AI Robot Sophia

Created by Hanson Robotics, Sophia has been dubbed “a cultural icon and an AI robot” by
many. But, what’s the truth behind Sophia? Is “she” really an AI with thoughts and emotions
of her own? Or is it all a facade? First we must delve into the reasons that led to the creation
of Sophia. While she was created by Hanson Robotics, the group was lead by David Hanson,
who used to work for Disney as an Imagineer, sculptor and filmmaker. He went on to
describe how humans
prefer “on how humanoid robots can be likable, despite the conception that anything to 'fake
human' will trigger a revulsion in people” (Forbes, 2017).

David first encountered the idea of four-dimensional robots in a way to help humankind and
for AI robots to be of emotional value and help to us.

"We feel that for realistic robots to be appealing to people, robots must attain some level of
integrated social responsivity and aesthetic refinement,".
While some might say that Sophia is, in all her characteristics a true artificial intelligence
milestone, others refute these statements and say that ‘yes she is a milestone’, but she has
been portrayed as something she isn’t. In an interview made by CNBC, the expressed their
concerns by the fact that they were given a script to “stick to”, they sent questions and
Hanson Robotics answered with what they described as a correct version for them to answer,
making their questions predetermined, and they weren’t the only ones. Further statement by
the likes of Committee Chief scientist of Hanson Robotics, Ben Goertze, who expressed “(A
lot) of what comes out of her (mouth), she doesn’t really understand the meaning or the full
implication…”.

She has also been described as a robotic chat bot, which is far from alive, Sophia’s creator
has been quoted as saying that she was “basically alive”, and as we know in the scientific
world “basically” is not a correct statement. In his thesis paper, fully rebuke of the Uncanny
Valley theory, that humans will not like if robots “sort of” look like humans, but not exactly
like them. And the fruit of the thesis could be Sophia. Some up and coming figures in the
scientific community have described the hype of Sophia as an ELIZA of the new century. “In
computer science, ELIZA effect, is the tendency to unconsciously assume computer
behaviors are analogous to human behaviors, that is anthropomorphisation”.

According to Business Insider in their article “Facebook's AI boss described Sophia the robot
as 'complete b------t' and 'Wizard-of-Oz AI'” published in January 6, 2018. Yann LeCun had
tweeted about Sophia being a scam “This is to AI as prestidigitation is to real magic”. She
isn’t human-like AI, she is human-like Sculpt with chatbot technology.

So in all reality, she might be perceived as a model for future advances in AI Robotics. But
not a real AI.

In the Dominican Republic, while we are not exactly at a level to apply such AI technology
we are in the reaches of chatbot intelligence, with approaches to mental health helping chats
and even corporate Q&A’s. There are a ton of opportunities for AI in the D.R. In the future
we’ll be able to see and produce technology in the cloud, but for now in all reality,
investigations, studying and further understanding is what lies in front of us.