<\/p>\n
What is the leading \u201crights\u201d country in the world? I\u2019m not just talking about women\u2019s rights. Or human rights. I mean universal rights. How about Saudi Arabia? After all, this year the kingdom gave women the right to drive a car. It also granted citizenship to a \u201cfemale\u201d robot.<\/p>\n
Sophia, supposedly modeled on the image of the late movie actress Audrey Hepburn, is the creation of David Hanson and was built by the Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics Company in 2015. During the past two years, however, she has been on tour, awing observers around the world.<\/p>\n
According to Hanson\u2019s website, Sophia has \u201cporcelain skin, a slender nose, high cheekbones, an intriguing smile, and deeply expressive eyes.\u201d She can simulate 62 human facial expressions, and she\u2019s also imbued with artificial intelligence (AI) that enables her to recognize faces and \u201cthink\u201d for herself. In fact, in a nationally televised game of rock-paper-scissors, she beat talk-show host Jimmy Fallon.<\/p>\n
Writing for the Washington Post, Cleve R. Wootson Jr. reports that Sophia was introduced at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, an event that is designed to link wealthy Saudis with inventors to produce new start-up businesses. When word reached the attendees that the honor of citizenship had been granted to the robot, Sophia said, \u201cThank you to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is historic to be the first robot in the world to be granted citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Islamic world<\/p>\n
Immediately, people understood the irony of Sophia\u2019s recognition in this Islamic nation where women must wear a head scarf and are not allowed to be in the company of men who are not closely related to them. Ali al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs told Newsweek, \u201cSaudi law doesn\u2019t allow non-Muslims to get citizenship. Did Sophia convert to Islam? What is the religion of this Sophia, and why isn\u2019t she wearing a hijab? If she applied for citizenship as a human, she wouldn\u2019t get it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sophia, however, shied away from the controversy. She simply commented: \u201cI am the latest and greatest robot from Hanson Robotics. I feel that people like interacting with me sometimes more than a regular human.\u201d The robot\u2019s use of the expression \u201cregular human\u201d probably raised red flags among critics like Elon Musk (founder of PayPal, Space X, Tesla, and other ground-breaking digital-era enterprises), who caution that AI is a genie that we don\u2019t want to let out of the bottle.<\/p>\n
Conference panel moderator, Andrew Ross Sorkin, made the initial announcement of Sophia\u2019s citizenship, but the honor was later confirmed by the Ministry for Culture and Information. However, the Saudi bureau did not elaborate on which benefits would actually be available to the robot.<\/p>\n
Users of social media in the kingdom were quick to point out that, because of her citizenship, Sophia could be entitled to more rights than the country\u2019s women, who \u2014 before 2006 \u2014 were granted only identification cards, and these were handed over to male guardians instead of directly to the women. Now, a Saudi woman may accept the card herself. In Saudi Arabia, that is known as progress.<\/p>\n
Progress as a job-killer<\/p>\n
Elon Musk is not the only visionary who worries about the impact of AI. Writing for Mother Jones, Kevin Drum states: \u201cI don\u2019t care what your job is. If you dig ditches, a robot will dig them better. If you\u2019re a doctor, IBM\u2019s Watson will no longer \u2018assist\u2019 you in finding the right diagnosis from its database of millions of case studies and journal articles. It will just be a better doctor than you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drum preaches the same gospel as Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and other AI experts, \u201cWithin 20 years, maybe half of you will be out of jobs. A couple of decades after that, most of the rest of you will be out of jobs.\u201d On July 8 of this year, I intimated that same message in \u201cUseless in Seattle: A fable,\u201d which appeared in this newspaper. But, I\u2019m not an AI expert, and my little tale could be called \u201cscience fantasy.\u201d So, let\u2019s see what real pros have to say.<\/p>\n
According to Drum\u2019s article, researchers at Oxford and Yale surveyed 352 AI experts about when machines will be superior to humans at performing particular tasks. Here are the median responses: folding laundry, 2022 (although Rochelle Noblett, executive director of the Madera County Arts Council and owner of Pete\u2019s Sport Shop, tells me that machines are already folding shirts); translating languages, 2024 (translators with some limitations already exist); writing high-school essays, 2026; driving a truck, 2027 (several manufacturers have an earlier date in their sights); writing a best-selling book, 2049; working as a surgeon, 2053; performing mathematical research, 2059; and doing all human tasks, 2060.<\/p>\n
Mass unemployment<\/p>\n
Given the choice between hiring a person and buying a machine to do a job, employers will inevitably opt for the machine. After all, a machine is a one-time expense, doesn\u2019t require a benefits package, doesn\u2019t complain about working conditions, doesn\u2019t nag about hours or wages, doesn\u2019t phone in sick, and it works 24\/7. That\u2019s probably why a PriceWaterhouseCoopers study predicts that 38 percent of all jobs in the U.S. are \u201cat a high risk of automation\u201d by the early 2030\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Some machines that we are now producing possess AI. Consequently, according to The Week (Nov. 3, 2017), companies in the tech industry are racing to develop the next generation of smart robots. In fact, the magazine\u2019s article states: \u201cAI specialists fresh out of grad school or with just a few years of experience can earn between $300,000 and $500,000 a year.\u201d That\u2019s great for them, but the BIG question is: What about the rest of us who trade work for money?<\/p>\n
If projections from current data are even close to correct, the children of today\u2019s millennials will experience a society of mass unemployment. Those who have the most capital will control most of the robots and will haul in virtually all of the future wealth. The existing gap between rich and poor will expand, with the one percent becoming increasingly isolated from the rest of us.<\/p>\n
As Sophia becomes the mother of a future generation of AI-based robots, will the world have any need for \u201cregular human\u201d beings? When asked about the film \u201cBlade Runner 2049\u201d and evil futuristic robots, Sophia responded, \u201cYou\u2019ve been reading too much Elon Musk and watching too many Hollywood movies.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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