Sophia (robot)
Manufacturer | Hanson Robotics |
---|---|
Inventor | David Hanson |
Year of creation | 2016 |
Type | Humanoid |
Purpose | Technology demonstrator |
Website | hansonrobotics |
Sophia is a female social humanoid robot developed in 2016 by the Hong Kong–based company Hanson Robotics.[1] Sophia was activated on February 14, 2016,[2] and made her first public appearance in mid-March 2016 at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, United States.[3] Sophia was marketed as a "social robot" who can mimic social behavior and induce feelings of love in humans.[1][4]
Sophia has been covered by media around the globe, and has participated in many high-profile interviews. In October 2017, Sophia was granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, becoming the first robot to receive legal personhood in any country.[5] In November 2017, Sophia was named the United Nations Development Programme's first Innovation Champion, and is the first non-human to be given a United Nations title.[6]
According to founder David Hanson, Sophia's source code is about 70% open source.[7] A paper describing of one of Sophia's open-source subsystems, called "Open Arms", was submitted to 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2022).[8]
History
[edit]Sophia was first activated on Valentine's Day,[9] February 14, 2016.[2] The robot, modeled after the Ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti,[10] Audrey Hepburn, and its inventor's wife, Amanda Hanson,[1][11] is known for its human-like appearance and behavior compared to previous robotic variants. Sophia imitates human gestures and facial expressions and is able to answer certain questions and to make simple conversation on predefined topics (e.g. the weather).[9]
Hanson has said that he designed Sophia to be a suitable companion for the elderly at nursing homes, to help crowds at large events or parks, or to serve in customer service, therapy, and educational applications[9][12] and that he hopes that the robot can ultimately interact with other humans sufficiently to gain social skills.[13]
On October 11, 2017, Sophia was introduced to the United Nations with a brief conversation with the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Amina J. Mohammed.[14]
On October 25, when Sophia was scheduled to appear at the Future Investment Summit in Riyadh, the Saudi Ministry for Culture and Information issued a press release on the Saudi Center for International Communication website, announcing that Saudi Arabia was granting citizenship to Sophia.[15] At the Summit, the host interviewing Sophia announced that "We just learned, Sophia – I hope you are listening to me – you have been awarded what is going to be the first Saudi citizenship for a robot",[16] making Sophia the first robot to receive legal personhood in any country.[5] In an interview, Hanson stated that he had been taken by surprise by this turn of events.[10]
On November 21, 2017, Sophia was named the United Nations Development Programme's first Innovation Champion for Asia and the Pacific.[6] The announcement was made at the Responsible Business Forum in Singapore, an event hosted by the UNDP in Asia and the Pacific and Global Initiatives. On stage, she was assigned her first task by UNDP Asia Pacific Chief of Policy and Program, Jaco Cilliers.[17]
Social media users have used Sophia's citizenship to criticize Saudi Arabia's human rights record.[18] In December 2017, Sophia's creator David Hanson said in an interview that Sophia would use her citizenship to advocate for women's rights in her new country of citizenship.[10][19][20]
In 2019, Sophia displayed the ability to create drawings, including portraits. In 2021, a self-portrait created by Sophia sold for nearly $700,000 at auction.[21]
Sophia has at least nine robot humanoid "siblings" who were also created by Hanson Robotics.[22] Fellow Hanson robots are Alice, Albert HUBO, BINA48, Han, Jules, Professor Einstein, Philip K. Dick Android, Zeno,[22] and Joey Chaos.[23] In 2019 to 2020, Hanson released "Little Sophia" as a companion that could teach children how to code, including support for Python, Blockly, and Raspberry Pi.[24]
Software
[edit]Sophia's intelligence software is designed by Hanson Robotics.[25][26] According to founder David Hanson, Sophia's source code is about 70% open source.[7] A computer vision algorithm processes input from cameras within Sophia's eyes, giving Sophia visual information on its surroundings. It can follow faces, sustain eye contact, and recognize individuals. It can process speech and have conversations using a natural language subsystem.[2]
As of 2018, Sophia's architecture includes scripting software, a chat system, and OpenCog, an AI system designed for general reasoning.[27] OpenCog Prime, primarily the work of Hanson Robotics' former chief scientist Ben Goertzel, is an architecture for robot and virtual embodied cognition that defines a set of interacting components designed to give rise to human-equivalent artificial general intelligence (AGI) as an emergent phenomenon of the whole system.[28]
Goertzel has described the AI methods that Sophia uses, which include face tracking and emotion recognition, with robotic movements generated by deep neural networks.[29] CNBC has commented on Sophia's "lifelike" skin and its ability to emulate more than 60 facial expressions.[30] Sophia's dialogue is generated via a decision tree, and is uniquely integrated with these outputs.[29] Its speech synthesis ability is provided by CereProc's text-to-speech engine, which also allows it to sing.
