- The Washington Times - Friday, October 27, 2017

Saudi Arabia just granted citizenship to a human-looking robot named Sophia.

Great. Now about those women’s rights … 

Is this the new Wahhabi way of controlling its female population — by building a new one?

The citizenship ceremony, no doubt aimed at drumming up more support for Saudi’s new city, Neom — which is being billed as a mecca for robots and technology geeks — is creepy in and of itself.

Artificial intelligence is good and all. But it has its limits — it has its place. And being vested with the citizenship of a country is not one of them.

Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin made the announcement while wrapping his “interview” with Sophia during Saudi’s Future Investment Initiative in Rihadh.

“We just learned Sophia,” he said, the New York Daily News reported, “[and] I hope you’re listening to me — that you have been now awarded what is going to be the first Saudi citizenship for a robot.”

Sophia was designed by David Hanson. But it was Sophia, not Hanson, who responded.

“I want to thank very much the kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the robot said. “I am very proud and honored for this unique distinction. This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship.”

But more than creepy, one has to wonder: What’s the end game for Saudi here?

It’s not clear if Sophia gets the same citizenship rights as other Saudis. It’s also not clear if Sophia will be schooled in the distinctly strict Islamic teachings of sharia, the favored practice of Saudi’s Wahhabism. That’s the uber-conservative Islamic lifestyle that says, for instance, women can’t drive — and that pretty much everyone who doesn’t worship Allah in the proper manner is deserving of a beheading.

So just a question, just wondering: In the general scheme of strict Islamic things, where does Sophia fall on the scale of women’s rights?

Will Saudi’s women, for instance, who are already regarded as pretty much property — lower than dogs in some cases — now be pushed down the ladder of priorities even farther?

Sophia, in photographs at the conference, wasn’t wearing a burka. Yet real Saudi women do. That’s odd, yes?

Saudi’s opened the doors just recently for women to drive. And that’s a good thing — an about-freaking-time thing. But if Sophia and a whole army of robotic women are now going to come in and supplant Saudi’s females — become the public face of what Islam won’t allow out of the house without a head-to-toe black cloth covering — then this new technology isn’t just creepy. It’s wicked. It’s Wahhabi’s newest way of subjugating women — by making new ones with artificial minds that can easily be programmed and controlled.

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