Saudi Arabian Grants Citizenship to Fembot

General chat about fembots, technosexual culture or any other ASFR related topics that do not fit into the other categories below.
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Svengli
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Saudi Arabian Grants Citizenship to Fembot

Post by Svengli » Fri Oct 27, 2017 1:34 pm

"Sophia the robot might not have a heart or brain, but it does have Saudi Arabian citizenship. As of October 25, Sophia is the first robot in history to be a full citizen of a country."

It's a rather symbolic gesture since it this level of primitive tech, Sophia simultaneously remains a piece of private property - She's vote or bring a lawsuit only accord to the simple programming she's been given.

I personally think that even if/when we develop an ability to create or mimic "free willed" behavior in robots, it would be a mistake to do so - If X billion free-willed humans have trouble deciding how to live together, adding further free wills into the mix would make things just more messy. Instead, having keeping robots as tools-if-very-intelligent-and-competent tools would be safer.

http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the ... id-2017-10

--NightBattery--

Re: Saudi Arabian Grants Citizenship to Fembot

Post by --NightBattery-- » Fri Oct 27, 2017 2:55 pm

If I was a secular-minded citizen of Saudi I would be facepalming very hard at my authorities for giving citizenship to an animatronic.
seemingly this out of nowhere announcement by Saudi Arabia was given during a speech at a panel for some new technology funding named Future Investment Initiative.
of course, any long speech in Sophia is always inputted by her controllers.
And...
I mean yeah, Sophia has some sweet autonomous servos, and as the article says: Intriguing mechanical guts.
But it is a machine incapable of movement and problem-solving skills, besides her limited speech recognition.
Seemingly also she requires an external power source to maintain herself.
I wouldn't be surprised if all the intricate and supposedly messy arrangement of her circuits are just a deliberate artistic choice with little to no functionality.
Especially since if you look at the pictures you can notice her sensors (photo and audio) are actually at her chest.
where her actual CPU probably is too...
this are not the tools a robot ready for the trials of becoming a citizen, with rights and obligations should have.
...she might be a robotic system but not quite the robot yet.

I can't help feel my philosophical sense tingling that this, more than a respect for the coming artificial intelligence, is disrespect for the value of a citizen over business. Especially with all the noncitizen workers in the area living in slum conditions.
Awesome and polemic tho.
but also a little dumb.

Regards!
Last edited by --NightBattery-- on Fri Oct 27, 2017 5:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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FaceoffFembot
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Post by FaceoffFembot » Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:42 pm

This is essentially a headline-grabbing move by Saudi Arabia to attract tech capital. They're not opening the doors to non-human intelligence - Sophia still seems nothing more than a souped-up animatronic, and for all that matter they could have awarded citizenship to Amazon's Alexa. But the hardware looks somewhat human, which can be used to confuse people as to where the sate-of-the-art actually is.

Also yeah, additional tastelessness when next to Saudi Arabia's disregard and exploitation of its migrant workers.

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Re: Saudi Arabian Grants Citizenship to Fembot

Post by N6688 » Fri Oct 27, 2017 7:12 pm

Svengli wrote: Sophia is the first robot in history to be a full citizen of a country."
Sophia simultaneously remains a piece of private property
Well, at least they're treating it like a real saudi woman, you got to give them that :lol:
"Robot wives have needs, too"
Goku, Dragonball fighterZ 2017

--NightBattery--

Re: Saudi Arabian Grants Citizenship to Fembot

Post by --NightBattery-- » Fri Oct 27, 2017 7:19 pm

too soon N6!

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Re: Saudi Arabian Grants Citizenship to Fembot

Post by dieur » Mon Oct 30, 2017 8:50 am

Any idea what technology Sophia actually works on? I tried to find a description or white paper, but gave up before I found search keys that got me past all the fluff articles.

Is it just a chat bot + pre-input text to speech for longer passages?

I agree with Battery, btw. I have no qualms about giving citizenship to self aware robots that have the desire, but this isn't one, so it's just insulting to the actual Saudi citizens - especially the women who still have to fight for such basics as the right to drive!

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Re: Saudi Arabian Grants Citizenship to Fembot

Post by Esleeper » Fri Nov 03, 2017 7:02 pm

Robotman wrote:I am guessing that Sophia's AI is about as cutting-edge as Siri or Google Assistant, but with many enhancements made for it to specifically "be" an android's AI. But I wouldn't go so far as to consider it a true artificial intelligence yet, let alone what's sometimes referred to as "Strong AI" or "True AI".

As for the nuts and bolts of the software, I think it's been coded in-house by Hanson Robotics over the years. Again, that's a guess.

And yeah, this whole citizenship thing strikes me as just a publicity stunt, but to come from a country like Saudi Arabia is just done in very poor taste. I think Hanson Robotics should have declined the offer, though they probably got paid a lot of money along with the gesture. Giving citizenship "rights" to a robot, from a government with such backward views on human rights is not a good look.
Indeed. I can only assume this is some kind of attempt to seem less "backward" in terms of social matters, At any rate, while the gesture's principle is sound I believe citizenship is wasted on an entity that can make no valid use of it.

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