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Saudi Arabia Becomes First Nation To Grant Citizenship To Humanoid Robot (foxbusiness.com)
Saudi Arabia became the first country in the world to offer citizenship to a humanoid robot, but Brad Keywell, CEO of Uptake, a predictive analytics technology company, told FOX Business on Thursday artificial intelligence (AI) will not replace humans anytime soon. From a report: "Humans are made super-human through the intelligence that can be derived from these sensors and there is a clear argument that's made about the possibility that there will be no humans, there'd be just autonomous everything... but this is something that has historically involved humans and I just don't see that changing," he told Maria Bartiromo on "Mornings with Maria." Uptake's products are used in a collection of industries ranging from energy to aviation, helping "people and machines work better and faster," according to the company website.
If i'd looked at the URL first i wouldn't have been expecting much from a FOX article, but it failed even to meet those low standards. It says nothing at all about the robot and consists almost entirely of Kaywell's semi-coherent musings on the topic.
A quick search resulted in this article from Bloomberg. Which at least explains what they're talking about, though still not in very great detail.
As expected it's a PR stunt, relating to the "robot city" they're planning to build.
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But only because it's a Sunni robot and not a Shi'ite one.
TFA doesn't say. In fact, it only mentions Saudi Arabia in the first half of the first sentence, and then abruptly veers into a shameless promotion of "Uptake" with plenty of vacuous statements by its CEO, and never mentions Saudi Arabia again.
Here is a link with some actual information. Here is another.
The robot's name is Sophia. Since she is female, presumably she won't be allowed to drive. But she is pictured without a veil.