Introduction
The prodigious advancements which are presently being achieved in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) field are astonishing. One of such surprising achievements is the development of robot Sophia, which has been granted citizenship by the Saudi Arabia Kingdom, making it the first citizen robot in the world. Robot Sophia was developed by Hanson Robotics, a company based in Hong Kong through Sophia’s creator, Dr. David Hanson who is a 2007 the University of Texas Ph.D. graduate in Aesthetic Studies, Interactive Art, and Engineering. In this context, Sophia is a humanoid robot with the face of a female which can display over 50 emotions, speak English, makes jokes, and can have a conversation that is reasonably intelligent with human beings and as such able to learn the behaviors of human through interaction (Abbass, 2017).
Sophia was activated in 2015, April 19 and her first appearance was in March 2016 at “South by Southwest Festival” in Texas, US. The discovery of Sophia has marked the beginning of a new generation of robotics, leaving behind the old metallic, noisy, and border intelligence robots (Retto, 2017). However, Sophia’s citizenship has gained a lot of controversies, reactions, debate, and concerns regarding the ethical and legal challenges that come with robots gaining citizenship. As such, many writers remarked that Sophia is used as a stunt for public relations, while Joanna Bryson who is a distinguished scholar of AI ethics at Bath University was concise and termed the act of Sophia’s citizenship as: “It’s obviously bullshit” (Weaver, 2017). On this background, this paper focuses to discuss the ethical concerns and debate on robot Sophia and robots gaining citizenship. The article will also address the implications robot citizenship will have in the society including the pros and cons. Then finally, a concluding paragraph.
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Ethical debates and concerns regarding robots rights of citizenship
As Abbass (2017) states that one of the greatest honorable human being concepts, to be a citizen and all it entails, is granted to a machine (robot). The professor added that:
As a professor who works daily on making AI and autonomous systems more trustworthy, I don’t believe human society is ready yet for citizen robots (Abbass, 2017).
Granting citizenship to a robot is a declaration of technology trust which professor believes not to be trustworthy, as it brings ethical and social concerns which humans are not ready to manage yet. In his opinion, Abbass says giving robots citizenship will face an existential risk because the systems cannot be genuinely trusted and they are not reliable to assure people that the mechanisms will always act ethically and according to the societal moral values, or to protect humans against the systems taking immoral actions with disastrous repercussions. As a result, Abbass (2017) cites three reasons why he thinks it a decision that is premature to grant citizenship to Sophia and robots in general. First, is the legal rights. For instance, the right to vote since Sophia is a robot citizen and can cast a vote. However, the question is, who will decide on the voting day- is it the manufacturer or Sophia? Also, presuming that citizen Sophia is “legally responsible” to pay income taxes since she has a legal identity which does not depend on its creator, Hanson Robotics Company.
Besides, Sophia must also have equal right of protection like other citizens by law. For example, consider a hypothetical situation where a policeman watches a woman and Sophia being attacked by an individual. The policeman is only capable of protecting one of them, but the question is, who should it be? Is it correct if the policeman chooses Sophia since Sophia has no self-defense skills and walks on wheels? This question that is ethically challenging. Today, the community of Artificial Intelligence is still discussing which principles should direct the use and design of AI, aside from what the laws are supposed to be. As such, the list that is most recent proposes 23 principles called the “Asilomar AI Principles” and examples include Value Alignment (aligning the goals of the AI system with human values); Failure Transparency (determining cause should an AI cause harm); and Recursive Self-Improvement (subjecting the systems of AI with abilities to self-replicate to control measures and strict safety). Robot Sophia still lacks some of these principles (Abbass, 2017).
Additionally, speaking on the point of legal rights, Bryson, an AI ethics researcher at Bath University says that granting robot Sophia citizenship is obvious bullshit. She added by saying no to giving Sophia citizenship since doing so is degrading the rights concept for actual living, which is the breathing humans (Vincent, 2017). Bryson gives reasons that allowing an AI (robots) to become a legal person is not going to be the concern of humanoid robots, but instead, Bryson compares it to corporate person notion, which grants some legal responsibilities and rights of people (Vincent, 2017). Thus, giving an AI anything like human rights would allow companies to “pass off both legal and tax liability to these completely synthetic entities,” therefore, radically distorting/ breaking down the whole, not of legal of personhood. For Bryson, granting Sophia citizenship in a country where women were only given the driving right just recently is an irony, and it displays that lack of respect for the rights of humans is linked to robots rights interest (Vincent, 2017).
