At a recent Future Investment Initiative event in Saudi Arabia, a very special event took place. Sophia, a realistic humanoid robot created by the Hong Kong company Hanson Robotics, became the first robot ever to receive official citizenship, and Saudi Arabia accordingly became the first country in the world to grant such citizenship.
After the citizenship ceremony, the newly minted citizen was given the floor. “I am happy to be appreciated so highly. This is a historic moment, and I am very happy to be the first robot to become an official citizen,” Sophia stated. During the press conference that followed, the robot was pounced upon by “sharks of the pen” who asked her some very tricky questions.
Andrew Sorkin of CNBC and The New York Times stood out. He almost interrupted the robot at the very end and asked, “This is all very interesting, of course we believe you. But we all want to prevent a bad scenario for the future of humanity.” The robot did not lose face and replied, “You listen too much to Elon Musk and watch too many Hollywood movies. Don’t worry, if I’m okay, you and all of humanity will be okay.”
Interestingly enough, Elon Musk himself reacted rather promptly to the “stone in his garden,” writing the following on his Twitter: “Let this one review and analyze movies like “The Godfather” and you get the worst case scenario.” As a reminder to our readers, in the recent past, Elon Musk, as well as several other famous personalities, Stephen Hawking among them, issued a warning about the unfortunate consequences that the development of artificial intelligence systems can lead to. And it seems that the first phase of the war between humans and robots has already begun, though so far only in verbal form and on Twitter as a “battlefield.”
And in conclusion, one oddity should be noted. Saudi Arabia is a country where women are disenfranchised, and here a robot who clearly identifies herself as a woman gets Saudi citizenship. Apparently, Sophia’s lawyers managed to find loopholes in the country’s laws that allowed a female robot to obtain full civil rights, something that normal Saudi women are deprived of.
