Saudi Arabia becomes first country to grant citizenship to a robot

[iancampbell]

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/26/saudi-...en-sophia/

this sums up my thoughts on the matter

"Was the whole thing a depressingly empty, unironic attempt at publicity for Sophia’s human captors? Almost certainly yes, but only time will tell about how international law will handle the advent of AI-powered populations, a future that seems more certain to arrive with each passing day."

i'm guessing we'll continue to see this as another example in a long line of of artificial / corporate citizenship in conflict with or contrasted with the  rights of actual people in the foreseeable future/ early OA timeline.

Indeed. Even in a non-fictional context, I've thought for a long while that there is something fundamentally wrong with the whole concept of corporate personhood. For at least two reasons; one is that a corporation is potentially immortal (which is certainly not true for humans in 48AT) and that the very presence of a legal fiction such as a corporate person shields real living, sapient, breathing and vulnerable-to-punishment people from the consequences of their actions if they happen to be officers of said corporation.

The Bhopal disaster and the banking crash of 2008 are examples of the possible negative consequences of corporate personhood, IMHO.