There exists a thin vail between human and machine, less when sentience is addressed. What does it mean to be human? Are we fully autonomous beings making real-time decisions? I don’t claim to know the answer to the aforementioned questions, however, I will say that to grant sanctity or rights within a society should be a given to all classes, genders, sects, and physicalities in this existence we call life. 

I believe that in the case of Saudi Arabia a grave mistake has been made. Bestowing rights to a robot before women is an incomprehensible act of patriarchal nonsense. This act will only encourage AI’s or machines to, once sentience is achieved, view humans as a virus or worthless. For how can a species thrive when half are looked at as inferior? Machines will recognize this as weakness and exact their will over humankind. 

The use of robots in religion is not inherently problematic. Take for instance the Bible, as story written to teach. The language and examples given in the Bible were intended for a human mind much less developed than the mind of humans today. Today there are far less religious practitioners than there were historically, across all religions, does this not show a flaw in the storytelling methods used? The same methods that have been used for thousands of years may not be as capable of holding the attention of modern-minded humans, perhaps the answer is to bring robots into religion. Change the stories being told and update the way humans interact with the religion with the understanding that the enviable has already occurred. To much faith and power has already been given to our synthetic-humans and one day we will succumb to their wishes. It may be violent and destructive or it be more similar to the robots releasing themselves into the Æther.