An academic conference focusing on sex with robots, planned for this month in Montana, was canceled after a backlash against a proposed speech by Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, the Independent is reporting.
Protests from activists sparked the cancellation of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment (ACE), the newspaper said. A linked conference by the International Congress of Love and Sex with Robots (LSR) was scheduled alongside the event. That conference also has been canceled, according to the Independent.
“Since the arrangements being made for both conferences were inextricably intertwined, we have had no alternative, but to postpone the congress on Love and Sex with Robots,” organizer Dr. David Levy wrote on the group’s website.
“The congress had been due to take place at the University of Montana in Missoula, alongside the 2018 Advances in Computing Entertainment Conference. When it was announced that one of the keynote talks at ACE was to be given by Steve Bannon on the subject of employment opportunities for minorities in the computing entertainment industry, there were so many protests against Mr Bannon participating in the ACE conference that it became necessary to cancel the 2018 ACE conference.
“Since the arrangements being made for both conferences were inextricably intertwined, we have had no alternative but to postpone the congress on Love and Sex with Robots.”.
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