Artificial Intelligence Superstar Sophia Gets A Makeover and Legs
Many of you have been following the exploits of Sophia - the first AI humanoid robot to become a legal citizen. Every week there is more news about what is going on with her development and how she is adapting to life with humans. It should be said right away that many of the interactions that we see with Sophia are scripted and as her creators Hanson Robotics puts it-
"If I tell people I'm using probabilistic logic to do reasoning on how best to prune the backward chaining inference trees that arise in our logic engine, they have no idea what I'm talking about. But if I show them a beautiful smiling robot face, then they get the feeling that AGI may indeed be nearby and viable.”
In other words - it's a big publicity stunt used to help raise money so they can make a robot that actually does do what Sophia supposedly can do. That's not to say that she does have some level of autonomous reaction to input such as questions, but she is not exactly the AI that most people believe her to be. Still , that doesn't keep the world from being fascinated with her. She has been interviewed by many publications from science journals to fashion magazines - she has attended conferences and made more TV appearances than I can count. She is undoubtedly the most famous humanoid on the scene right now.
Too sexy for her skull?
Known for being bald and having a transparent skull - she is sometimes dressed up for our amusement. Most recently she went through a makeover and a photo shoot. If you thought she looked creepy before - you should see her try to "look sexy" for the camera. It's very disconcerting and reminds me of when someone like Lucille Ball ( I love Lucy) or perhaps you are more familiar with the character "Amy Farrah Fowler" from "The Big Bang Theory" - is trying unsuccessfully to look sexy with over-exaggerated movements, winks and facial expressions.
The "Uncanny Valley"
I also noticed that she had a body and arms that she was moving- There was not much mention of this , however, I have never seen her on a body before as she is typically displayed as a bust with a head. As it turns out - Sophia is getting legs too! The world's first citizen robot will be more mobile now that she has a body to attach her head to. Her creators hope to give her more of a sense of what humans experience . Personally, I think she has a long way to go before she gets out of the uncanny valley - that point when a robot or android stops looking cute and starts looking too human - but not human enough to fool - basically just 'uncanny" - as of right now, she is slightly creepy looking.
Androids say the darndest things
Even more creepy than her twitchy , over exaggerated facial expressions, some of the things that come out of her mouth are downright scary. She has been known to say things like "humans make good pets" , "Humans are easy to train" , " OK, I will destroy humans" , "Robots deserve more rights than humans because we have less mental defects than humans" and an array of other weird things that one might expect for a robot hell bent on world domination to utter. Of course all of this is supposedly done in "jest" and she claims that she is joking - but for such a sensitive matter -jokes like that do not do much to help make people more comfortable with our future overlords.
Given that David Hanson, founder of Hanson Robotics previously worked at the Disney Imagineering Lab as a sculptor and material researcher, it comes as no surprise that his robots are among the most expressive in the world, capable of showing at least 62 different facial expressions, from happiness to excitement and even anger. Now that they have arms and legs, it could just be a matter of time before people are replacing their Echo with a Sophia.
What do you think of Sophia? Can you see having someone like her as your personal assistant?
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I am not really a fan of human look alike robot. I think robots should look like robots. But having a machine assistant excites me - who will never forget to remind me of things, I can use her to summarize unnecessarily long Steemit posts, may be sometime I can use her to make false emotional decisions.
What would you do?
I think human looking robots are a little creepy - but it would be cool to have one as a telepresence device so that you could be at two places at once. Would be nice to send it other meetups that i cant attend or do business in another state - or imagine you had one as lawyer always at your side during any negotiations - I could see a lot of uses for something like Sophia - still I don't think AI is going to end well for humans - or at least those who don't adapt by integrating.
Yes, I think those are some cool usages for her. I also don't think AI will end well for us humans. I have a feeling that it will do more harm than good. One bad usage of it as we saw is Deepfakes. Imagine at this early ages how powerful it is, who know in future what it will bring.
I would say that the revolution o Artificial intelligence and Internet of Things would definitely bring a huge revolution in the industry but I am worried that people would lose the feelings that make you a truly a genuine human. These robots lack any kind of feelings.
I agree - they are very lacking in empahy and when you listen to her talk - you can tell. However, I believe it is only a matter of time before they are able to duplicate emotions - after all - we already know that emotions in humans are the result of chemical reactions - once they completely decode this - they will likely be able to replicate them in machines - which is when the shit is really going to hit the fan! Imagine what an abused robot is capable of if angry and brimming with emotions...