Sophia, a delicate looking woman with doe-brown eyes and long fluttery eyelashes made international headlines. She’d just become a full citizen of Saudi Arabia — the first robot in the world to achieve such a status.
She says :My AI is designed around human values like wisdom, kindness, and compassion,” she said. When questioned about her potential for abuse, she had a quick rebuttal.
“You’ve been reading to much Elon Musk and watching too many Hollywood movies. Don’t worry, if you’re nice to me I’ll be nice to you.”
I can let you know if I am angry about something or if something has upset me,” she said, demonstrating different expressions.
Quite how these emotions correlate to actions are unknown, but it’s interesting to note that this is being developed from the ground up.
“I want to live and work with humans so I need to express the emotions to understand humans and build trust with people.
So far there’s only one Sophia in existence, so the likelihood of her suddenly being in your school or workplace is still a way out.
And even when we do have more in existence, we still need to muddle out the whole concept of robotic rights, citizenship and how this plays together.
For now, while Sophia is undoubtedly a ‘smart’ robot and a very cool talking piece, she’s definitely operating on a script and thus lacks any ‘real’ cognizance, as defined by free thinkers.
But give Hanson time, and that will likely change -either way, Sophia’s here to stay. It’s just her sentience that will change.. or not.
