SEXROBOTER - Zukunft und Tabu - Ethische und gesellschaftliche Implikationen auf FRAUen*

"<< Background >>The focus of the project is to raise awareness about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on women* and their sexuality. In addition, a focus of our project is how ethical and socio-political implications of AI in sex robots have an impact on the equality of women* in our European society. Today, AI is being developed worldwide, applied in a variety of systems - some of them discriminatory - and will significantly influence many areas of our lives. AI and robotics are becoming increasingly present in many areas of life, including those of women*. The main problem here is the use of basic training data from the past, which is used to train AI and its machine applications. Often these already contain biases. In addition, the world and value concepts of the developers have a strong influence on the results of a later AI decision within robotics. Unfortunately, we still see strong deficits in the participation and involvement of women* in the development of AI. << Objectives >>The main goal of the project is to prevent sex robots from perpetuating the inequality of female and non-binary persons in our society. This is to be achieved by developing ethical guidelines and thus providing a direction that indicates ethical, moral and legal principles for the development and use of sex robots. The guidelines are intended to develop and implement international standards and thus identify and communicate a ""status quo"". On the one hand, attention (creating awareness) should be drawn to sex robots and AI in sexuality, the knowledge of staff in adult education should be expanded and they should be sensitised to the topic. So that they can in turn act as multipliers and involve a larger audience. On the other hand, we wanted to enter into a dialogue with decision-makers and, in particular, involve female participants in the decision-making process throughout the entire process. In addition, we informed women* as an indirect target group about our project via social media (visually) and a podcast (acoustically). << Implementation >>In addition to the continuous project management activities and the transnational meetings (face-to-face, online), the project staff from the participating partner countries conducted a country-specific literature review, desk research and anonymous online survey. From this, a consolidation paper was developed and four workshops were held. In these workshops, actors from politics, science, development, ethics and education were involved to act as multipliers and mentors for the ethical implications of AI and humanoid robotics with sex robots. One of these workshops was held at the world's largest conference on sex robots. A number of posts for social media channels were created and published. A website for the project was created and other dissemination activities such as newsletters and EPALE were carried out. Interviews with stakeholders were conducted and edited into a podcast series and made available on various platforms and the website. As part of the dissemination activities, a short virtual webinar event was held to present the project results. The website is www.sexrobotswomen.com.<< Results >>As organisations we have gained experience in project management with European context and partners. Important competences related to language, media and breaking down cultural barriers were built during the project. New common needs and priorities in the areas of general aduelt education were developed. These experiences supported the change towards a European thinking and acting organisation. Materials (consolidation paper, survey results, guidelines, English language webinar) for education staff in Germany, Italy and Spain in the three national languages and English were produced and made available for use. These materials contain the results of the literature and desk research as well as the online survey and the workshops. On this basis, the first version of ethical guidelines for the development of sex robots has been developed and published. Furthermore, the podcast series on the topic of sex robots and AI is available for our target group and other interested parties, as is a recording of an online webinar in English. In addition, a second project was carried out building on this and in parallel."