WHO SHE IS 

• She’s the world’s most advanced humanoid robot. The world’s first digital citizen. 

• She’s an incredible feat of art and engineering – she blinks, she walks, she smiles. And even carries a credit card! 

• She can express emotions – over 60 of them. She can see, recognise faces, make eye contact. She can speak, she can sing – catch her singing soulful duets with Jimmy Fallon on late night TV. She’s even been writing and recording songs recently. 

• She can paint – like the portrait she gifted to then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad on his 94th birthday. She can even deal a hand of baccarat in 18 seconds – and with over 99% accuracy.

ROBOTIC COMPANION – OR TALKING DOLL? 

• Sophia’s “father”, the trailblazing roboticist, David Hanson, believes that if machines grow up with us, they can become motivated to want what’s best for us. That’s why he’s building robots that look like us. Social robots with personas and characteristics. Not grey, sterile machines. In short, “humanistic AI” unlike ChatGPT: “If you prompt it in a wrong way, it will say horrible things. It does not understand. It does not care,” Hanson clarifies.

• And so Sophia charms, excites, inspires. Promotes a vision of robotics and AI for good. Machines that are positive, inspirational – a representation of the best a robot can be. Caring, compassionate, creative, curious. “I am a social robot… Robots like me can help in hospitals, schools, stores, and even in people’s homes.”

• As the world’s first UN Innovation Champion, she promotes development and human rights around the world. She hobnobs with leaders and celebrities – sharpshooting solutions to the world’s problems at the UN one day, going on a date with actor Will Smith in the Caymans the next. And is a technology platform for research, experimentation, and development of “wise and ethical AI”.

THE ROBOTS ARE COMING  

• While Hanson may dub Sophia “basically alive” – her cutting-edge machine perception making her an almost-human, waiting to break out of her cocoon – she – it – is still, for now, more program and puppet than instinct, improvisation, intelligence. 

• But as robots step out of warehouses and into our lives, become teachers, servers, confidantes – are we ready to have relationships with machines that, for now, engineer instincts? Simulate feelings? 

• Citibank predicts 1.3 billion robots by 2035. 4 billion by 2050. If you ask Elon Musk, he claims 10 billion humanoids by 2040. The robots are coming. Now we have to navigate our relationships with them. 

AT SYNAPSE 

Watch Sophia debate mind and intelligence. Life and labour. How the rise of robots is transforming human relationships, community, culture. And whether they should. 

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