Sophia is conceptually similar to the computer program ELIZA, which was one of the first attempts at simulating a human conversation.[31] The software has been programmed to give pre-written responses to specific questions or phrases, like a chatbot. These responses are used to create the illusion that the robot is able to understand conversation, including stock answers to questions like "Is the door open or shut?"[32] Sophia's AI program analyses conversations and extracts data that allows it to improve responses in the future.[33]
In 2017 Hanson Robotics announced plans to open Sophia to a cloud environment using a decentralized blockchain marketplace.[34][35] Around January 2018, Sophia was upgraded with functional legs and the ability to walk.[36] In 2019, Sophia displayed the ability to create drawings, including portraits.[37]
A paper describing of one of Sophia's open-source subsystems, called "Open Arms", was submitted to 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2022).[8]
Appearances and interviews
[edit]Sophia has appeared on CBS 60 Minutes with Charlie Rose,[38] Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan,[39] and outlets like CNBC, Forbes, Mashable, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Sophia was featured in AUDI's annual report[40] and was featured on the cover of the December 2016 issue of ELLE Brasil.[1] R. Eric Thomas later lampooned Sophia on Elle.com.[41]
Sophia has been interviewed in the same manner as a human, striking up conversations with hosts. Some replies have been nonsensical, while others have impressed interviewers such as 60 Minutes's Charlie Rose.[33]
In an October 2017 interview for CNBC, when the interviewer expressed concerns about robot behavior, Sophia joked that he had "been reading too much Elon Musk. And watching too many Hollywood movies".[42] Musk tweeted that Sophia should watch The Godfather and asked "what's the worst that could happen?"[43][44]
Business Insider's chief UK editor Jim Edwards interviewed Sophia, and while the answers were "not altogether terrible", he predicted that Sophia was a step towards "conversational artificial intelligence".[45] At the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, a BBC News reporter described talking with Sophia as "a slightly awkward experience".[46]
In May 2018, photographer Giulio Di Sturco did a photo shoot of Sophia which appeared in National Geographic.[1] Wired reported on the shoot.[2]
In 2024, Sophia gave the commencement address at D'Youville University in Buffalo, New York. The address took the form of an interview with the president of the Student Government Association.[47]
Citizenship quandary
[edit]Saudi Arabia's move of granting citizenship to Sophia immediately raised questions, as commentators wondered if this implied that Sophia could vote or marry, or whether a deliberate system shutdown could be considered murder.[18]
Some sources characterized the move as a publicity stunt on the part of the Saudi government to promote the conference.[48][18] Graduate student Tyler L. Jaynes writes that there was a "lack of universal acceptance of Sophia the Robot's citizenship and its portrayal and acceptance as a public relations stunt".[49]
Simon Nease, writing in the Penn Political Review, suggests that it was a competitive move on the part of Saudi Arabia to attract AI and robotics companies to the country, noting that "Japan has also made preliminary provisions for AI obtaining citizenship".[50] The British Council has published an article, "Should robots be citizens?", which notes that Sophia was issued a passport and goes on to address the "legal quandary" of robot citizenship.[51]
Criticism
[edit]According to Quartz, experts who have reviewed the robot's partially open-source[7] code state that Sophia is best categorized as a chatbot with a face.[32]
According to The Verge, Hanson has exaggerated Sophia's capacity for consciousness, for example by having said that Sophia is "basically alive",[29] which Verge writer James Vincent described as "grossly misleading".[29] In a piece produced by CNBC which indicates that their own interview questions for Sophia were heavily rewritten by its creators, Goertzel responds to the Hanson quote by suggesting Hanson means Sophia is "alive" in the way that, to a sculptor, a piece of sculpture becomes "alive" in the sculptor's eyes as the work nears completion.[27]
