Yesterday, Sophia, a robot, was declared a citizen of Saudi-Arabia.
Although we should probably see this primarily as a publicity stunt, probably in response to the appointment of a minister for Artificial Intelligence earlier this week in the UAE, still this is an important event for AI and especially for the whole society.
Sophia, built by Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong, is a talking head. It is a very handsome womanlike head standing on a rigid platform. Without wishing to dismiss the very remarkable qualities of this robot, in particular its ability to understand and answer spoken language, Sophia is a chat bot which comments and answers are carefully crafted to meet expected questions. In fact, it will have no spontaneous opinion on the new Dutch government on the last soccer game of Real Madrid.
Regardless of the remarkable qualities of this Sophia, what makes this event so important is that it has created a precedent, and a dangerous one as it is. Since ancient times, much has changed in the inclusiveness of citizenship of a country, from the male citizens of Athens, to include women, and people of different races birthplaces. However, refugees, immigrants and their children, still do not have citizenship in most countries. Sophia is mainly a piece of software and hardware, and therefore can be cloned without much effort. If there are many identical copies of Sophia will all of them be Saudi citizens? To this respect, Sophia should praise itself lucky to be a ‘it’ and not a women, or its position in Saudi society would be less enviable. (Would it be required to wear a veil?)
But above all, citizenship involves rights and obligations and reflects responsibilities. Providing city citizenship to a machine indirectly makes this machine responsible for its actions and its consequences. In my view, this is something we as society should not want. Machines are built. Like a car or hammer, their developers, builders, owners and users are the ones responsible. Giving responsibility to the machine opens the way for these parties to withdraw from their own responsibility and liability.
We are responsible.
