Sophia robot Saudi citizenship prompts controversy
A decision by the Saudi Arabian government to grant citizenship to a humanoid robot fueled controversy about the merits of robot rights and resulted in accusations of hypocrisy. The decision prompted commentators and social media users to point out that Sophia would have more rights than the country's women, who must have a male guardian, wear a hijab, cannot mix with unrelated males, and are unfairly represented in the justice system. The move also resulted in accusations that Saudia Arabia was likely primarily looking for positive publicity. The country claimed to be the first nation to bestow citizenship upon a robot, despite it being designed and developed in Hong Kong. The European Parliament had earlier released a report (pdf) proposing to grant autonomous robots 'personhood' or legal status in order to establish liability, but not confer rights given to humans. Humanoid robot A humanoid robot is a robot resembling the human body in shape. The design may be for functional purposes, such as interacting with human tools and environments, for experimental purposes, such as the study of bipedal locomotion , or for other purposes. Source: Wikipedia 🔗 System 🤖 Sophia 🔗 Operator: Hanson Robotics Developer: Hanson Robotics Country: Saudi Arabia Sector: Technology Purpose: Multi-purpose Technology: NLP/text analysis; Facial recognition; Robotics Issue: Robot rights
- Date it happened
- 2017-10-01
- Organisation involved
- Hanson Robotics
- Product, system or model
- Sophia
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