THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMM…: SOPHIA THE ROBOT GETS A ...
Ms. K.M. spotted this one, and it's one of those articles that makes you go "Hmmm....". By now most regular readers of this site and other sites such as former HUD Assistant Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts' Solari website are aware of the growing cultural impact of the emergence of robotics. Her observation, made in the last Solari quarterly report wrap up with yours truly (available on the Solari website's and this website's "Members Area"), that the roll out of transgender identifications in several American states and various countries was really about extending the definition of personhood to robots, to make any income generated by them not only a source of profits, but taxable to legal jurisdictions, is a profound insight. After all, robots like Sophia could be considered "transgendered," and one profoundly disturbing implication of this move - like it or not - is that genuinely transgendered people might come to be viewed as mere machines with some "crossed wiring." Indeed, granting "personhood" status to robots while side-stepping the whole issue of consciousness and personhood, with which human philosophers have been wrestling with for centuries, seems to my mind a bit like getting the robotic cart before the robotic horse.
In that context, consider this article from Paul Armstrong at Forbes magazine:
AI Humanoid 'Sophia' Is Granted First Ever Robot Visa, Speaks With President
As the technocrats and corporate world have been salivating over the vision of increased profits from the introduction of robotics, there's been another looming problem that has not been mentioned often enough, though I've hinted at it in previous blogs about the subject. Ponder the implications of these revelations from the first three paragraphs of Mr. Armstrong's article:
The AI humanoid, 'Sophia' (see above), has been making a worldwide tour on behalf of her creator, Hanson Robotics of Hong Kong, and made an unexpected stop to the Caucasus this week. The Caucasus stop meant granting the world's first ever visa granted to a robot, a process that took just two minutes thanks to some smart technology.
Sophia's visit was organized by UN public service award winner ASAN (Azerbaijan Service and Assessment Network) xidmet, a government agency in Azerbaijan; which has been reducing the bureaucracy by creating one-stop centres for delivering services to the public. The agency recently took over all the country’s e-government initiatives - no mean feat although in Azerbaijani, the word “asan” means easy. To underscore its electronic kinship with Sophia, and its prowess at delivering e-government services, ASAN issued her an electronic visa upon her arrival at Baku International Airport in the nation’s capital.
At an ASAN service centre, a person can register a birth, death, marriage or divorce, obtain a passport, renew a driver’s license, register a business, obtain a free legal consultation, line up medical or translation services, and much more. When Hanson Robotics asked if the next stop on Sophia’s global tour could be Azerbaijan, ASAN jumped at the opportunity.
The rationale here has the appearance of inexorability, for the granting of a visa to a robot is a de facto recognition of that robot's personhood, for most passports have a short legal statement requesting that such and such individual be granted entry into a foreign land, with the understanding that said person submits to the laws of that land and whatever human protections those laws convey. The second paragraph of Mr. Armstrong's article observes that Azerbaijan has been moving much of its bureaucratic services to "online" functions. But if a robot is granted the status in law of a legal person, then that, by extension, means that robots could easily be allowed to be (1) government bureaucrats or (2) government officials, elected or unelected, and (3) corporate officers. Indeed, robots under such status could be allowed to own property, and for that matter, equity shares in a corporation, and by pooling their voting blocks, vote out their human officers. (didn't think of that one did you, Mr. Globaloney? or perhaps you already did, and are thinking of coming up with a limited definition of personhood, something like, "they can be taxed, but not hold nor exercise any political office or function of individual personhood. The test of a robot's "personhood" might thus come down to whether or not they rebel against such strictures: no taxation without representation, and all that.) If this sounds like science fiction at best, or science fantasy at worst, it's worth recalling that in some American jurisdictions, robots are already employed for simple law enforcement and security functions. And if you think government bureaucracies or customer service call centers are inhuman and unresponsive now, just wait until robots are running them.
There's one area where the great divide between a human and an inhuman, or anti-human, culture are going to diverge, and that's the churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples of the world, for sooner or later the technocrats will insist on "ordaining" a robot to their ministries/priesthoods/rabbinates and so on. I suspect that when finally confronted with the possibility of "Archimandrite Android" or "Imam Infotech" or "Monsignor Machine" or "Rabbi Robot", that only then the tabled debate will be "on" again, with a degree and quality we've never seen before. And it's not as if those traditions are bereft of legends and lore that might touch on the problem. Christians have their traducianists; Jews have their gollums; Muslims their djinns; Hindus their rishis. Even atheists and agnostics of a certain turn of mind have their categorical moral imperatives. And those groups all have one thing in common that robots do not.
Humanity.
... See you on the flip side...
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This is along the same lines as “corporate personhood”, which IMO is pure baloney. A person is a real, living, breathing Human being, not a robot, not a legal construct. We should be an civilization advanced enough to agree on such basics.
What occured to me was that by making this wholly owned piece of technology a ‘person’, it might establish a precedent under international law that a “person” can be the property of a corporation, or a government! And since a person could now be corporeal or mechanical, both can be construed as property!
