Ethical considerations of gendering very humanlike androids from an interdisciplinary perspective

Abstract

A large proportion of “very humanlike” androids are assigned aesthetics typically associated with femininity. Ethical and discriminatory issues have yet to be given in-depth attention in procedural literature. This position paper suggests that implicitly viewing humanlike robots as agents that could, in future, substitute “undesirable” and/or exploitable humans may affect not just the robots' design, but also the human demographics considered replaceable. Such tendencies must be carefully considered by researchers, businesses, and policy makers. Interdisciplinary analysis may inform and expand social and cultural negotiations in the design of these androids.