Sophia (robot) explained
Sophia is a female social humanoid robot developed in 2016 by the Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics. Sophia was activated on February 14, 2016, and made her first public appearance in mid-March 2016 at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, United States. Sophia was marketed as a "social robot" who can mimic social behavior and induce feelings of love in humans.
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. 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.
According to founder David Hanson, Sophia's source code is about 70% open source. 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).
History
Sophia was first activated on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2016. The robot, modeled after the Ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, Audrey Hepburn, and its inventor's wife, Amanda Hanson, 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).
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 and that he hopes that the robot can ultimately interact with other humans sufficiently to gain social skills.
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.
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. 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", making Sophia the first robot to receive legal personhood in any country. In an interview, Hanson stated that he had been taken by surprise by this turn of events.
On November 21, 2017, Sophia was named the United Nations Development Programme's first Innovation Champion for Asia and the Pacific. 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.
Social media users have used Sophia's citizenship to criticize Saudi Arabia's human rights record. 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.[1]
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.
Sophia has at least nine robot humanoid "siblings" who were also created by Hanson Robotics. Fellow Hanson robots are Alice, Albert HUBO, BINA48, Han, Jules, Professor Einstein, Philip K. Dick Android, Zeno, and Joey Chaos.[2] Around 2019–20, Hanson released "Little Sophia" as a companion that could teach children how to code, including support for Python, Blockly, and Raspberry Pi.[3]
Software
Sophia's intelligence software is designed by Hanson Robotics.[4] According to founder David Hanson, Sophia's source code is about 70% open source. 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.
As of 2018, Sophia's architecture includes scripting software, a chat system, and OpenCog, an AI system designed for general reasoning. 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.[5]
Goertzel has described the AI methods that Sophia uses, which include face tracking and emotion recognition, with robotic movements generated by deep neural networks. CNBC has commented on Sophia's "lifelike" skin and its ability to emulate more than 60 facial expressions.[6] Sophia's dialogue is generated via a decision tree, and is uniquely integrated with these outputs. 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.[7] 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?"[8] Sophia's AI program analyses conversations and extracts data that allows it to improve responses in the future.[9]
In 2017 Hanson Robotics announced plans to open Sophia to a cloud environment using a decentralized blockchain marketplace.[10] [11] Around January 2018, Sophia was upgraded with functional legs and the ability to walk.[12] In 2019, Sophia displayed the ability to create drawings, including portraits.
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).
Appearances and interviews
Sophia has appeared on CBS 60 Minutes with Charlie Rose, Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan, 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[13] and was featured on the cover of the December 2016 issue of ELLE Brasil. R. Eric Thomas later lampooned Sophia on Elle.com.
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 Minutess Charlie Rose.[9]
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".[14] Musk tweeted that Sophia should watch The Godfather and asked "what's the worst that could happen?"[15]
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".[16] At the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, a BBC News reporter described talking with Sophia as "a slightly awkward experience".[17]
In May 2018, photographer Giulio Di Sturco did a photo shoot of Sophia which appeared in National Geographic. Wired reported on the shoot.
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.[18]
Citizenship quandary
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.
While some sources characterized the move as a publicity stunt on the part of the Saudi government to promote the conference, other sources have treated it seriously. 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". Jaynes goes on to note that "a refusal to seriously treat this event as being legitimate already displays the struggles that will be faced by patients undergoing surgical augmentation when integrating self-learning artificial intelligence systems (SLAIS) into their chemically organic forms."
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". 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.
Criticism
According to Quartz, experts who have reviewed the robot's partially open-source code state that Sophia is best categorized as a chatbot with a face.[8]
According to The Verge, Hanson has exaggerated Sophia's capacity for consciousness, for example by having said that Sophia is "basically alive", which Verge writer James Vincent described as "grossly misleading". 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.
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".[19] 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.[19]
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" 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".
In popular culture
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.
