Slashdot Mirror
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.
But only because it's a Sunni robot and not a Shi'ite one.
Atheist, Christian or Apostate robots need not apply, ditto for female ones without being accompanied by their developer.
Jewish ones will be thrown into the sea, so they'd better be waterproof.
PS. Is it allowed to charge or get an oil change in the day during Ramadan for a robot citizen?
Presumably, it's a male robot and enjoys many rights not afforded to Saudi women.
The subject says it. Perhaps those should get citizenship first? Or proper treatment and rights?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"Our "AI" isn't even at the intelligence of a clever mouse yet."
I'd pay for a stupid mouse one.
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.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Saudi Arabia can finally be a democracy! Where all the robots vote for the current monarch.
Even if you believe that we'll one day have strong AI that is intelligent in every way that we think of ourselves as being intelligent, we can all agree that we're not there yet. We're nowhere close, in fact.
So if you've just conferred human rights to an object, how long until we see people protesting with signs that read "Software updates are murder"? After all, you'd effectively be destroying the very essence of one of your citizens if you replace the thing that makes them intelligent—their software—with something else. And if they do it voluntarily, do we call it suicide? Are we allowed to reuse their robotic chassis if they don't sign off as an organ donor? Can we sell their body parts, or is that illegal? Are minor software updates okay, in the same way that we're okay with prosthetics? At what point does this a ship of Theseus situation, where it's still them, even though nothing is still the same?
Perhaps a more pragmatic question: can it vote? If so, and if updating their software isn't disallowed, what's to stop me from making millions of them and programming them all to vote according to my wishes?
Is it a new trick how to program new citizens to ensure that totalitarian dynasty will never be ousted?
You know... it is so easy to clone new citizens by just one key press in case the real ones decide to vote for somebody else...
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
I don't give a shit about Brad Keywell. I want to learn about this robot. They don't say a thing about it. Not who developed it, what it does. What kind of salary it is going to be paid, how taxes are going to be collected on it, it's work hours, overtime, maintenance insurance, or any of the other things that go along with being a fully-fledged citizen.
Does anyone have a better source for this?
This is an absolute monarchy after all, so it's really more a claim of authority over than a grant of rights to.
The only constitutional limitation of the Saudi monarchy is compliance with Sharia, the Quran and Sunnah. Insofar as these documents do not grant rights to machines of any sort, granting "citizenship" to a robot is effectively meaningless.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
...and now they won't need to.
I'd like to think this is part of a clever American plan for world domination by convincing the rest of the planet that force fields and intelligent robots and starships are real through decades of pushing science fiction and fantasy movies, books, and television shows, thereby turning the rest of the planet into gullible saps. I really would like to think that. Unfortunately, it seems some of us are starting to believe our own propaganda here, so I'm not sure.