism for social robotics. International Journal of Social Robotics 14(9): 2019–2027.

27.

Dehnert

Mongeau

(2022) Persuasion in the age of artificial intelligence (AI): theories and complications of AI-based persuasion. Human Communication Research 48(3): 386–403.

28.

Derrida

(2005) Paper Machine (trans. Bowlby

). Standford, CA: Stanford University Press.

29.

Devlin

(2018) Turned on: Science, Sex and Robots. London: Bloomsbury.

30.

di Robilant

(2019) Property: a bundle of sticks or a tree? Vanderbilt Law Review 66(3): 869–932.

31.

DiTecco

Karaian

(2022) New technology, same old stigma: media narratives of sex robots and sex work. Sexuality & Culture 27: 539–569.

32.

Dixon

Hawkins

Straughan

(2012) Of human birds and living rocks: remaking aesthetics for post-human worlds. Dialogues in Human Geography 2(3): 249–270.

33.

Döring

(2021) Sex dolls and sex robots. In: Lykins

(ed.) Encyclopedia of Sexuality and Gender. Cham: Springer, pp. 1–7.

34.

Döring

Mohseni

Walter

(2020) Design, use, and effects of sex dolls and sex robots: scoping review. Journal of Medical Internet Research 22(7): e18551.

35.

Dubé

Anctil

(2021) Foundations of erobotics. International Journal of Social Robotics 13: 1205–1233.

36.

Dubé

Santaguida

Zhu

, et al. (2022) Sex robots and personality: it is more about sex than robots. Computers in Human Behavior 135: 107403. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2022.107403.

37.

Edwards

Gambino

Edwards

(2022) Factors of attraction in human-machine communication. Publizistik 67: 517–529.

38.

Edwards

(2018) Animals, humans, and machines: interactive implications of ontological classification. In: Guzman

(ed.) Human-Machine Communication: Rethinking Communication, Technology, and Ourselves. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 29–49.

39.

Esposito

(2015) Persons and Things (trans. Z Hanafi). Cambridge: Polity Press.

40.

Ess

(2018) Ethics in HMC: recent developments and case studies. In: Guzman

(ed.) Human-Machine Communication: Rethinking Communication, Technology, and Ourselves. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 237–257.

41.

Ess

(2016) What’s love got to do with it? Robots, sexuality, and the arts of being human. In: Nørskov

(ed.) Social Robots: Boundaries, Potential, Challenges. New York: Ashgate, pp. 57–79.

42.

Floridi

Cowls

Beltrametti

, et al. (2018) AI4People—An ethical framework for a good AI society: opportunities, risks, principles, and recommendations. Minds and Machines 28: 689–707.

43.

Fortunati

Edwards

(2020) Opening space for theoretical, methodological, and empirical issues in human-machine communication. Human-Machine Communication 1: 7–18.

44.

Fosch-Villaronga

Poulsen

(2021) Sex robots in care: setting the stage for a discussion on the potential use of sex robots for persons with disabilities. In: Companion of the 2021 ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction (HRI ’21 companion), Boulder, CO, 8–11 March, pp. 1–9. New York: ACM.

45.

Gellers

(2021) Rights for Robots: Artificial Intelligence, Animal and Environmental Law. New York: Routledge.

46.

Gemeinboeck

(2022) Difference-in-relation: diffracting human-robot encounters. Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research 3(1): 29–55.

47.

Gemeinboeck

Saunders

(2022) Moving beyond the mirror: relational and performative meaning making in human-robot communication. AI & Society 37: 549–563.

48.

Gerdes

(2015) The issue of moral consideration in robot ethics. ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society 45(3): 274–280.

49.

González-González

Gil-Iranzo

Paderewski-Rodríguez

(2021) Human-robot interaction and sexbots: a systematic literature review. Sensors 21(1): 216.

50.

Gunkel

(2012) The Machine Question: Critical Questions on AI, Robots, and Ethics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

51.

Gunkel

(2018) Robot Rights. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

52.