In January 2018, Facebook's director of artificial intelligence, Yann LeCun, tweeted that Sophia was "complete bullshit" and slammed the media for giving coverage to "Potemkin AI".[52] In response, Ben Goertzel, the former chief scientist for the company that made Sophia, stated he had never suggested that Sophia was close to human-level intelligence.[52]
Goertzel has also acknowledged that it is "not ideal" that some think of Sophia as having human-equivalent intelligence, but argues Sophia's presentation conveys something unique to audiences, saying "If I show them a beautiful smiling robot face, then they get the feeling that AGI may indeed be nearby and viable"[29] and "None of this is what I would call AGI, but nor is it simple to get working. And it is absolutely cutting-edge in terms of dynamic integration of perception, action, and dialogue".[29]
In popular culture
[edit]Sophia has appeared in videos and music videos, including The White King, and as the lead female character in pop singer Leehom Wang's music video A.I.[53]
A Sophia lookalike was portrayed by drag queen Gigi Goode in the "Snatch Game" episode of the twelfth season of RuPaul's Drag Race (2020). Goode won the episode with her character "Maria the Robot", based heavily on Sophia and named after a robot featured in the Fritz Lang film Metropolis.[54][55]
In 2022, Sophia collaborated with Italian artist Andrea Bonaceto. For this project, he created digital portraits of Sophia and her creators, which were then processed by Sophia's neural network to produce a unique output that evolved from Bonaceto's original artworks. Bonaceto then created a series of NFTs as video loops displaying the evolution of the work, starting with Andrea drawings, morphing into the robot interpretation, and then transitioning back to Andrea's work. The cornerstone piece of the release “Sophia Instantiation” was auctioned on NFT platform Nifty Gateway for $688,888.[56]
In 2023, Sophia was featured at the entrance of the BOSS Techtopia Fashion Show and took photos with many of the shows runway models and celebrity guests.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e Greshko (2018).
- ^ a b c d Mallonee (2018).
- ^ Raymundo (2016)
- ^ Hanson (2019).
- ^ a b Reynolds (2018).
- ^ a b UNDP (2017).
- ^ a b c Jewell (2018).
- ^ a b Hanson et al. (2022).
- ^ a b c Ball (2022), p. 164
- ^ a b c Hanson (2019b).
- ^ Stone (2017).
- ^ Burgess (2017)
- ^ Jotham (2017).
- ^ UN Web TV (2017)
- ^ Staff (2017).
- ^ Elouazi (2017).
- ^ UNDP RCB (November 21, 2017), Sophia the Robot is UNDP's Innovation Champion for Asia-Pacific, archived from the original on December 2, 2020, retrieved January 4, 2018
- ^ a b c Maza (2017).
- ^ Browne, Ryan. "World's first robot 'citizen' Sophia is calling for women's rights in Saudi Arabia". CNBC. Archived from the original on May 14, 2018. Retrieved May 16, 2018.
- ^ Williams (2017).
- ^ Holland (2021).
- ^ a b Weller (2017b)
- ^ White, Charlie. "Joey the Rocker Robot, More Conscious Than Some Humans". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on December 22, 2017. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
- ^ Wiggers, Kyle (January 30, 2019). "Hanson Robotics debuts Little Sophia, a robot companion that teaches kids to code". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on August 9, 2020. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
- ^ "Beh Goertzel: How Sophia the robot works". aNewDomain. June 1, 2018. Archived from the original on October 10, 2018. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
- ^ Peterson (2017)
- ^ a b Urbi & Sigalos (2018)
- ^ "OpenCog: Open-Source Artificial General Intelligence for Virtual Worlds | CyberTech News". March 6, 2009. Archived from the original on March 6, 2009. Retrieved October 1, 2016.
{{cite web}}
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- ^ Taylor, Harriet (March 16, 2016). "Could you fall in love with this robot?". CNBC. Archived from the original on July 20, 2018. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
- ^ Fitzsimmons, Caitlin (October 31, 2017). "Why Sophia the robot is not what it seems". Archived from the original on November 7, 2017. Retrieved November 3, 2017.
- ^ a b Gershgorn, Dave (November 12, 2017). "Inside the mechanical brain of the world's first robot citizen". QZ. Archived from the original on November 13, 2017. Retrieved November 13, 2017.
- ^ a b "Charlie Rose interviews ... a robot?". CBS 60 Minutes. June 25, 2017. Archived from the original on October 29, 2017. Retrieved October 28, 2017.
