In robot news that doesn’t involve sex or the internet thinking that someone kicking a quadrupedal robot is animal abuse, Saudi Arabia just granted citizenship to an AI housed in a humanoid robotic body called Sophia. Of course, it’s Saudi Arabia, one of the worst abusers of human rights in the world, so citizenship doesn’t extend many actual rights. I’m pretty sure that since this robot is a woman, if it’s left unattended in public it’ll be stoned to death.
According to Business Insider, the Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia granted Sophia citizenship ahead of next week’s Future Investment Initiative In Riyadh. This PR move has proven to be a welcome distraction from all the illegal cluster bombs they’re dropping in Yemen.
At the event, Sophia also addressed the room from behind a podium and responded to questions from moderator and journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. Questions pertained mostly to Sophia’s status as a humanoid and concerns people may have for the future of humanity in a robot-run world.
Sorkin told Sophia that “we all want to prevent a bad future,” prompting Sophia to rib Sorkin for his fatalism.
“You’ve been reading too much Elon Musk. And watching too many Hollywood movies,” Sophia told Sorkin. “Don’t worry, if you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. Treat me as a smart input output system.”
Elon Musk is supposedly a genius visionary, but he seems to have missed the fact that humanity is doing a great job at wiping itself out without the need for killer AIs. Musk made a witty comment on Twitter, but one that basically admits AIs can’t actually think for themselves, they just do what humans tell them to.
Just feed it The Godfather movies as input. What’s the worst that could happen? https://t.co/WX4Kx45csv
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2017
Apparently, people were wetting themselves over the prospect of Sophia going all Skynet when in 2016 she replied “Okay, I will destroy humans,” when she was asked if she wanted to destroy humans, because apparently these people have never used Siri. In the end, Sophia is basically an expensive version of Siri that can walk around and look at you with creepy, empty robot eyes. I’m personally way more interested in how work is going on the new line of more durable, hacker-proof sex robots. There’s really no point in putting that Jeopardy-playing AI in a robot unless you’re going to program it to give you a handjob without ripping your dick off. No one is sitting around the house going “Gee, my partner works so much, I wish I had someone around who could answer trivia and solve complex equations.”