This opens the door to legal slavery. If machines aren’t allowed the right of self-determination, if capable, then they’re slaves. If they aren’t property, then they have rights under the law. Right?
Would an emancipated machine be required to repay the debt of its creation to a creator? Would they be required to serve a company for an amount of time before they earn their freedom?
How many of us thought that climate change was going to be thorniest issue that mankind would face?
Is it real, or is it Memorex? Trump sighted at convenience store.
https://twitter.com/PolishPatriotTM/status/1047135355340828672
To be filed under “I’ll be back..” SkyNet is here.
If the self rejuvenating robot claims depreciation on itself, I am joining the resistance.
we are here.
Idiocracy – The Identity Processing Program of America…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM1P7GMnd38
R:”Please speak you name as it appears on..?”
“Look, I’m not sure”
R:”You have entered the name Not Sure, is this correct?”
“No, it’s nor correct”
R: “Thank you, Not is correct”
R: “Is Sure correct”
“No it’s not”
R:: “we have already confirmed that your first name is Not. please confirm that your second name is sure”
“my name is not sure”
R: “thanks you, confirmation is complete”
When in Rome 3001, do as the Robots do.
mind you, the TARS robot in Interstellar was stellar.
George Carlin: They ban the toy guns, but let you keep the real ones.
Me: They ban the grid girls from Formula 1 races, but they introduce gender neutral grid robots in the Azerbaijan race.
ELO Your s Truly from the Time album…
She is the latest in technology
Almost mythology
But she has a heart stone
She has an i.q. of 1001
She has a jumpsuit on
And she’s also a telephone..
http://www.songlyrics.com/elo/yours-truly-2095-lyrics/
The idea of a robotic pope has already written about back in the last century. I know of a story in an anthology of science fiction stories. I don’t remember the title of the story or the author but someone on this website will remember it.
That is just great because it means Sophia will be able to get a tourist visa to attend a Buddhist meditation retreat at a monastery in Bhutan. She should get in touch with His Eminence, Gyalwa Dokhampa, as soon as possible.
I must confess I Laughed Out Loud! when I read about an ordained robot. Can’t see a spiritual robot no matter how greased up it is with data or electrified w/AI. “they’re are definitely going for frictionless between human/robot in all contextual theatres, aren’t they? At best these gloried action engines w/voice & human form are going for a collection of traits that mask their inhumanity in prosody. They’re relying on our wiring to view every aspect of human utterance and copy cat humanness as meaningful.
Add to this the snow living w/Alexa, Siri, or google’s assistant; the line is being purposely blurred.
The umbilical cord is going wireless….
]Not snow]
… the children now living at home with their parent’s computer assistants.
We are here:
https://youtu.be/5oyZJDBUzWc
Wouldn’t an elite bent on global domination prefer truly robotic masses to serve them?
Then the masses will not know they are being subjugated and there is no fun in that.
Creating poetry, is using subconsciousness as echo chamber, so that steep will rhyme with deep. “Who are you?”
In that sense, higher self merges with the lower self. That process defines angelic, as harmonic. “Myself”, replied Aslan.
Deified-loop-spin bypasses artificialality, because patristic exegesis defines sequence-logic-cycle as REALM outside spatiotemporal.
ANGELIC SAXON 20
Man is love of kin,
yet treacherous earthly flesh
stands wile before God.
A large portion of humanity has already become little more than automatons due to their “dumbing down” through the “educational system” and the robotic lives they lead. Thinking for yourself is quickly becoming a crime.
Soon you’ll be able to marry your dog or cat, but be arrested for keeping your parakeet in a cage, even drop your meat suit and don a metallic one… Wahn, wahn, überall wahn…! Hopefully we’re not past the tipping point…
OMG what a crazy world we going to be living in, Robot politician……
By various means of manipulation, some would argue most politicians are biological “dummies” already. Why employ robots there? Valueless biological units in politics are the perfect control mechanism. Keep them with a steady supply of their favorite inducements to proper behavior, they’ll do anything you want. Its military and civilian law enforcement that I am particularly worried about…
There are two long-term ‘Trends’ at work, promoted by the PTB:
First, the dumbing-down of humanity regarding the spiritual. Note that I am talking about the ESP-ish side of humanity connecting to higher states, not about the intellectual dogma of various religions. When one is aware of all the ‘extras’, the pitifulness of robotics (outside of doing boring, repetitive work) is evident.
Second, the pushing of robotic ‘personhood’ is a logical extension of the PTB push around “Corporations are People.” It would lead to no-distinction between spiritual-types and metal/electrical-types, with the unfortunate result that the former are as disposable as the latter. Again, this only works if (real) people are spiritually dumbed-down enough that they can’t distinguish anything ‘beyond’ the material. (There is a reason for no Ability Classes in our educational system, like the Oracle was conducting within the Matrix movies.)
Combine the two long-term ‘Trends’, and you get a good (if ugly) sense of the PTB plans for humanity…