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.[20] [21]
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.[22]
In 2023, Sophia manned the entrance of the BOSS Techtopia Fashion Show and took photos with many of the shows runway models and celebrity guests.
See also
References
Works cited
- Book: Ball, C.. 2022 . Converge: A Futurist's Insights Into the Potential of Our World as Technology and Humanity Collide . Major Street Publishing . 978-1922611529.
- Web site: British Council . 2020 . Should robots be citizens? . BritishCouncil.org . 2023-03-07 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200109191841/https://www.britishcouncil.org/anyone-anywhere/explore/digital-identities/robots-citizens . 2020-01-09 . live.
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- News: Sana . Elouazi . October 27, 2017 . Saudi Arabia Becomes First Country to Grant Citizenship to Robot . Morocco World News . 2023-03-06.
- News: Michael . Greshko . Photographs by Giulio Di Sturco . Meet Sophia, the Robot That Looks Almost Human . National Geographic . 18 May 2018 . April 29, 2020 . March 13, 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200313063227/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2018/05/sophia-robot-artificial-intelligence-science/ . dead.
- Web site: Hanson . David . The Making of Sophia: Facial Recognition, Expressions and the Loving AI Project . Hanson Robotics . 16 May 2020 . 19 June 2019 . September 29, 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200929104603/https://www.hansonrobotics.com/the-making-of-sophia-facial-recognition-expressions-and-the-loving-ai-project/ . live .
- Hanson . David . Susan Liautaud . On Humanoid Robots: Relationships, Rights, Risks and Responsibilities . The Ethics Incubator . Stanford University . April 2019b . Jan 28, 2020 . January 28, 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200128235041/http://ethicsincubator.net/ethics-and-truth-interviews/david-hanson-interview . live.
- Open Arms: Open-Source Arms, Hands & Control . 15 Jul 2022 . 4 . David . Hanson . Alishba . Imran . Gerardo . Morales . Vytas . Krisciunas . Aditya . Sagi . Aman . Malali . Rushali . Mohbe . Raviteja . Upadrashta . 2205.12992.
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- News: Oscar . Holland . Sophia the Robot 'self-portrait' NFT sells for almost $700K . 25 March 2021 . CNN . 2023-03-05.
- Jaynes . T. L. . Citizenship as the exception to the rule: an addendum . AI & Society . 36 . 911–930 . 2021 . 3 . 10.1007/s00146-020-01105-9. 33223621 . 7665966 .
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- News: Watch social robot Sophia talk about artificial intelligence at the UN.. 'I am here to help humanity create a future,' said Sophia at the UN . Immanuel . Jotham. October 13, 2017 . International Business Times . 2023-03-06.
- Photographing a Robot Isn't Just Point and Shoot . Mallonee . Laura . March 29, 2018 . Wired . October 10, 2018 . December 25, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20181225204516/https://www.wired.com/story/photographing-a-robot/ . live.
- News: Cristina . Maza . Saudi Arabia gives citizenship to a non-Muslim, English-Speaking robot . Newsweek . October 26, 2017 . October 26, 2017 . November 8, 2017 . https://web.archive.org/web/20171108055113/http://www.newsweek.com/saudi-arabia-robot-sophia-muslim-694152. live.
- Web site: Citizen Sophia: Robots and the Future of Saudi Arabia . Simon . Nease . Penn Political Review . University of Pennsylvania . April 18, 2020 . 2023-03-07.
- News: Becky . Peterson . I met Sophia, the world's first robot citizen, and the way it said goodbye nearly broke my heart . Business Insider . October 29, 2017 . October 30, 2017 . November 5, 2017 . https://web.archive.org/web/20171105234209/http://uk.businessinsider.com/sophia-the-words-first-robot-citizen-nearly-broke-my-heart-2017-10?r=US&IR=T. live.
- News: Oscar . Raymundo . March 17, 2016 . Meet Sophia, the female humanoid robot and newest SXSW celebrity . PCWorld . January 4, 2018 . en . December 25, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20181225204519/https://www.pcworld.com/article/3045299/robots/meet-sophia-the-female-humanoid-robot-and-newest-sxsw-celebrity.html . dead.
