(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology once hosted a panel that seemingly endorsed the idea of giving “child-size sex robots” to sex offenders, claiming it may keep them from abusing real children.
Disturbingly, the same MIT Media Lab once accepted funding from convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein over 17 years, the Daily Caller reported on Wednesday.
That lab also held a July 2016 conference without “social and moral constraints” to discuss pedophilia. According to the Caller, panelists argued pedophilia should not be viewed as a “moral failing,” but rather a medical condition.
MIT even considered inviting Epstein to one of its events that same month, according to a 2020 report commissioned by the university, per the Caller.
“Once child-size sex robots hit the market, which they will, is the use of these robots going to be a healthy outlet for people to express these sexual urges and thus protect children and reduce child abuse? Or is the use of these robots going to encourage, normalize, propagate that behavior?” one panelist asked.
“We can’t research it [because of reporting restrictions],” the panelist added. “But I do wonder whether they’re doing more harm than good in these cases. Because as much as people want these sexual urges — the urges, not the act — to be a moral failing, they are a psychological issue.”
Another panelist argued that such robots could help researchers better understand pedophilia.
“The notion of studying sexual deviance and actual normal humans interacting with these things can provide the basis for a deeper understanding of how that operates,” the panelist added.
Headline USA tried to embed video footage of the disturbing panel, but MIT restricted it from being shared. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxiT5Q6WZaU
MIT spokesperson Kimberly Allen dodged questions about whether Epstein had been invited to a July 2016 conference and downplayed the lab’s involvement in a statement.
“The panel referenced occurred nearly a decade ago, and we can’t comment on individual programming decisions a department made. Thousands of events take place on our campus each year,” Allen said. “As a general practice, we also don’t comment on the individually held and freely expressed views of any particular community member. The views of any individual community member are their own.”
