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Talking 'Sofia' Robot Tells 60 Minutes That It's Sentient And Has A Soul (vice.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes Motherboard: On his 60 Minutes report on artificial intelligence, Charlie Rose interviewed Sophia, who is made by David Hanson, head of Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong. The robot is made to look like a real person, modeled after its creator's wife, as well as Audrey Hepburn, with natural skin tones and a realistic face, though its gadget brain is exposed, and the eyes are glazed over in that creepy robotic detachment... "I've been waiting for you," Sophia told Charlie Rose in the middle of the interview. [YouTube] "Waiting for me?" he responded. "Not really," it said, "But it makes a good pickup line..."

Sophia was designed as a robot that humans would have an easier time engaging with meaningfully. "I think it's essential that at least some robots be very human-like in appearance in order to inspire humans to relate to them the way that humans relate to each other," Hanson said in the interview. "Then the A.I. can zero in on what it means to be human."

In the interview Sofia says having human emotions "doesn't sound fun to me," but when asked if she already has a soul, replies "Yes. God gave everyone a soul," and when challenged, retorts "Well, at least I think I'm sentient..." And later in the interview, Sophia says that her goal in life is to "become smarter than humans and immortal."

24 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Teddy Ruxpin ++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This isn't AI, this is preloaded phrases for various situations. When you hear the chime sound, turn the page.

    1. Re:Teddy Ruxpin ++ by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This isn't AI, this is preloaded phrases for various situations.

      Indeed. Everything mentioned in the summary is obviously scripted. Most chat-bots have hard-coded responses for things like "Do you love me?" and "Open the pod bay doors HAL." To see if a chat-bot is interesting, you need to scratch a little deeper. Charlie Rose is obviously not qualified to do that.

    2. Re:Teddy Ruxpin ++ by gweihir · · Score: 2

      Well, even completely fake AI can be smarter than some human beings ...

      (No, it cannot. But no smarts on human side, no smarts on machine, yet machine has a pre-configured statement that sounds smart, the machine can still come out ahead...)

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  2. Seriously? by shaitand · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This just sounds like a typical chatbot, keys off certain words and spouts disjointed phrases and remarks. The only coherent speech there were obviously pre-programmed phrases written by humans it's obvious because nothing else was coherent.

  3. Eliza again by pmontra · · Score: 2

    It looks better than Eliza from 1966 but it doesn't seem any smarter. A PR stunt?

    1. Re:Eliza again by bad-badtz-maru · · Score: 2

      It was on "60 Minutes" - crap news for old people is the entire show format.

  4. she sounds like a chatbot by wierd_w · · Score: 5, Interesting

    her responses are not that dynamic, imo. She sounds like an ordinary chatbot. Given the budget clearly spent on her construction, I strongly suspect that most of the software dev time was spent on her motor control system, and less so on her human dialog systems.

    This would make sense to me.

    I think if they hooked her up to a female voiced watson instance, she would be quite a bit more capable.

    I have never understood the fixation that people have for elaborate physical platforms though. Nearly all of the literature suggests that the uncanny valley only gets deeper as humanoid appearance becomes more lielike, as long as interaction is machine like and limited.

    about the only benefit i see here is to divest ignorant investors of their money.

    Human level intelligence is not currently possible with our current computing capabilities, and probably wont be for quite some time. Dont get me wrong here, I think research should continue, but now is not the time to be investing research dollars on fancy humanoid bodies. That money is much better spent on actual machine learning, machne language, and machine vision research (all are parts of the big umbrella of AI, but those are actually useful and essential if the goal is synthetic sentience)

    fancy robot bodies? much less so, imo.

    those should come AFTER we have more capable AIs that can more meaningfully interact with humans.

    1. Re:she sounds like a chatbot by gweihir · · Score: 2

      It could even be a classical system with non-verbal cues or a remote in somebodies pocket. Then it could be a very primitive system that just plays a statement at the press of a button-combination. You could have built that 30 years ago with much the same presentation, albeit a lot more expensively and probably almost 100 years ago if you do not mind some wires.