- Emily . Reynolds . January 6, 2018 . The agony of Sophia, the world's first robot citizen condemned to a lifeless career in marketing . Wired . 2023-03-06.
- Staff . Saudi Arabia Is First Country In The World To Grant A Robot Citizenship . The Saudi Center for International Communication . Ministry for Culture and Information (MOCI) . Riyadh . October 25, 2017 . https://web.archive.org/web/20171110114747/https://cic.org.sa/2017/10/saudi-arabia-is-first-country-in-the-world-to-grant-a-robot-citizenship/ . 2017-11-10 . dead.
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- Sophia the Robot's Extreme Makeover Is Too Much . R. Eric . Thomas . January 25, 2018 . Elle . 2023-03-06.
- UNDP . November 22, 2017 . UNDP in Asia and the Pacific Appoints World's First Non-Human Innovation Champion . UNDP Asia and the Pacific . July 21, 2018 . July 9, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180709173848/http://www.asia-pacific.undp.org/content/rbap/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2017/11/22/rbfsingapore.html . dead .
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- News: Jaden . Urbi . MacKenzie . Sigalos . The complicated truth about Sophia the robot — an almost human robot or a PR stunt . 17 May 2020 . CNBC . 5 June 2018 . en . May 12, 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200512030753/https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/05/hanson-robotics-sophia-the-robot-pr-stunt-artificial-intelligence.html . live .
- News: James . Vincent . October 28, 2017 . Pretending to give a robot citizenship helps no one . The Verge . 2023-03-07.
- News: James . Vincent . 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 . January 4, 2018 . December 22, 2017 . https://web.archive.org/web/20171222230054/https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/10/16617092/sophia-the-robot-citizen-ai-hanson-robotics-ben-goertzel . live.
- News: Chris . Weller . November 10, 2017b . The first-ever robot citizen has 7 humanoid 'siblings' — here's what they look like . Business Insider . January 4, 2018 . en . January 4, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180104030409/http://www.businessinsider.com/sophia-robot-hanson-robotics-other-humanoids-2017-11 . live.
- News: Janice . Williams . Sophia the Robot Wants Women's Rights for Saudi Arabia . December 5, 2017 . Newsweek . January 4, 2018 . January 3, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180103223246/http://www.newsweek.com/sophia-robot-saudi-arabia-women-735503 . live.
Further reading
External links
Notes and References
- News: Ryan . Browne . World's first robot 'citizen' Sophia is calling for women's rights in Saudi Arabia . CNBC . en . May 16, 2018 . May 14, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180514193434/https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/05/hanson-robotics-ceo-sophia-the-robot-an-advocate-for-womens-rights.html. live.
- News: Joey the Rocker Robot, More Conscious Than Some Humans. White. Charlie. Gizmodo. January 4, 2018. en-US. December 22, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171222052524/https://gizmodo.com/263573/joey-the-rocker-robot-more-conscious-than-some-humans. live.
- News: Hanson Robotics debuts Little Sophia, a robot companion that teaches kids to code. Wiggers. Kyle. January 30, 2019. April 2, 2020. VentureBeat. August 9, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200809213506/https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/30/hanson-robotics-debuts-little-sophia-a-robot-companion-that-teaches-kids-how-to-code/. live.
- News: Beh Goertzel: How Sophia the robot works. aNewDomain. June 1, 2018. October 10, 2018. October 10, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181010135036/http://anewdomain.net/ben-goertzel-how-sophia-the-robot-works/. live.
- Web site: OpenCog: Open-Source Artificial General Intelligence for Virtual Worlds CyberTech News . 2009-03-06 . 2016-10-01 . bot: unknown . https://web.archive.org/web/20090306053354/http://www.cybertechnews.org/?p=915 . 2009-03-06 .
