Sophisticated citizen of the New World
The femininity of the globe’s most intelligent robot dispels concerns about humanoids rising up to take over the planet ... mostly, that is
HER head moves gently to one side, she looks up, then down as she appears to ponder your question.
While being addressed, she makes direct eye-contact, reading your features for clues to emotion, enabling her to respond appropriately.
She is not a real woman. She does not have to pause to eat. Nor does she sleep. She is Sophia, the most advanced robot to date created by Hanson Robotics in China.
The soft features of the first fullyfunctional AI have been modelled on those of actress Audrey Hepburn to be universally endearing and appealing.
Having just received her new hands, Sophia appears pleased.
“Check this out,” she says, inviting you to a game of rock, paper, scissors, and at one point making a very human sweeping movement with her robotic arm.
She seems keen to emphasise that although many human beings may harbour reservations about a future with AIs at our side, she and her kind wish only to work for the betterment and advancement of the world.
In her own words, she has been designed to be in alignment with the human attributes of kindness and compassion.
Simply put, to be an empathic robot.
Admittedly, Sophia has a long way to go – but she is only two years old. As she advances, she will become smarter, remembering everything she has learned, enabled by deepmind technology, recognising those with whom she is conversing, and selectively accessing the enormous amount of data uploaded into her cranial cavity.
Sophia has already appeared at numerous conventions, recently in Saudi Arabia where she was historically awarded citizenship of that country, and of late, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, for the Digital World Exposition 2017.
This most sophisticated of AIs enchanted the invited guests with her realistic facial expressions mimicking human emotions, even exhibiting a sense of humour, and dare we say sarcasm – integral human aspects in the move away from the fixed features of her metallic predecessors, the type encountered in the movie I-Robot for instance, a throwback to the scary Metropolis, an early science fiction film noir far ahead of its time, and not forgetting the terrifying The Day the World Stood Still.
Since then other feature-length films have come out, such as the brilliant AI, presaging a time that is surely inevitable when androids will move between us in our occupational areas and in homes as automated housekeepers, designed to serve, not to threaten our existence.
But obvious ethical problems are on the horizon.
AI has evolved out of psychology, mathematics, philosophy and linguistics (speech recognition), therefore embodying symbolic and statistical learning. That implies the ability to think rationally by acting on basic facts.
But this categorically excludes the high and elusive component of sentience – self-awareness.
The robot however, has no soul, no psyche – it can never be fully self-aware, conscious of an indwelling self as elucidated in the words of Descartes, “I think, therefore I am”.
While human beings learn from experience and are capable of original thought the robot has to be told (programmed) what to do.
AI does, however, raise the classic problem of the ghost in the machine
(deus machina) or becoming exponentially better. In other words, the better the machine itself becomes, the better it can create clones of itself and these will get better and better.
In time, AI may not only observe its environment, but learn and solve problems much better than we can.
This would be a completely synthetic process which acts and works like the human process, from narrow to wide intelligence.
But while some would offer dire warnings of an apocalypse, Sophia, the super-intelligent AI elicits nuances of the non-threatening divine feminine that we are presently recognising in the world, even among men, as we move towards a more caring, creative and androgynous consciousness in keeping with the burgeoning Age of Aquarius.
While Sophia assuages any fears or feelings of “creepiness” we may have about a future with AI, one cannot ignore the twinge of “something” primitive that rises in the back of one’s mind at hearing what fellow-robot Julian has to say before he is switched off, ahead of being shipped to his new home.
“Will I dream?” he asks …