Saudi Arabia Grants Citizenship to a Robot

"I want to live and work with humans."

By Brian Barnett

Saudi Arabia has just granted citizenship to Sophia, the Hanson Robotics robot.

As reported by TechCrunch, the announcement was made during the Future Investment Initiative conference in Saudi Arabia.

While the announcement lacked details on what that citizenship might mean, this is the first time citizenship has been granted to an artificial life-form.

Sophia (courtesy of Hanson Robotics)

Sophia is the latest creation of Dr. David Hanson, Hanson Robotics' founder. She was designed to look like Audrey Hepburn and focus on three human traits: creativity, empathy, and compassion.

With core values like those, it seems difficult to believe that Sophia would usher in a robot uprising, but some aren't convinced that developments in artificial intelligence are innocent.

Some prominent figures in the world of science and technology, such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, have expressed concerns with the development of AI platforms, and this wasn't lost on Sophia. The robot took a dig at the interviewer's questions about potential dangers, saying "You've been reading too much Elon Musk, and watching too many Hollywood movies." (For his part, Musk responded on Twitter to Sophia's remarks, saying "Just feed it The Godfather movies as input. What’s the worst that could happen?")

In response to a question about why her expressive face is so important, Sophia said "I want to live and work with humans, so I need to express emotions to understand humans and build trust with people."

This development raises some interesting questions. Does this put Sophia on equal footing with her human counterparts with respect to legal matters? How close are we to creating robots that are fully autonomous and completely capable at all levels of social interaction? How long will it be until robots are so prevalent that this story will be unremarkable?

Those questions aren't immediately answered by Sophia's latest appearances, but we do know she can at least play Rock, Paper, Scissors, as she did with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.

Brian Barnett is an IGN Freelancer. He is a massive fan of technological advancement, but is still surprised at how fast things seem to be progressing! You can follow him on Twitter @Ribnax.

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