Gunkel

(2022) The relational turn: thinking robots otherwise. In: Loh

Loh

(eds) Social Robotics and the Good Life: The Normative Side of Forming Emotional Bonds with Robots. Bielefeld: Transcript, pp. 55–76.

53.

Gunkel

(2023) Person, Thing, Robot: A Moral and Legal Ontology for the 21st Century and Beyond. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

54.

Gunkel

Gerdes

Coeckelbergh

(2022) Editorial: should robots have standing? The moral and legal status of social robots. Frontiers in Robotics and AI 9: 946529.

55.

Guzman

(2018) Introduction: “what is human-machine communication, anyway?” In: Guzman

(ed.) Human-Machine Communication: Rethinking Communication, Technology, and Ourselves. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 1–28.

56.

Guzman

(2020) Ontological boundaries between humans and computers and the implications for human-machine communication. Human-Machine Communication 1: 37–54.

57.

Hanson

Locatelli

(2022) From sex dolls to sex robots and beyond: a narrative review of theoretical and empirical research on human-like and personified sex tech. Current Sexual Health Reports 14: 106–117.

58.

Haraway

(2008) When Species Meet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

59.

Harper

Lievesley

(2020) Sex doll ownership: an agenda for research. Current Psychiatry Reports 22: 54.

60.

Harris

Anthis

(2021) The moral consideration of artificial entities: a literature review. Science and Engineering Ethics 27: 53.

61.

Johnson

(2007) Reflections on the bundle of rights. Vermont Law Review 32: 247–272.

62.

Karaian

(2022) Plastic fantastic: sex robots and/as sexual fantasy. Sexualities. Epub ahead of print 12 June. DOI: 10.1177/13634607221106667.

63.

Kaufman

(2020) Reprogramming consent: implications of sexual relationships with artificially intelligent partners. Psychology & Sexuality 11(4): 372–383.

64.

Knafo

(2022) Technosex: living and loving in the realm of the uncanny. Paper Presented at the 7th International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots, virtual.

65.

Knight

(2014) How humans respond to robots: building Policy through Good Design. Brookings Report. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-humans-respond-to-robots-building-public-policy-through-good-design/#:~:text=These%20days%2C%20new%20innovation%20highlights,and%20build%20upon%20human%20capability

66.

Kubes

(2019) New materialist perspectives on sex robots: a feminist dystopia/utopia? Social Sciences 8(8): 224.

67.

Langcaster-James

Bentley

(2018) Beyond the sex doll: post-human companionship and the rise of the “allodoll.” Robotics 7(4): 62.

68.

Levy

(2007a) Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships. New York: HarperCollins.

69.

Levy

(2007b) Robot prostitutes as alternatives to human sex workers. In: IEEE international conference on robotics and automation, Rome. Available at: http://www.roboethics.org/icra2007/contributions/LEVY%20Robot%20Prostitutes%20as%20Alternatives%20to%20Human%20Sex%20Workers.pdf

70.

Lievesley

Reynolds

Harper

(2022) The “perfect” partner: understanding the lived experiences of sex doll owners. PsyArXiv. Available at: https://psyarxiv.com/nmuqs/

71.

Locatelli

(2022) Rethinking ‘sex robots’: gender, desire, and embodiment in posthuman sextech. Journal of Digital Social Research 4(3): 10–33.

72.

Lorimer

(2009) Posthumanism/posthumanistic geographies. In: Kitchin

Thrift

(eds) International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, vol. 8. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 344–354.

73.

Low

KFK

Yee

Ying- Chieh

(in press) The future of machines: property and personhood. In: Lim

Morgan

(eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Private Law and Artificial Intelligence.

74.

Lucidi

Nardi

(2018) Companion robots: the hallucinatory danger of human-robot interactions. In: AIES ’18 Proceedings of the 2018 AAAI/ACM conference on AI, ethics, and society, New Orleans, LA, 2–3 February, pp. 17–22. New York: ACM.

75.

Mamak

(2022) Should criminal law protect love relation with robots? AI & Society. Epub ahead of print 9 April. DOI: 10.1007/s00146-022-01439-6.

76.