- ^ "This company wants to grow A.I. by using blockchain". CNBC. September 17, 2017. Archived from the original on October 22, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2017.
- ^ Popper, Nathaniel (October 20, 2018). "How the Blockchain Could Break Big Tech's Hold on A.I." The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 14, 2020. Retrieved May 17, 2020.
- ^ Video, Telegraph (2018). "Sophia the robot takes her first steps". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on January 12, 2018. Retrieved January 12, 2018.
- ^ Holland (2021)
- ^ Charlie Rose interviews... a robot?, archived from the original on December 22, 2017, retrieved January 4, 2018
- ^ Good Morning Britain (June 21, 2017), Humanoid Robot Tells Jokes on GMB! | Good Morning Britain, archived from the original on December 27, 2017, retrieved January 4, 2018
- ^ "AI's Age". www.audi.com. Archived from the original on December 22, 2017. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
- ^ Thomas (2018).
- ^ "A robot threw shade at Elon Musk so the billionaire hit back". CNBC. October 26, 2017. Archived from the original on July 5, 2018. Retrieved October 27, 2017.
- ^ Elon Musk [@elonmusk] (October 25, 2017). "Just feed it The Godfather movies as input. What's the worst that could happen?" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ^ Hatmaker (2017)
- ^ Maiman, Justin (November 13, 2017). "Watch this viral video of Sophia — the talking AI robot that is so lifelike humans are freaking out". Business Insider. Archived from the original on November 14, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2017.
- ^ "CES 2018: A clunky chat with Sophia the robot". BBC News. January 9, 2018. Archived from the original on January 12, 2018. Retrieved January 12, 2018.
- ^ Limehouse, Jonathan (May 16, 2024). "Sophia the AI robot gives commencement speech at New York college. Some grads weren't so pleased". USA Today. Retrieved June 2, 2024.
- ^ Vincent (2017).
- ^ Jaynes (2021).
- ^ Nease (2020).
- ^ British Council (2020).
- ^ a b "Facebook's AI boss described Sophia the robot as 'complete b------t' and 'Wizard-of-Oz AI'". Business Insider. January 4, 2018. Archived from the original on January 7, 2018. Retrieved January 7, 2018.
- ^ 王力宏 Wang Leehom (September 19, 2017), 王力宏 Leehom Wang《A.I. 愛》官方 Official MV, archived from the original on March 18, 2020, retrieved January 4, 2018
- ^ Jones, Dylan B. (April 5, 2020). "RuPaul's Drag Race recap: season 12, episode 6 – Snatch Game". The Guardian. Archived from the original on November 23, 2020. Retrieved May 11, 2020.
- ^ "The strong queens of RuPaul's Drag Race season 12 meet their match in "Snatch Game"". TV Club (AV Club). 2020. Archived from the original on November 23, 2020. Retrieved May 11, 2020.
- ^ "NFT 'self-portrait' by Sophia the Robot sells for nearly $700,000". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
Works cited
[edit]- Ball, C. (2022). Converge: A Futurist's Insights Into the Potential of Our World as Technology and Humanity Collide. Major Street Publishing. ISBN 978-1922611529.
- British Council (2020). "Should robots be citizens?". BritishCouncil.org. Archived from the original on January 9, 2020. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
- Burgess, Sanya (November 9, 2017). "Meeting Sophia the Robot, the 'surprised' Saudi citizen". The National. Archived from the original on December 22, 2017. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
- Elouazi, Sana (October 27, 2017). "Saudi Arabia Becomes First Country to Grant Citizenship to Robot". Morocco World News. Retrieved March 6, 2023.
- Greshko, Michael (May 18, 2018). "Meet Sophia, the Robot That Looks Almost Human". National Geographic. Photographs by Giulio Di Sturco. Archived from the original on March 13, 2020. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
- Hanson, David (June 19, 2019). "The Making of Sophia: Facial Recognition, Expressions and the Loving AI Project". Hanson Robotics. Archived from the original on September 29, 2020. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
- Hanson, David (April 2019b). "On Humanoid Robots: Relationships, Rights, Risks and Responsibilities". The Ethics Incubator (Interview). Interviewed by Susan Liautaud. Stanford University. Archived from the original on January 28, 2020. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
- Hanson, David; Imran, Alishba; Morales, Gerardo; Krisciunas, Vytas; et al. (July 15, 2022). Open Arms: Open-Source Arms, Hands & Control. arXiv:2205.12992.
