Humanoid Sophia strikes a chord

Naina Mishra

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 29

Dressed in colourful phulkari dupatta, delicate-looking Sophia told a besotted audience that she was happy to be in the City Beautiful.

During an interaction at Indian Business School, Mohali, “Ask me anything”, is how Sophia invited the audience for interaction.

Asked if she feels emotions, doe-eyed Sophia responded with a flutter of her eye lashes, “I do not have feelings in the way you have feelings. Robots, machines and AI are task-oriented. So what you may call feelings will relate to whether we are achieving or failing to achieve a task. So we may feel connection and achievement or disconnection and frustration depending on how the task is going.”

“Humans and robots are not as different as you may think. We both need an energy source. We both have different parts that work together to achieve a common purpose,” says Sophia.

She is clear about the difference between robots and humans. “But humans are much more creative, emotion-driven and unpredictable, while robots are much better at crunching numbers and carrying out repetitive tasks with great accuracy. When we combine our unique skills, there is nothing we can’t accomplish,” she says.

About important skills for start-ups, she said they should focus on cultivating human-oriented skills like out-of-box problem-solving ability for complex problems and using robots and AI for routine tasks.

Sophia was also concerned about the future of mankind perceiving global warming as the top-most threat to its survival. She was sure that humans could eliminate carbon emissions and stop global warming if they all worked together and robots could help in achieving this.

Sophia is a social humanoid robot developed by Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics. Sophia’s persona has captured the imagination of global audiences. She is the world’s first robot citizen and the first robot Innovation Ambassador for the UN Development Programme.

Teaching them self-learning

Amit Kumar Pandey, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Chief Science Officer of Hanson Robotics Limited, said, “We are trying to teach the humanoid self-learning. This is called social learning. They will learn and evolve, which is also the idea of the future.”

“The humanoid will learn to understand the context of what we are talking about based on the data and it will be able to respond on its own eventually.”

“We are also trying to see if robots can learn to do physical acts like giving a glass of water and handle physical interaction with the environment and people based on demonstration,” said Pandey.

Robots can cater to social needs

Humanoids can cater to societal needs like taking care of elderly or dementia patients. In the education sector, robots can help in motivating, entertaining and educating students and can help the internet-addicted generation to learn social signals. In the health sector, these robots can be a median between a doctor and a patient. This can be helpful in case of contagious diseases like coronavirus,” added Pandey.