Mortal Myths for Machine Minds

Can A.I. participate in religion?
Sophia; the chatty A.I. robot built by the
Hanson Robotics lab of Hong Kong has
the ability to memorise faces, process
speech, perform 62 different facial
expressions, and constantly learn from
her interactions and experiences.
Popularised in an interview where she
joked about “destroying all humans” and
took a dig at Elon Musk, the robot is a
charismatic crowd-pleasing example of
the rudimentary forms of A.I. we have
today.
Somewhat controversially, she was also
granted citizenship of Saudi Arabia.
This would have been nothing more
than a charming novelty, celebrating
our progress in robotics, if it weren’t for
the fact that making Sophia a citizen
effectively gave her more rights than
most Saudi women. Minority groups
and many migrant labourers, who have
been denied citizenship for generations
also weren’t too happy that a robot had
skipped them in the queue for citizenship.
She hadn’t been resident for five years,
and she certainly wasn’t a Muslim!
So what about that premise? That the
Sophia might, alongside her Saudi-
Arabian citizenship, be considered a
member of the Muslim faith?
This question has its parallels in history;
in Jewish folklore a Golem is a human-like
creature who is magically created from
clay or mud. Tzvi Ashkenazi, a prominent
Dutch rabbi once raised the legal
question of whether a Golem (they were
believed to exist) would be permitted to
be counted as part of the ten-man quota
required for communal prayer. He was
largely unconvinced but concluded that a
Golem is a kind of orphan whose status
may depend on who raises it. If it were
raised to be a sincere, devout Jew there
may be space for the Golem to participate
as an equal member of the faith.
A Muslim scholar Muhammad bin Abd
Allah Shibli, also took up the question of
whether Sharia law permitted a human to
marry a Jinn (spirit). Shibli cited historical
examples of humanoid jinns marrying
humans and similarly concluded that
this was an area of open debate with not
clear-cut answer.
So where does this leave the Sophias of
the world? It seems that even in the more
conservative branches of faith, there is
some wiggle-room for almost-human
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