On Oct 11, 2017 Sophia, a human looking robot, developed by the Hong Kong robotic firm gain citizenship to Saudi Arabia. While Sophia is still in the crude stages of binary evolution and still appearing mechanical, I do have some fears about the what this open the doors to. The idea of citizenship is broad and will mean different things to different cultures. I'm not familiar enough with Saudi Arabian legalities to commit on what Sophia will be entitled to, but I believe by one nation state offering its protection to a manufactured citizen can and probably will influence other countries to follow.
So Aside from free publicity why would a company want to citizenfy some circuits . Furthermore why would a government want to wish to take on this burden. Well to answer the 1st question violence against Sophia could now be akin to violence against a person. Why would a corporation not want the extra legal protection of its products if all it had to do would be to go through some government procedures. What exactly would be protected. Just her anthropomorphic frame. If she, or another robotic citizen were hooked into the cloud would that human right extend to all the infrastructure she is connected too. This could be interesting . If this would happen would people use this logic to protect the environment as they are connected to it sustain us in a similar ways as a cloud server could sustain a fleet of robots. Probably not if for no other reason as that legal argument is harder to monetize
Sophia looks like a person, but she has more in common with a new car or one of those refrigerators who spies on you. This was an easy sell. Could a roomba get citizenship. It doesn’t look like a person so that would have been a harder sell, but once a precedent is established it's easy for lawyers to exploit such things. Maybe not a roomba, maybe a predator drone. Not only are we living in a world where it is increasingly hard not to be lojacked and remote killing technologies are becoming better but these death machines may also be giving legal rights hampering any futuristic resistance, to a possible dystopian future. But I'm sure those that control these new technologies will you them responsibly for many generations. .
Now why would a any government want to grant rights to robots. Well does Sophia get a vote. Could an election be hacked by robots. How many people spent the last year arguing politics with twitter bots. This is very new technology that advancing fast. It's near impossible to see where we are going to go with it. Maybe somebody ordaining a bunch of robots voting rights to sure up an election is far fetched, but should we rule it out. After all what is voting but figuring who would probably win in a fight if things came to violence and letting that side have their way. So in way we could justify giving the terminators hundreds of votes each.
I think there is a deeper more sinister reasons why a nation would grant perform this act of secular magic. From a nation perspective any person living in it is just a congealed set of data. The humanness of anyone really doesn’t account for anything. Laws are laws, and no matter why you break them you are demoted to criminal. Of course Robots will most likely be programed to not break laws so they will not suffer under any legal system as people do. For a robot an inanimate object to be granted citizenship insults people everywhere who do not have these rights. I feel this is a form of psychological intimidation. Essentially I see a nation saying in the most blunt way possible citizen are nothing more than programmable object. More importantly how long will it be before we start to say if a robot can become a citizen, fuck being a citizen lets just be human,