Would you let a robot in?

There was some sort of spat over the weekend between Dar Sleeper, vice president of product and design at 1X, and WIRED. Sleeper had provided WIRED with an exclusive on 1X’s $20,000 humanoid robot and he felt “betrayed” by the magazine’s coverage, alleging that WIRED turned it into a story about “sexualizing robotics.”

I read the story. It expressed some skepticism, especially surrounding privacy issues. In certain situations, 1X allows a human ‘specialist’ to take over the robot remotely. The reporter also argued that one of 1X’s advertising had displayed sexual undertones. Perhaps that was entirely unintentional by 1X and the reporter read into it too much. Perhaps not. Perception can be subjective.

But setting all of this aside, I think the broader public reaction to humanoid robots and having them in their own homes raises some genuinely interesting questions.

Some people compare owning a humanoid robot to slavery. I don't think that analogy holds. A robot is no more a slave than a…