Futurama: Robot Rights and the Law

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a growing concern among humans. ‘Sophia’ the humanoid being granted citizenship of Saudi Arabia in 2017 points to a future where science fiction might not be a faction of human creativity but also a reality. The most recent incident of the AI chat bot ‘LaMDA’ developed by Google that took the world by storm in 2022 underscores the relevance of this research to modern times. This research is aimed at distinguishing robot rights from human rights, ascertaining the viability of recognising robots as a separate legal entity, analysing the existing legal regime governing AI to find issues, and proposing a way forward when dealing with legal issues that might arise in the future. This study is a library research based on secondary sources such as scholarly articles, policy directives, literature surveys and other onacademic resources. The study was limited to AI, more specifically, stages III and IV of AI. The authors have also limited the discussion to the cases of 'Sophia' the humanoid and 'LamDA' the AI chatbot. Moreover, the scope of legal analysis was limited to the European Union laws. This study identifies inherent problems in extending biological connotations to robots, equating robots to animals and imposing corporate liability schemes on robots. Therefore this study finds that AI driven autonomous robots should be recognized as a separate legal entity and conferred an electronic personhood that stands in between human rights and inferior rights such as animal rights.