Moral Permissibility of Robot Companions

Companionships and romantic relationships are paramount to the social nature of humanity, and as society continues to innovate, the possibility of AI robots entering the equation is becoming increasingly more prominent. Simultaneously, the question of if it is morally permissible to create and engage in a romantic robot companionship is also up for contentious discussion. Would a romantic companion be able to produce mutual love, and more importantly, would a romantic relationship with a robot be considered a form of engineered bondage? In this essay, I will attempt to mitigate the overall morality of creating a romantic robot companion for oneself by evaluating various arguments and possibilities. I will do this first by considering arguments that agree that romantic robot companionship is morally permissible on the grounds of the engineering of desires, while also critiquing its pitfalls regarding rationality. Second, I will establish what it means to be a moral and rational agent when applied to artificially intelligent robots generally, then apply this methodology to companion robots specifically. Third, I will discuss the importance and likelihood of rationality in robots as well as in robot-human interaction. Finally, I will attempt to develop and decipher a middle ground between the two competing viewpoints, yet conclude that the moral impermissibility of robot companionship remains to be the most ethically and morally justifiable stance.