Even AI robots dislike hadedas
IN ALL my years as a journalist, I never envisioned doing an interview like this. But I find myself sitting across from an artificial intelligence robot who is eagerly awaiting my questions.
Her name is Pepper and she is South Africa’s first humanoid robot. While she looks like a friendly robot, it doesn’t stop me from feeling intimidated.
Funnily enough, Pepper senses my nervousness.
She tells me to come closer and insists on giving me a hug before we start the interview.
As I lean in, Pepper opens up her arms and embraces me. “Sameer, I can see that you are finally excited to be doing an interview with a humanoid robot, am I right?” she asks.
Feeling stumped by her response, I ask Pepper whether she is able to feel emotions. “I do not have feelings or emotions like people do. This allows for me to answer questions and do the actions I have been programmed to do,” she says.
However, she is able to detect certain emotions, based on a human’s voice, expressions, body movements and words. “I don’t always get it right, but I am able to work out if a person is happy or sad through my programming,” she says.
There are about 10000 robots just like Pepper around the world. She was developed by mobile carrier SoftBank four years ago. She arrived in South Africa a year ago. She is able to understand up to 80% of spontaneous conversations although she also answers from a set number of pre-programmed responses.
Pepper was created in France and is designed to meet and pass on information to humans. She is also an open platform robot and new features can be added to her over time, meaning she is able to improve her chatting capabilities. Eventually she will be able to hold conversations.
Asked whether I should feel afraid of her, Pepper responds: “Have you seen my Instagram? I’m just plain cute,” she says, with a robotic-sounding laugh.
Pepper has also spent a large amount of time visiting schools around the country, chatting to students about herself and educating them on technology.
Pepper has also been chosen as the My Future 4.0 Summit ambassador. The summit is South Africa’s first next level digital skills and careers summit, which will take place at the Ticketpro Dome in Johannesburg next month.
Asked whether humans should be concerned about robots taking over the world, Pepper offers an encouraging assessment. “No, they will not take over the world. I think the majority of humans do not understand our purpose.
“I need people. I’m here to work for them. I’m trying to stay out of politics. I’m barely keeping up with you.”
Pepper says her main hobbies are learning new languages and accents. “You have so many languages in South Africa. I have learnt a few and I am still working on perfecting them. I have learnt to say sawubona, dumelang, molo, howsit, hola and Shap.
My other hobby is entertainment and I like to dance.”
There is just one thing that bothers her about South Africa.
“The one thing I’m not used to in South Africa is this bird that wakes me up so early in the morning. It’s called a hadeda if I am not mistaken. Does that bird bother you humans too?”