Robots and Citizenship, and Human Rights

Student’s Name Professor’s Name Course Date Robots and Citizenship and Human Rights The decision of Saudi Arabia to grant the Sophia robot citizenship raised concerns among various people. Some people were more outraged because the robot had "more rights than the human women" in Saudi Arabia. In this regard, there arises a pertinent question whether the robots should be granted citizenship and human rights. I believe that robots should not be granted citizenship and human rights on various grounds. First, the capabilities of the AI systems and the robots still fall below the capabilities of the humans despite the impressive achievements courtesy of the deep learning systems like the AlphaGo. In this regard, the robots are still regarded as manufactured tools that cannot be able to match the abilities of their "creator," the humans. On the same note, the robots and human cannot be treated on an equal basis to humans because of the distinct differences between the robots and the humans. For instance, the human beings are unique and irreplaceable with a characteristic finite lifespan. On the other hand, robots and other Artificial Intelligence systems are computational systems which can be "backed up, stored, retrieved, or duplicated, even into new hardware." In this regard, robots are not unique since they can be replaced. Therefore, it would be "dangerous" to offer the robots citizenship and human rights even if they "reach a level of cognitive capability in terms of consciousness and self-awareness that is equal to human beings." Since they are programmed systems, assigning citizenship would make it difficult to ...