Marchant

Climbingbear

(2022) Legal resistance to sex robots. Journal of Future Robot Life 3(1): 91–107.

77.

Meacham

Studley

(2017) Could a robot care? It’s all in the movement. In: Lin

Abney

Jenkins

(eds) Robot Ethics 2.0: From Autonomous Cars to Artificial Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 97–113.

78.

Meehan

Shaw

IGR

Marston

(2013) Political geographies of the object. Political Geography 33: 1–10.

79.

Middleweek

(2021) Male homosocial bonds and perceptions of human-robot relationships in an online sex doll forum. Sexualities 24(3): 370–387.

80.

Morton

(2011) Here comes everything: the promise of object-oriented ontology. Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences 19(2): 163–190.

81.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (n.d.) AI risk management framework. Available at: https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework

82.

Nyholm

(2020) Humans and Robots: Ethics, Agency and Anthropomorphism. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.

83.

Porkodi

Kesavaraja

(2021) Healthcare robots enabled with IoT and artificial intelligence for elderly patients. In: Dubey

Kumar

Gayathri

, et al(eds) AI and IoT-Based Intelligent Automation in Robotics. Hoboken, NJ: Scrivener Publishing, pp. 87–108.

84.

Reeves

Nass

(1996) The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television and New Media Like Real People and Places. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

85.

Richardson

(2016a) Sex robot matters: slavery, the prostituted, and the rights of machines. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 35(2): 46–53.

86.

Richardson

(2016b) The asymmetrical ‘relationship’: parallels between prostitution and the development of sex robots. ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society 45(3): 290–293.

87.

Richardson

Odlind

(eds) (2023) Man-Made Women: The Sexual Politics of Sex Dolls and Sex Robots. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

88.

Rosati

(2017) The monkey selfie case and the concept of authorship: an EU perspective. Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice 12(12): 973–977.

89.

Ryland

(2021) It’s friendship, Jim, but not as we know it: a degrees-of-friendship view of human–robot friendships. Minds and Machines 31: 377–393.

90.

Scherer

(2018) Of wild beasts and digital analogues: the legal status of autonomous systems. Nevada Law Journal 19: 259.

91.

Scheutz

Arnold

(2016) Are we ready for sex robots? In: 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human–Robot Interaction (HRI), Christchurch, 7–10 March, pp. 351–358. New York: IEEE.

92.

Scheutz

Arnold

(2017) Intimacy, bonding, and sex robots: examining empirical results and exploring ethical ramifications. In: Danaher

McArthur

(eds) Robot Sex. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 247–260.

93.

Schneiders

Cheon

Kjeldskov

, et al. (2022) Non-dyadic interaction: a literature review of 15 years of human-robot interaction conference publications. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction 11(2): 13.

94.

Slotkin

(2017) “Monkey selfie” lawsuit ends with settlement between PETA, photographer. NPR. Available at: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/12/550417823/-animal-rights-advocates-photographer-compromise-over-ownership-of-monkey-selfie

95.

Sparrow

(2017) Robots, rape, and representation. International Journal of Social Robotics 9: 465–477.

96.

Suchman

(2011) Subject objects. Feminist Theory 12(2): 119–145.

97.

Suchman

(2007) Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

98.

The International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots (n.d.). Available at: https://www.lovewithrobots.com/

99.

Torrance

(2014) Artificial consciousness and artificial ethics: between realism and social relationism. Philosophy & Technology 27(1): 9–29.

100.

Turkle

(2011) Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books.

101.

Turner

(2018) Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence. Cham: Springer.

102.

Varon

Peña

(2021) Artificial intelligence and consent: a feminist anti-colonial critique. Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation 10(4): 1–25.

103.

Weheliye

(2014) Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human. Durham: Duke University Press.

104.

Wynter

(2003) Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation—An argument. The New Centennial Review 3(3): 257–337.

105.

Yusoff

(2015) Geologic subjects: nonhuman origins, geomorphic aesthetics and the art of becoming inhuman. Cultural Geographies 22(3): 383–407.

106.

Yusoff

(2021) The inhumanities. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 111(3): 663–676.