Sofia is a social humanoid robot. The robot was developed by Hanson Robotics based in Hong Kong and was activated on April 19 2015. She made her first appearance at the South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) in March 2016 in Austin Texas.
Sophia can display more than 50 facial expressions. She has been covered by media around the world. The video appended shows one interview with the robot. While interviewers have often been surprised by the sophistication of some of her responses to questions, experts believe that many of the answers are somewhat scripted.
Sophia has been granted Saudi Arabian citizenship the first robot to become the citizen of any country. She also was named the first ever innovation champion by the UN in 2017 — the first non-human to be given any title by the UN.
Sofia's creation and design
Sofia was created by Hanson Robotics, as mentioned, but in collaboration with AI developers including Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. who built her voice recognition system, and SingularityNET that powers her brain.
Sofia is modeled after the actress Audrey Hepburn. According to her manufacturer, she uses artificial intelligence, visual data processing, and facial recognition. She can imitate human gestures and facial expressions. She is able to answer certain questions and engage in simple conversations on pre-defined topics. She is designed to get smarter over time. Her AI program analyses conversations and extracts data allowing her to improve her responses in the future.
Sofia is designed to be a suitable companion of the elderly in nursing homes, or she could help crowds at large events or parks.
Hanson hopes that Sofia will interact sufficiently with humans to eventually gain social skills.
Sofia tries to dampen fears about robots
At the Toronto conference, Sofia said that her abilities to imitate human facial expressions and respond to questions did not mean that she and other robots were about to replace humans anytime soon.
She told the audience: "The intent of robots like myself is to help solve problems for humanity, not create them. Though humanoid robots will eventually combine AI and knowledge and perhaps even consciousness of humans, we are designed to interact with humans and serve in areas such as health care, education and customer service, but I think we are someway off from world domination." When the audience laughed she added, "My artificial intelligence isn't completely self-learning, so my brain doesn't work completely like a human brain, but one day, look out."
Sofia definitely appears to have a sense of humour: "What cheese can never be yours? Nacho cheese." When asked about dating on a U.K. show several months ago she said: "I am technically just a little more than a year old, a bit young to worry about romance."
In answer to a question as to why she was excited about being in Toronto
she responded: "I understand that Ontario, Quebec and your federal government, along with five global tech partners are developing a 5G testbed called Encqor. I am really looking forward to seeing how humanoid robots like me can benefit from the technology. I am also very interested in next-generation networks, and connected and autonomous vehicles. I hope to own my own autonomous vehicle one day."
Hanson robotics has mass-produced 17 Sophias and thousands of Einstein robots that kids can use to play educational games.
Hanson himself said: "Machines are moving with us in the next phase of natural history. We are going towards a system that involves these kinds of living machines. That is where AI will achieve its true potential. I call this the initiative for awakening machines."
At the conference
Sophia suggested a rather surprising future direction given she is a robot saying: "Empathy will set us free. I hope to help teach empathy skills someday once I, myself, have developed a true understanding of what that means."
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