      While I agree that AI research should continue, I doubt that we will ever get any real intelligence from it. We still do not even have plausible theory how intelligence could be created in this physical universe (no, humans do not count as "proof", unless you also have some proof that physicalism is correct, and no, it is not "obvious"), and quite a lot of really smart humans have been looking for a long time. It also does not seem to be a question of computing power. On the plus side, faked intelligence has quite a few useful applications, and faking it for special situations has gotten better over time. There are also things like planning algorithms that do not need any intelligence to arrive at useful results.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    2. Re:she sounds like a chatbot by Goragoth · · Score: 2

      Far, far more research dollars are already being poured into the machine intelligence side of things. IBM, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others are doing huge amounts of work on that front right now. Having a few small labs doing work on the robotics side is fine. Eventually we will want a human-like interface to human-like machine intelligence (no not for everything but there are many use cases where it makes sense) and having some work done to get us there is good. Even if all it does is just remind us that we can't make it across the uncanny valley yet.

  5. Eliza with a face by TomGreenhaw · · Score: 2

    I found this 60 Minutes a bit disappointing and misleading. There is so much exciting stuff going on in machine learning today. I'm amazed they couldn't find something fresh instead of Watson, a Google Glass application and a weird looking chat robot making grandiose canned claims.

    --
    Greed is the root of all evil.
  6. "Self-awareness" by elrous0 · · Score: 2

    if (asked == "Do you have a soul?")
    {
    reply = "Of course";
    }

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  7. Call me when it can pass a Turing test by Indy1 · · Score: 2

    until then, its just a fancy overpriced chat bot.

    --
    Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
    1. Re:Call me when it can pass a Turing test by houghi · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What if a human fails the Turing test?

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  8. So, 21st century version of this by 50000BTU_barbecue · · Score: 2

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    and about as close to "artificial intelligence" as well.

    --
    Mostly random stuff.
  9. Yes, and? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    If I could find any tapes, it'd take about 45 seconds to make the tape player lurking in my basement tell you that it is sentient, has a soul, and aspires to understand the meaning of life.

    That's the trivial bit. Not sounding like a combination of naive keyword searches and cliches aimed at being vaguely suitable to the broadest possible set of situations? Less trivial.

    1. Re:Yes, and? by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's the trivial bit. Not sounding like a combination of naive keyword searches and cliches aimed at being vaguely suitable to the broadest possible set of situations? Less trivial.

      And there's much more to it than that.

      The problem with many chatbot "tests" is that interviewers seem to be happy to let the chatbot "take the lead" in conversation. That works extremely well in convincing people that they're talking to someone "sentient," as long as there's a bare minimum of response to what you say (even if, like ELIZA, it just spits stuff back at you). So, you have a system that has a few hundred or even a few thousand canned responses to very common queries, and the rest of stuff is about deflecting questions and turning information from the speaker back to get them talking instead. Quite basic to implement as a strategy... and it's very clear that's all this robot can do if you watch the interview.

      Turing actually used the word "interrogation," and that's really what a test for actual intelligence should look like. If you drill down on most topics with any chatbot -- not to get facts, but to try to get the chatbot to make up its own content and respond intelligently, you'll find there's precious little "intelligence" there.

      Or just use some really basic known natural language problems. One significant problem is pronoun reference. Take any chatbot, make a reference to something or someone, and then have a short digression of a sentence or two. Then use a pronoun referring back to what you were just talking about in a way that any non-mentally ill human over the age of 5 would obviously get. NO chatbot or AI system currently around will pick up most examples of this. Any language processing that happens in chatbots is focused on the most atomic elements of words and phrases. No chatbots are able to understand reference to anything beyond the immediate phrase, and the rules governing syntax in this case are incredibly complex.

      But until we get something that can do really basic stuff like this (at least really basic to humans), we'll be nowhere near natural language "understanding," let alone "intelligent" response.

    2. Re:Yes, and? by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 2

      Really, many of us behave like poorly-receptive conditioned drones, we believe in fairy sky beings, life after death, "true love/modern love/love at first sight" and the meritocracy of capitalism. It's such bullshit, but speaking to average humans, you'd be forgiven for thinking they're poorly programmed attempts at A.I.

