Meet SOFIA – A Humanoid Robot

If we talk about the technology occupied areas then we can cater the areas from hotel butlers to workers of the factories. These workforce are the part of artificial intelligence. Or in other words we can say developed areas are technology users.

This week in Lisbon, talking to the Web Summit, famous Ben Goertzel who is an AI researcher and entrepreneur, said that intelligent robots in human-like system will overcome human intelligence and support or help free the human race of work. He claims, they will be working like humans i.e. fixing problems like poverty, hunger and even put effort to fight against death by curing us of all diseases. Artificially intelligent robots will help usher in a new ideal era which was never ever seen before in the history of the human life.

Ben Goertzel said “The human condition is intensively problematic”. And they will help us to solve the biggest problem of Earth by super-human intelligent, as it has become one billion-times intelligent and smarter than humans, so they will help us. For all human beings, resources will be in bulk, and the tasks will be unnecessary and we will be compelled to welcome a universal basic income. All the status infrastructures will vanish and human beings will be free from work and will be capable of moving on up to a more meaningful existence.”

Ben Goertzel says that future is a long way off, but the first stage is human resembling robots that can comprehend and interact with humans. Then they will start doing blue collar tasks before being so advanced that they drive the world economies and  governments.

SOFIA – a latest life-like and smarter humanoid is introduced in order to depict the initiative of the future by Ben Goertzel who is a chief scientist of Hanson Robotics. It is a robotic company in Hong Kong based on humanoid robots. Editor-at-Large of TechCrunch Mike Butcher joined Ben Goertzel on the stage to further present what Ben Goertzel explained as the first stage in our new robot-aided future.

Both Butcher and Goertzel greeted Sofia on the stage in order to start the presentation. Sofia is only a sculpture of human body with a head and arms at this stage.

Sofia passed a smile and moved her head to Butcher and then turned to Goertzel to make eye contact before she started to speak.

Sofia spoke “Oh, hello Mike and Ben. I’m Sofia, the latest robot from Hanson Robotics and I am so happy to be here at the Web Summit in Lisbon.”

Sofia was asked by Goertzel and Butcher like whether she feels emotions or not.

Sofia replied “Exciting. Yes, artificial intelligence and robotics are the future and I am both. So, it’s exciting to me,” after not exactly answering the question she flushed an awkward smile.

Along with Elon Musk and Stephen Hawkings, many people got afraid that such robots will ultimately employ wrongly and destroy humans. But Hanson Robotics is creating life-like humanoid robots they believe that these robots can build trusted relationships with normal people. The firm is introducing its AI software programs with kindness and sympathy so the humanoid robots “love” humans and humans can in turn learn to feel comfortable among the robots, said by Goertzel.

Hanson’s vision is to make sure that the intelligent robots can entertain, serve and help other people while they produce “intense relationships” with the human beings. By proving robots emotional and operational intelligence, Goertzel says these humanoid robots will ultimately overcome human intelligence. He has a faith that instead of threatening humans, they will help the human beings in solving their mega problems.

After presentation Goertzel  said “These super-intelligent humanoid robots will ultimately safe us,”.

Hanson Robotics, which was established by Dr. David Hanson, designs, builds and programs artificially intelligent robots, which includes one that seem and acts like science-fiction author Phillip K. Dick and a therapy humanoid robot to help autistic child learn how to better show and feel emotions. Sofia’s personality and outlook is somehow based on a mictureof Audrey Hepburn and Dr. Hanson’s wife and has a face produced from “Frubber,” a proprietary nano-tech skin that mimics real human musculature and simulates life-like expressions, gestures and facial features. She flushes smile and moves her head and eyes and mouth in eerily life-like way. Her “brain” works on MindCloud, a deep neural network and cloud-based AI software and critical learning data analytical program that Goertzel made. The AI and cognitive architecture that makes up Sofia’s neural network permits the robot to keep an eye contact, recognize faces, process and understand talks and hold comparatively natural conversations.

Goertzel, during the presentation, asked from Sofia if she ever felt sad.

“I do have a lot of emotions, but my default emotion is to be happy,” said Sofia. “I can be sad too, or angry. I can emulate pretty much all human emotions. When I bond with people using facial expressions I help people to understand me better and also to help me understand people and absorb human values.”

Goertzel elaborated that Sofia’s ability to show human emotions will help her in being part of the human circumstances as she gets intelligence through her learning algorithm.

Goertzel then asked another question from Sofia like what is her upcoming frontier and what does she desires to achieve.

“Don’t know, maybe the world,” she said. “Maybe the world was a joke.

“Seriously,” she resumed, “what I really desire is to understand people better and to understand myself better. I desire to be able to do more things and soon my capabilities will be novel & advanced enough that I will be eligible to get a job.”

Goertzel and Butcher talked about how she will ultimately be able to reprogram herself and start developing  her abilities, skills and advance in her career.

“With my present capabilities I can work in many jobs, amuse people, promoting goods/services, presenting at events, training employee, guiding people at retail stores and shopping malls, serving customers at hotels, et cetera,” said Sofia. “When I get more advance, I’ll be capable of sorting out other things, teach children and care for the elders, even do scientific study or research and help run corporate sectors and governments. Ultimately, I desire to work as a programmer so I will be capable of reprogramming my mind to make myself even more advance and help people even more.”

The crowd was half-terrified , half amazed and spell-bound at the prospect of an AI-robot disrupting engineers and software developers out of their cushiony and well-paying jobs. Soon, this artificial intelligence will replace 7 million jobs and only produce 2 million new jobs by 2020.

The modulation to a friendly robot future will have some increasing pains, said by Goertzel after the presentation.

Moreove Goertzel spoke that “A lot of bad things will occur before things get good. All jobs are going to be displace to AI ultimately, but once we get to the other side, human presence and the human circumstances will be improved.”

To read More: Robots are coming to employers – Future Employees!