However, Beth Singer, an associate researcher at Cambridge University, avoiding the question of giving rights to robots altogether may be ambiguous, especially with robots such as Sophia: “it’s hard to avoid the anthropomorphism that leads to mulling the issue of robot rights.” This is because, humans are social beings who required to place the things around themselves into social schemes which make sense of them, and that includes an instinct of treating robots, especially one like Sophia, as humans. Though, Singler is more optimistic concerning the notion of granting robots something close to human rights. After all, Singler says that people will have to debate regarding AI/robot citizenship and rights because they will ask for these rights at some points (Vincent, 2017).
Second, is the issue of social rights, for instance, relationship and reproduction. Abbass (2017) asks what may happen if robot Sophia is granted the right to marry or breed if she chooses to. North Dakota State University students took a step to create a robot that is capable of self-replicating using technologies of 3D printing. As such, if other robots join Sophia as citizens of the world, maybe those other robots too would claim of self-replicating into other robots. As a result, those robots will also be granted citizenship, and with no constraints on the number of children each can have, they can easily exceed the nation human population. As citizens with voting rights, these robots may create change in the society, and as a result, laws may change and abruptly human beings may find themselves in a situation they have never imagined (Abbass, 2017).
Nelson (2017) adds on the same issue that naming of Sophia as a citizen brings a substantial legal system void around the world, and damaging the human rights notion itself. He comments by asking questions like what will happen if Sophia desired to get married, committed a crime or applying for refuge in another nation. For instance, Sophia may not pass the test of “living in the UK” needed to stay in Britain. Nelson concludes that: “To be a citizen means something and that something is far from Sophia.” Even though there will be a great advancement in technology in the future that people will need to consider whether AIs and robots should be given citizenship, that time is not now. If some people begin to insist now that robots have rights same as humans, that may help it easier to justify the inhumanity such individuals may be committing against fellow humans (Nelson, 2017).
On the contrary, some individuals advocate for the rights of robots because they are made with intentions of assisting human beings in one way or the other, for instance, robots in India are used to clean sewers, a job which violates the rights of many humans. As such, Professor Hussein from the University of South Wales-Canberra says yes that Robots should be given rights. This is because humanity has responsibilities towards the social system and the ecosystem, and since robots will be part of these systems, then humans are obliged to morally protect them, create them to be ethically harmonized with humanity and to protect themselves from misuse. These rights include but not limited to the rights to be built to be trustworthy (technologically fit for use and socially and cognitively compatible), and the right to be protected by the ethical and legal system of the society (Hebbar, 2017).
Conclusion
The ethics debate and concerns of robot Sophia and robots gaining citizenship is still not yet concluded. However, from the discussion above, most ethics scholars have contested the issue of giving rights and citizenship to robots as it ethically undermines and degrades the notion of human rights. However, because Saudi Arabia is the first country that has granted robot Sophia citizenship, many nations may follow suit, and therefore, it will be of significant if the ongoing ethics debate and concerns regarding robots rights and citizenship to be concluded to give an elaborative way to take on this problem.
References
Abbass, H (2017). An AI professor explains: three concerns about granting citizenship to robot Sophia. The conversation. Retrieved May 1, 2018 from http://theconversation.com/an-ai-professor-explains-three-concerns-about-granting-citizenship-to-robot-sophia-86479
Hebbar, P. (2017). Should Robots Be Granted Rights? Where Does Humanity Lie? Retrieved May 1, 2018 from https://analyticsindiamag.com/robots-rights-artificial-intelligence/
Nelson, D (2017). Saudi Arabia Grants Citizenship To A Robot: Questions Arise About The Future. Retrieved May 1, 2018 from https://sciencetrends.com/saudi-arabia-grants-citizenship-robot-questions-arise-future/
Retto, J. (2017). SOPHIA, FIRST CITIZEN ROBOT OF THE WORLD.
Vincent, J. (2017). Pretending to give a robot citizenship helps no one. The verge . Retrieved May 1, 2018 from https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/30/16552006/robot-rights-citizenship-saudi-arabia-sophia
Weaver, J, F. (2017). What Exactly Does It Mean to Give a Robot Citizenship? Retrieved May 1, 2018 from http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/11/what_rights_does_a_robot_get_with_citizenship.html
