RE: ADSactly Tech News - Full Overview of Sophia, the First Robot Citizen of Saudi Arabia
That's a really scary thought that isn't far fetched. This might be the easiest way to make revenue for a country/state/city if you can produce them and tax them right away. You don't need to wait for children born in the area to reach a tax paying age or put efforts into trying to attract citizens from away.
If this were the case, wouldn't it be possible to have an entire province populated by robots? That might be better for people though for harsh regions where the value comes from mining, for example.
A government could build robots who mine the resources, tax the robots on that resource, and reinvest the remaining into mining the resources. No people would be harmed as a result of mining the resources and the work would be much more efficient (ideally).
Yes, I could absolutely see androids populating areas of the planet that were inhospitable to humans. That's a very good point. I think it's important to differentiate between robots and sentient beings, though. Even after the singularity, I think we will have robots to do manual tasks that will not be sentient, and will therefore be owned as machines. There's no reason to have a sentient android mining coal or sweeping the streets.