In 2017, social robot Sophia was given citizenship of Saudi Arabia – the first robot to be given legal personhood anywhere in the world. Bestowed with this great gift, Sophia has embarked on a distinguished career in marketing.
Sophia’s creator, David Hanson, argues that the opportunity was used to “speak out on women’s rights”, a statement that sits somewhat awkwardly in Saudi Arabia, a country in which women have only just been given the right to drive and where “male guardianship” still exists, meaning many women have to ask permission from male relatives or partners to leave the house, get a passport, get married or even file police reports for domestic violence or sexual assault. The citizenship stunt seemed more akin to a marketing campaign – for Sophia and Saudi Arabia – than it did a genuine statement on humanity, dignity or personhood.
Since obtaining personhood, Sophia has gone on a whistle-stop marketing tour – CES, the Digital World Exposition, the Creative Industry Summit – and has used her Twitter account to promote tourism in Abu Dhabi, a smartphone, a Channel 4 show, and a credit card.
And not everyone is keen on robots being given the same rights as humans. One open letter, written earlier this year and addressed to the European Commission by 150 experts in medicine, robotics, AI and ethics, described plans to grant robots legal status as “electronic persons” as “inappropriate” and “ideological, nonsensical and non-pragmatic”, arguing that to do so would directly impinge on human rights.
This isn’t as pessimistic as it might seem at first glance. For one, sex robots have already been legitimately suggested – in the pages of the New York Times, no less – as a solution to the recent wave of young men describing themselves as “incels” and demanding a government mandated “redistribution of sex”. Ross Douthat, a columnist at the paper, suggested that the “logic of commerce and technology will be consciously harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of incels” – an opinion that was later unhappily regurgitated, via The Spectator, by Toby Young.
This, of course, misses the point entirely. The “solution” to the incels’ entitled demand for sex may not be immediately obvious, but it certainly isn’t acquiescing to it in robot form. Unlike human women, robots in their current stage of development are objects, a fact that would remain true even if they were given rights. To compare the two – and to proffer robots as an antidote – is simply a false equivalence: they are not the same. And to give legitimacy to this idea by affording these same rights may only give further weight to what is nothing more than a particularly toxic strain of misogyny that seeks to deny women their genuine and meaningful right to bodily autonomy.
Now, a new game from writer and designer David Cage is imagining a world where, sex robots aside, these very same rights are being disputed. Detroit: Become Human follows three characters – Connor, a law enforcement robot investigating ‘deviant’ androids, the rebellious Markus, who aims to start a robot uprising, and Kara, a domestic servant who has broken free of her original programming – as they navigate the dystopian world of 2038 Detroit.
The game has a central narrative, but much depends on your choices. One small decision can change the entire course of the story – sometimes even resulting in the deaths of one of the main characters. And it’s these choices that prompt three questions: what does it mean to be human? When will robots be given the same rights as us? And what will happen if – or when – they start to demand those rights?
Sophia has already been wheeled out to promote the game, with Hanson also writing a paper about robotic rights to accompany the launch. His “educated guess” is that the timeframe of Detroit: Become Human is “possible and reasonable” – meaning we could have sentient robots by the 2030s.
Hanson also believes that robot rights – the key premise on which Become Human hinges – are likely to be granted when robots begin to share conscious thought with humans. “It requires not only physical capabilities, but a sense of desire for autonomy, as well as a curiosity and awareness of one’s state,” he explains. “My expectation is that it won’t be until the mid-2040s or late 2050s that there will be a general worldwide recognition of android rights.”
In the world of Become Human, these issues are fairly cut and dry. The premise that robots should be given their rights is clear and unquestioned: it is simply a given. This is understandable, considering that it’s a game – unless you’re a Radio 4 fan looking for a playable version of Moral Maze, fully exploring the legal and philosophical quandaries involved in the topic would make for significantly less gripping gameplay.
In the real world, things are not so easy. Having been brought to life, Sophia is already a marketing plaything – and no matter how woke or feminist she is programmed to be, Hanson acknowledges that her development is still more akin to a baby or toddler than an adult with a consciousness or intellect that could feasibly be rewarded with a full set of rights. Even this is pushing it – toddlers, for example, have consciousness; Sophia does not.
We may also ask exactly whose rights and lives we are prioritising on our path to an android-filled technological utopia – and that’s a question neither Detroit: Become Human, nor Sophia herself, is able to answer yet.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
