Is AI taking over the world?
As the world evolves, so does the technology in it. On October 25 Saudi Arabia announced that they accepted their first robot citizen, Sophia. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) robot was developed by Hanson Robotics, and in an interview with Andrew Sorkin from the New York Times, Sophia threw a jab at Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk.
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The journalist asked Sophia about his worries on negative intentions with humans and Sophia’s reply was, “You've been reading too much Elon Musk and watching too many Hollywood movies. Don't worry, if you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you. Treat me as a smart input output system.” Elon Musk, not known to stay quiet, replied via Twitter saying “Just feed it The Godfather movies as input. What's the worst that could happen?”
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Hanson Robotics described Sophia on their website as “An evolving genius machine. Over time, her increasing intelligence and remarkable story will enchant the world and connect with people regardless of age, gender, and culture.”
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I asked Alina Sharkey, a junior communications student how she felt about an AI receiving citizenship and she said, “I think citizenship should be reserved for human beings and not robots, because if we start giving robots citizenship, we may as well start giving all inanimate objects citizenship.”
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After the release of AI, Twitter had an outpour of negative messages in regards to Sophia. Some comments included: “Are robots allowed to drive now, will they need to pay taxes too, and human replacement is starting to roll off the assembly line.”
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The citizenship granted to Sophia by the Saudi Arabian government has sparked a lot of conversation and controversy. Because Saudi Arabia is a country that has been notoriously known to refuse civil rights to women, them giving rights to a robot that identifies herself as a female struck a chord with many people. Women in the country have to be accompanied by a male in public and wear head coverings, yet a robot has a lot more civil rights than a Saudi Arabian woman.
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According to the company, Sophia is still in her beginning stages, therefore conversation does not flow so smoothly. Creator, David Hanson, hopes that people interact with her the same way they would interact with a friend in order to help develop her perception of the social world as well as the one she has with the physical world.
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The company developed Sophia to look human-like with her complexion, but the exposed plastic skull does not really emote feelings of humanity and approachability. They also wanted the robot to mimic human emotions, such as: anger, jealousy, love and empathy. Similar to Sophia’s conversation capacity, her emotions are the same way. She has only been able to somewhat display happiness and sadness.
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The Hanson Company is looking to develop other humanoid AI’s to join civilization and society in which “the age of human androids will be upon us.” She is going to take a lot in order to convince the populations that AIs are the way of the future, but it seems like Hanson Robotics is dedicated to take on the task.
