Right to vote for robots?

Abstract

In 2017, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia granted citizenship to the robot Sophia, a social humanoid robot equipped with humanoid artificial intelligence (AI). Our thesis is that, if Saudi Arabia’s move is consistently pursued, it is impossible to avoid granting the new citizens the right to vote, especially since liberal pluralist democracies are based on the principle of equality and thus the participation of its citizens. This in turn raises a number of questions of legal policy which are also discussed by the European Parliament and which in their scope are comparable to the time when Europe fought for universal and equal suffrage from the 19th century onwards. The contribution aims at discussing a series of questions as well as initial answers.