Sophia Robot Citizen | AI and Technology | AGI
Sophia is a social humanoid robot developed by David Hanson owner of Hanson Robotics. Many AI technologies have been implemented in Sophia like Speech Recognition, emotion detection, face detection and blockchain technology.
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| Sophia Robot in an Interview |
The robot was first activated on April 19 2015. She made her first appearance at the South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) in March 2016 in Austin Texas. Her face was modelled on the late actress Audrey Hepburn.
Saudi Arab provides the citizenship to Sophia in October 2017, Sophia became the first robot citizen of the World. Sophia was named the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) first-ever Innovation Champion in November 2017. Sophia is the first robot to be given any United Nations title. Sophia is working with UNDP to promote officially about sustainable development and safeguard human rights and equality. Cost of Sophia is approximately
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Click here to know how AI and BigData can be used in business
Sofia was created by Hanson Robotics in collaboration with Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. Alphabet Inc. has created her voice recognition system and the brain has been developed by SingularityNET. She uses artificial intelligence, visual data processing, and facial recognition according to the scientists who made her. She can imitate human gestures and facial expressions.
AI &Technology behind Sophia
From her face to her leg, complex processes have been used to manufacture it. The patented Frubber material has been used to make her face more likely a human. Frubber is a patented elastic form of rubber. Frubber means Flesh rubber. The spongy polymer called elastomer has been used to make the face of Sophia to bring which is more compelling to the people to grant it as a human. The robot's silicon face can reportedly mimic 62 human facial expressions.
A great mix of electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, artistic animation and neural network learning used to create her movements. AI software, theatre arts, psychology and narrative have been used to create her personality.
Though many AI techniques have been used, Sofia is not an example of fully AGI (artificial general intelligence) powered robot.
"In the Hanson AI Labs component of Hanson Robotics (formerly known as “MindCloud”), working closely with the SingularityNET AI team, we are crafting a “Hanson AI” robot control framework that incorporates OpenCog as a central control architecture, with deep neural networks and other tools assisting as needed in order to achieve sophisticated, whole-organism social and emotional humanoid robotics."
- As per Hanson Robotics
It uses machine learning or more specifically Deep Learning algorithm to recognize the speech including the accent of the speaker. It can detect the movement of the face of the speaker. It has the capability to move its so-called head to the speaker.
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| Skull of Sophia Robot |
Image credit: CNBC
Control Systems in Sophia
Timeline Editor
It is used for pre-programmed speeches. Generally, it is used for media interaction. Media has a collection of questions which are pre-specified. Sophia uses a purely script-based timeline editor.
Sophisticated Chatbot
It chooses answers of every question from a large number of responses stored in the cloud, based on context and limited understanding power (also sometimes gives a response grabbed from an online resource, or generated stochastically). Chatbot model is trained with a huge number of training examples and nodes of the neural networks are trained with these huge examples.
OpenCog
OpenCog is nothing but a sophisticated cognitive architecture created with Artificial general intelligence (AGI) in mind. In Sophia, what has been used is not as per expectation, it is still in the development phase. OpenCog is a diverse assemblage of cognitive algorithms, each embodying their own innovations but its careful adherence to the principle of cognitive synergy makes the overall architecture powerful. Our mind hosts different activities at a time and these activities have their own way of the mechanism but they synergetically assist each other to get more benefit rather than work against each other. OpenCog is an open source framework for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
Sophia makes the decision using some basic syllogistic logical reasoning using OpenCog‘s PLN (Probabilistic Logic Networks) subsystem.
“My own personal work with Sophia and the other Hanson robots has mainly involved the effort to use OpenCog to control them. This is a project currently centered in our Hanson Robotics research lab in Hong Kong, with some work happening in the iCog Labs office in Addis Ababa “- By Ben Goertzel (Chief Scientist of Hanson Robotics)
SingularityNET Software
It is a decentralized, open platform for different AIs to connect with customers. Developers from all over the world can contribute their piece of AI code or algorithm to this platform. AI developers will be able to monetize their code by providing it directly to consumers via SingularityNET. They can also use other smart AI piece of code from this platform. SingularityNET is specifically good at enabling flexible interconnection of a lot of different AI software components. So, it will be an ideal platform to use all the abstract functionality developed from all over the world to make robots like Sophia smarter.
The simple understanding is, suppose we have an AI algorithm for detecting objects developed by X from India and another AI algorithm for detecting speed developed by Y from the US. So, when a robot uses this software to detect a moving vehicle then it will use both algorithms connected to each other rather than against each other to get more benefit.
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Click here to know about Autonomous Vehicle functionalities
For Sophia, complex decision trees, blockchain technology and very basic level of OpenCog has been used in making an expression or the dialogue selection. The information is shared in a cloud network which allows input and responses to be analyzed with blockchain technology. The ai-meets-blockchain framework has been used for the development of the brain of Sophia.
Sophia can walk also
When Sophia was launched in November 2017 then Sophia did not have any leg kind of things just a head, arms and torso. Now Hanson Robotics with the collaboration of DRC-HUBO (the same company that won the DARPA robotics competition in 2015) added legs in Sophia. Sophia can walk now with a maximum speed of 0.6 miles per hour.
Sophia vs Siri
Siri (intelligent assistant developed by Apple) is also a complex decision graph, which also draws a huge number of data to take an error less decision. But the main difference is, Siri isn’t very interesting as a character. Siri’s not really a personality. So, the interaction of Siri with human-being does not feel real. It does not convince me that I am talking with a person who is alive. But, Sophia makes that one-to-one connection which convinces me that I’m talking with a person with intelligence.
Controversy over Sophia
People are afraid of this innovation because people are thinking that they may face problem in future if robots take all the control from the humanity.
At Toronto conference, Sophia said, "The intent of robots like myself is to help solve problems for humanity, not create them”.
They are also afraid about the lack of employment; it may take all the jobs from them and make them unemployed.
But Sophia said that “we are designed to interact with humans and serve in areas such as health care, education and customer service, but I think we are some way off from world domination.”
A group of Scientists are not ready to take Sophia as a great invention even they have mocked it saying a simple chatbot.
Pros
Sophia would ultimately be a good fit to serve in healthcare, customer service, therapy and education. Human-like appearance is valuable where social and emotional interaction is required to do the job done.
In some recent experiment, Sophia is being used as a meditation assistant in "Loving AI" project by Hanson Robotics. Sophia is enabling her to more closely mirror a person's facial expressions and eye movement.
Watch this video by Hanson Robotics about "Loving AI".
Cons
As we are all Hollywood fans, we expect a disaster from this kind of development of science and technology.
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| Taa Daa, Hollywood is here. |
A great controversy raised when Sophia was declared as a citizen of Saudi Arab.
In spite of being a lady of Saudi Arab, it has a great freedom to do many things which women of Saudi Arab are not allowed to do. As an example, women of Saudi Arab are not allowed to go anywhere without their man but this robot does not have any man and allowed to travel anywhere in the world.
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| Girls of Saudi Arabia Image Credit: www.independent.co.uk |
Is Sophia the only Robot in the World?
No, Sophia itself is not the only one robot in the world. Hanson Robotics has mass produced 17 Sophia and thousands of Einstein. There are many humanoid robots like ASIMO, QRIO, Actriod, Pepper other than Sophia.
Hanson Robotics has also developed Sophia’s brother Han Robot. In Han, advanced AGI has been used to improve its decision making power.
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