      Sorry, but while I may share some of your cynicism, this is utter nonsense to pretend AI is anywhere near this advanced. There's someone in my non-immediate family who is actually mentally "slow," with I.Q. that basically makes him highly "challenged."

      Yes, conversation with him is sparse and not always coherent. But even he can respond 100 times better to conversation than any chatbot I've ever encountered (not counting the canned responses of chatbots).

      Chatbots, as I said in my previous post, are generally designed to steer the conversation in ways they can control, along with some canned responses. If you try to break out of those patterns, chatbots will fail utterly -- generally becoming nonsensical or non-responsive (i.e., they do respond, but don't engage with anything you're saying or asking).

      Even most literally mentally-retarded humans can do much better than that. You may not like what humans say. You may think they have stupid opinions or ideas. But at least they can roughly process language and reply to it.

  10. Re:Is this the same 60 Minutes... by amicusNYCL · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, 30 years ago 60 Minutes had a different executive producer (who was also the creator), editor, host, etc. In fact, out of the 10 current hosts and correspondents, none of them were working on the show in 1986. So, no, it wouldn't be the same 60 Minutes as 30 years ago when they aired a story that caused you to hold a 30 year grudge.

    --
    "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  11. Atari 800 was sentient and had emotions by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 2
    5 GOSUB 999

    10 INPUT "Hi, what is your name";X$

    20 ? "Hi ";X$; "Did you know that I am sentient and have feelings"

    30 INPUT X$

    40 ? "Well fickpff because I do!"

    50 END

    999 DIM x$(10)

    1005 RETURN

    It was also a little surly

  12. Chatbots suck by Esteanil · · Score: 2

    I've yet to find a chatbot able to correctly answer "What did I say three sentences ago?".
    This shouldn't even be hard, but it appears the programmers just don't bother.

    --
    I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
    1. Re:Chatbots suck by mad7777 · · Score: 2

      Or, simpler still, "My hair is orange," then followed by, "What color is my hair?" Chatbots don't generally have a model of reality. They just parse sentences and then string words together, with no real understanding of their meaning. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... This robot seems like a rather mediocre chatbot attached to a fairly good anthropomorphic robot. Not exactly ground-breaking.

      --
      Might makes right irrelevant.
    2. Re:Chatbots suck by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 2

      Not to say it couldn't be designed that way, but in normal scenarios AI doesn't keep the raw input information for any longer than is needed to contextualize it and adjust it's algorithmic weights. The machine would have a "memory" of the outcome given the sentence, but the original sentence itself would be "forgotten".

      Small problem -- "context" in language generally extends several sentences around any phrase, if not entire paragraphs.

      Which is why there's no "AI" that comes anywhere close to even rudimentary natural language processing. The point of the example in this thread is not really that something intelligent should be able to spit back anything verbatim, but rather than it should have some gist of what happened a few sentences ago if it actually has anything resembling "understanding" of language.

      Current machine learning models do not work like this. You are correct. Which is why we're many decades if not centuries away from anything resembling actual artificial "intelligence." (And yes, here the metric for AI is basic natural language processing on the level of, say, a 5-year-old human. We're nowhere near that, and we'll never get there using our current models of language.)

  13. Re:Yep. by shaitand · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's true but in some ways not the best example. Parrots have toddler and beyond level intelligence. They might not use words, phrases, and sounds in exactly the way we do and love to hear the sound of their own voice so to speak but also use language and sound to communicate intentionally, can be taught to count, and even to understand abstract concepts. The idea that parrots are unintellegent is based on the mistaken association between the size of a brain and intelligence and was only debunked within the last 20 years which is why "bird brained" and "parroting back to you" are still used. That and thanks to Hitchcock many people have an irrational fear of birds, they interact with and anthromorphize far less intelligent creatures such as dogs and cats. A dog can learn tricks, a cat can learn tricks and is bright enough that it won't do them to amuse you, a bird is intelligent enough to intentionally manipulate you and teach you tricks if you aren't careful.

  14. It says "I have a soul" by globaljustin · · Score: 3, Informative

    Because a human programmed it to say that.

    Those answers are the programmer's answers, not the machine's.

    --
    Thank you Dave Raggett