6/10/22
Sophia the robot has been on a roll lately. Earlier in the year, its creator David Hanson told Jimmy Fallon that the bot is “basically alive.” At the beginning of October, it showed up at the United Nations, announcing to delegates: “I am here to help humanity create the future.” And just last week, Sophia was awarded an honorary citizenship by Saudi Arabia. The headline from Arab News? “Sophia the robot becomes first humanoid Saudi citizen.”
If this sounds like a PR stunt to you, well, you’re right: the Saudi kingdom was using this eye-grabbing headline to promote a tech summit, part of its nationwide policy to transform an oil-based economy into something more forward-thinking. But it’s not just headline fluff. Some experts say this sort of approach to robot rights is actively damaging, both to public understanding of technology and to civil society itself.
“It’s obviously bullshit,” Joanna Bryson, a researcher in AI ethics at the University of Bath, tells The Verge. “What is this about? It’s about having a supposed equal you can turn on and off. How does it affect people if they think you can have a citizen that you can buy.”
The question of whether or not we should be giving robots rights is a big one, but first we need to be clear about what Sophia is — and that’s certainly not “basically alive,” no matter what its creator says.
History
Sophia was first activated on February 14, 2016.The robot, modeled after the ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti,[9] Audrey Hepburn, and its inventor's wife, Amanda Hanson, is known for its human-like appearance and behavior compared to previous robotic variants. As of 2018, Sophia's architecture includes scripting software, a chat system, and OpenCog, an AI system designed for general reasoning.[11] Sophia imitates human gestures and facial expressions and is able to answer certain questions and to make simple conversations on predefined topics (e.g. on the weather).[12] Sophia uses speech recognition technology from Alphabet Inc. (the parent company of Google) and is "designed to get smarter over time".[citation needed] Its speech synthesis ability is provided by CereProc's text-to-speech engine, and also allows it to sing. Sophia's intelligence software is designed by Hanson Robotics.The AI program analyses conversations and extracts data that allows it to improve responses in the future.[15]
Hanson designed Sophia to be a suitable companion for the elderly at nursing homes, or to help crowds at large events or parks. He has said that he hopes that the robot can ultimately interact with other humans sufficiently to gain social skills.Sophia is marketed as a "social robot" that can mimic social behavior and induce feelings of love in humans.
Sophia has at least nine robot humanoid "siblings" who were also created by Hanson Robotics. Fellow Hanson robots are Alice, Albert Einstein Hubo, BINA48, Han, Jules, Professor Einstein, Philip K. Dick Android, Zeno,[17] and Joey Chaos.Around 2019–20, Hanson released "Little Sophia" as a companion that could teach children how to code, including support for Python, Blockly, and Raspberry P
Public figure
On November 21, 2017, Sophia was named the United Nations Development Programme's first Innovation Champion for Asia and the Pacific.[5] The announcement was made at the Responsible Business Forum in Singapore, an event hosted by the UNDP in Asia and the Pacific and Global Initiatives. On stage, it was assigned its first task by UNDP Asia Pacific Chief of Policy and Program, Jaco Cilliers.
Sophia has appeared on CBS 60 Minutes with Charlie Rose, Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan,[30] and outlets like CNBC, Forbes, Mashable, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Sophia was featured in AUDI's annual report[31] and was on the cover of ELLE Brasil magazine. Sophia has also appeared in videos and music videos, including The White King, and as the lead female character in pop singer Leehom Wang’s music video A.I.
A Sophia lookalike was portrayed by drag queen Gigi Goode in the "Snatch Game" episode of the twelfth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Goode won the episode with her character "Maria the Robot", based heavily on Sophia and named after a robot featured in the Fritz Lang film Metropolis.
Immediate Consequences
Unfortunately, the notion of robot citizenship is such a modern issue that there are very few other instances to compare Saudi Arabia to. However, Japan has taken similar actions by granting residency to AI, putting them at the forefront of the conversation as well. Like Saudi Arabia, Japan hopes to stimulate the economy while also preserving ethnic and cultural homogeneity. Unlike Saudi Arabia, Japan has planned ahead and began to create provisional guidelines for the integration of robots.
As mentioned in the introduction, the main guidelines for human-robot interaction are Asimov’s four Laws of Robotics. These loose ideas are currently some of the only guiding ethical principles for the field of AI on the international scale. This necessitates individual nations that intend to integrate robots to create further guidelines that fit their own social and cultural conceptualization of human rights and robot rights. As the Japanese social historian Akihiko stated, “universal human rights can and should be justified by different cultures through their own terms and perspectives.” In line with this reasoning, Japan created their own laws of robotics. During the 1950s, Japanese scientist Tezuka Osamu created his own set of 10 laws for human-robot interaction, integrating Japanese social values. Then, in 2005-2007, a consortium of Japanese lawyers, roboticists, and IT specialists gathered to create concrete laws similar to those of Asimov but tailored to Japanese society. During this time, they compiled the “Living with Robots” guidebook that included a set of laws that combined Asimov’s and Osamu’s laws to create a set of principles that was broad in scope while also considering Japanese social institutions. Like in Japan, Saudi society is based on a strict set of social and familial values. These values are primarily derived from Sharia Law, so in order to effectively include robots as members of society, Saudi Arabia should consider synthesizing Asimov’s Laws with principles taken from Sharia to create personalized rules that conform to Saudi societal institutions. As a country with similar social institutions to many other nations in the Arab world, Saudi Arabia is in the unique position to be able to lead the Arab world in terms of Artificial Intelligence and ethics, but it is essential that they begin to plan for a future of robot dependent society.
Japan has also made preliminary provisions for AI obtaining citizenship. The Japanese Koseki System is a rigid legal system for household registration aimed at preserving Japanese homogeneity. The Koseki system allows Japanese individuals to obtain Koseki based on their familial ties to Japan. In 2010, a robot named Paro was able to obtain a Koseki on the basis of having a Japanese “father”, because the robot’s inventor is Japanese. Likewise, if Saudi Arabia seeks to integrate robot citizens, there are a number of adaptations that it must be willing to make in order to ensure that the transition is effective. This requires revisiting the Saudi Nationality System, which outlines 3 main ways to attain citizenship: by birth, marriage, or naturalization. Sophia was clearly not able to be granted citizenship by birth or marriage, so that leaves only naturalization as a way for her to obtain citizenship. In order to be naturalized, one must meet a set of criteria including being of legal age, being a resident for 10 years, and being fluent in Arabic. Sophia evidently meets none of these criteria and is therefore a direct contradiction of Saudi citizenship policy. While Sophia’s case may be considered an exception, the government can not continue to make such arbitrary decisions. If the Saudi government hopes to continue with the trend of allowing AI citizenship, they must adapt the Nationality System to accommodate robot citizens.
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