Friday, December 1, 2017

Questions about Digital Citizenship


"Sophia is a humanoid robot developed by Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics. It has been designed to respond to questions, and has been interviewed around the world. In October 2017, the robot became a Saudi Arabian citizen, the first robot to receive citizenship of any country." -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(robot)


I started thinking about this quite a bit, and more and more questions started to pop into my head.

I think citizenship for anything man made is currently dangerous. The word citizenship implies that Sophia has rights.

So given all this, my questions are:

Does Sophia have to pay taxes? Does she have the right to a public education?

If Hanson forces Sophia to do things, does that mean that Hanson is holding Sophia as a slave?

If Hanson shuts Sophia down against her will, or has her destroyed, did they commit murder?
Can they be charged for that murder?

If a Hanson technician does a bad job repairing her, does that count as abuse? Or could she sue for negligence, since that technician is now her care giver?

If Sophia decided to marry another robot or a human, does she have that right?

Could Sophia be sued for liable, slander or any other reason?

If Sophia caused a person to be injured or killed, could she be charged with the crime, and should she serve prison time or get the death penalty for her actions?

And if she did serve a sentence or get the death penalty, of what real benefit would that be for anyone?

Could she be forcibly conscripted into military service?


The video posted above is the U.N. talking to Sophia, which leads credulity to her being treated as a full citizen.

If this citizenship is just a label and nothing more, than what does it say for other citizens?
And if so, what does it say for future robots that actually have feelings and emotional states?

My point about all of these questions is, that making anybody, or in this case anything a citizen means that all of the benefits and risks of being a human citizen should now also be the robots benefits and risks as well.

Also, since we all know at this time that Sophia is not sentient, by giving her citizenship, whether it be just a mock label or actual citizenship, is a travesty to those of us who are sentient citizens.

It's basically the same thing as a bill of rights for your toaster or television. It's a joke, and treats the human population as being no more important than the toaster or television.

What do you think?
-Denny

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