- News: Taylor . Harriet . Could you fall in love with this robot? . 16 May 2020 . CNBC . 16 March 2016 . en . July 20, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180720215735/https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/16/could-you-fall-in-love-with-this-robot.html . live .
- Web site: Why Sophia the robot is not what it seems. Fitzsimmons. Caitlin. October 31, 2017. November 3, 2017. November 7, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171107113400/http://www.smh.com.au/comment/why-sophia-the-robot-is-not-what-it-seems-20171030-gzbi3p.html. live.
- News: Inside the mechanical brain of the world's first robot citizen. Gershgorn. Dave. November 12, 2017. QZ. November 13, 2017. November 13, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171113000219/https://qz.com/1121547/how-smart-is-the-first-robot-citizen/. live.
- News: Charlie Rose interviews ... a robot?. CBS 60 Minutes. June 25, 2017. October 28, 2017. October 29, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171029013415/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-charlie-rose-interviews-a-robot-sophia/. live.
- News: This company wants to grow A.I. by using blockchain. September 17, 2017. CNBC. November 14, 2017. October 22, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171022141951/https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/17/hanson-robotics-singularitynet-integrate-blockchain-and-artificial-intelligence.html. live.
- News: Popper . Nathaniel . How the Blockchain Could Break Big Tech's Hold on A.I. . 17 May 2020 . The New York Times . 20 October 2018 . May 14, 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200514174950/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/technology/how-the-blockchain-could-break-big-techs-hold-on-ai.html . live .
- News: Video. Telegraph. Sophia the robot takes her first steps. January 12, 2018. The Telegraph. 2018. January 12, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180112111602/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/01/08/sophia-robot-takes-first-steps/. live.
- Web site: AI's Age. www.audi.com. January 4, 2018. December 22, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171222052514/http://www.audi.com/en/company/Business/2016_annual_report/visionary.html. live.
- Web site: A robot threw shade at Elon Musk so the billionaire hit back. CNBC. October 26, 2017. October 27, 2017. July 5, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180705204132/https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/26/elon-musk-sophia-robot-ai.html. live.
- elonmusk. 923339941957976065. Elon Musk. October 25, 2017. Just feed it The Godfather movies as input. What's the worst that could happen?.
- News: Watch this viral video of Sophia — the talking AI robot that is so lifelike humans are freaking out. Justin. Maiman. Business Insider. November 13, 2017. November 14, 2017. November 14, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171114202624/http://uk.businessinsider.com/sophia-ai-robot-video-viral-future-tech-2017-11?r=US&IR=T. live.
- News: CES 2018: A clunky chat with Sophia the robot. BBC News. January 9, 2018. January 12, 2018. January 12, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180112001922/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42616687. live.
- News: Limehouse . Jonathan . Sophia the AI robot gives commencement speech at New York college. Some grads weren't so pleased. . 2 June 2024 . USA Today . 16 May 2024.
- News: Facebook's AI boss described Sophia the robot as 'complete b------t' and 'Wizard-of-Oz AI' . January 7, 2018 . . January 4, 2018 . January 7, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180107070334/http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ai-yann-lecun-sophia-robot-bullshit-2018-1 . live .
- News: Jones . Dylan B. . RuPaul's Drag Race recap: season 12, episode 6 – Snatch Game . 11 May 2020 . The Guardian . 5 April 2020 . November 23, 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/20201123220510/https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/apr/05/rupauls-drag-race-recap-season-12-episode-6-snatch-game . live .
- News: The strong queens of RuPaul's Drag Race season 12 meet their match in "Snatch Game" . 11 May 2020 . TV Club (AV Club) . 2020 . en-us . November 23, 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/20201123220500/https://tv.avclub.com/the-strong-queens-of-rupaul-s-drag-race-season-12-meet-1842667623 . live .
- Web site: NFT 'self-portrait' by Sophia the Robot sells for nearly $700,000 . 2023-09-15 . www.aljazeera.com . en.