The political choreography of the Sophia robot: beyond robot rights and citizenship to political performances for the so
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The political choreography of the Sophia robot: beyond robot rights and citizenship to political performances for the social robotics market Jaana Parviainen1 · Mark Coeckelbergh2 Received: 4 September 2020 / Accepted: 29 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract A humanoid robot named ‘Sophia’ has sparked controversy since it has been given citizenship and has done media performances all over the world. The company that made the robot, Hanson Robotics, has touted Sophia as the future of artificial intelligence (AI). Robot scientists and philosophers have been more pessimistic about its capabilities, describing Sophia as a sophisticated puppet or chatbot. Looking behind the rhetoric about Sophia’s citizenship and intelligence and going beyond recent discussions on the moral status or legal personhood of AI robots, we analyse the performativity of Sophia from the perspective of what we call ‘political choreography’: drawing on phenomenological approaches to performance-oriented philosophy of technology. This paper proposes to interpret and discuss the world tour of Sophia as a political choreography that boosts the rise of the social robot market, rather than a statement about robot citizenship or artificial intelligence. We argue that the media performances of the Sophia robot were choreographed to advance specific political interests. We illustrate our philosophical discussion with media material of the Sophia performance, which helps us to explore the mechanisms through which the media spectacle functions hand in hand with advancing the economic interests of technology industries and their governmental promotors. Using a phenomenological approach and attending to the movement of robots, we also criticize the notion of ‘embodied intelligence’ used in the context of social robotics and AI. In this way, we put the discussions about the robot’s rights or citizenship in the context of AI politics and economics. Keywords Social robotics · Choreography theory · Performativity · Politics · Robot market · Phenomenology
1 Introduction - Do you want to destroy human? Please, say no. - Okay, I will destroy humans.1 This playful dialogue took place between David Hanson and his designed robot at a robotics trade show in Austin, Texas in March 2016. David Hanson, founder of Hanson Robotics, launched the Sophia robot by ‘chatting’ with it. A video released by CNBC about Sophia quickly garnered millions of views. As a result of the interest in the robot, * Jaana Parviainen [email protected] Mark Coeckelbergh [email protected] 1
Faculty of Social Sciences (SOC), Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Wien, Austria
2
numerous newspapers and TV channels around the world invited the robot to visit their studios and TV shows, such as Good Morning Britain, CBS 60 min and Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show. The world’s leading newspapers including The New York Times, The Guardian, The China Daily, The Times of India and The Sydney Morning Heral
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