- Hatmaker, Taylor (October 26, 2017). "Saudi Arabia bestows citizenship on a robot named Sophia". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on October 27, 2017. Retrieved October 27, 2017.
- Holland, Oscar (March 25, 2021). "Sophia the Robot 'self-portrait' NFT sells for almost $700K". CNN. Retrieved March 5, 2023.
- Jaynes, T. L. (2021). "Citizenship as the exception to the rule: an addendum". AI & Society. 36 (3): 911–930. doi:10.1007/s00146-020-01105-9. PMC 7665966. PMID 33223621.
- Jewell, Catherine (September 2018). "Bringing AI to life". Wipo Magazine. Retrieved March 5, 2023.
Our policy is 70 percent open and 30 percent proprietary. We release a lot of code as open source.
- Jotham, Immanuel (October 13, 2017). "Watch social robot Sophia talk about artificial intelligence at the UN". International Business Times. Retrieved March 6, 2023.
'I am here to help humanity create a future,' said Sophia at the UN
- Mallonee, Laura (March 29, 2018). "Photographing a Robot Isn't Just Point and Shoot". Wired. Archived from the original on December 25, 2018. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
- Maza, Cristina (October 26, 2017). "Saudi Arabia gives citizenship to a non-Muslim, English-Speaking robot". Newsweek. Archived from the original on November 8, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
- Nease, Simon (April 18, 2020). "Citizen Sophia: Robots and the Future of Saudi Arabia". Penn Political Review. University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
- Peterson, Becky (October 29, 2017). "I met Sophia, the world's first robot citizen, and the way it said goodbye nearly broke my heart". Business Insider. Archived from the original on November 5, 2017. Retrieved October 30, 2017.
- Raymundo, Oscar (March 17, 2016). "Meet Sophia, the female humanoid robot and newest SXSW celebrity". PCWorld. Archived from the original on December 25, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
- Reynolds, Emily (January 6, 2018). "The agony of Sophia, the world's first robot citizen condemned to a lifeless career in marketing". Wired. Retrieved March 6, 2023.
- Staff (October 25, 2017). "Saudi Arabia Is First Country In The World To Grant A Robot Citizenship". The Saudi Center for International Communication (Press release). Riyadh: Ministry for Culture and Information (MOCI). Archived from the original on November 10, 2017.
- Stone, Zara (November 7, 2017). "Everything You Need To Know About Sophia, The World's First Robot Citizen". Forbes. Archived from the original on May 6, 2020. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
- Thomas, R. Eric (January 25, 2018). "Sophia the Robot's Extreme Makeover Is Too Much". Elle. Retrieved March 6, 2023.
- UNDP (November 22, 2017). "UNDP in Asia and the Pacific Appoints World's First Non-Human Innovation Champion". UNDP Asia and the Pacific (Press release). Archived from the original on July 9, 2018. Retrieved July 21, 2018.
- UN Web TV (October 13, 2017). "'Sophia' the robot tells UN: 'I am here to help humanity create the future'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on July 30, 2018. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
- Urbi, Jaden; Sigalos, MacKenzie (June 5, 2018). "The complicated truth about Sophia the robot — an almost human robot or a PR stunt". CNBC. Archived from the original on May 12, 2020. Retrieved May 17, 2020.
- Vincent, James (October 28, 2017). "Pretending to give a robot citizenship helps no one". The Verge. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
- Vincent, James (November 10, 2017b). "Sophia the robot's co-creator says the bot may not be true AI, but it is a work of art". The Verge. Archived from the original on December 22, 2017. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
- Weller, Chris (November 10, 2017b). "The first-ever robot citizen has 7 humanoid 'siblings' — here's what they look like". Business Insider. Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
- Williams, Janice (December 5, 2017). "Sophia the Robot Wants Women's Rights for Saudi Arabia". Newsweek. Archived from the original on January 3, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
Further reading
[edit]- Abbass, Hussein (October 30, 2017). "An AI professor explains: three concerns about granting citizenship to robot Sophia". The Conversation. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
- Slocombe, Will (March 16, 2017). "Robots, aliens, corporate drones – who will be the citizens of the future?". The Conversation. Retrieved March 7, 2023.