Ask HN: Does Sophia the robot have any unique capabilities?

2 points by altsyset 8y ago ↗ HN

I am visiting Sophia the robot today, but I have been wondering if she has any unique skills? Have there been any milestones in AI accomplished with her? Because the more I read about her, the more I realize that she is just a pretty face ;) and tourism stint. Maybe I am wrong. But her skills are more of supervised learning, I don't even think it is supervised, it even seems scripted. Her jocks seem ahead of time to be learned.

What does her citizenship even mean? Does she have the same right as a Saudi woman, which, btw isn't much. Can she have a bank account? etc

Has anyone tried the Hanson Robotics API, I heard it's open source?

What do you guys know or think?

2 comments

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altsyset 8y ago ↗

https://www.inc.com/will-yakowicz/sofia-robot-hanson-robotic... For example in this article, the conversation seems scripted:

Goertzel then asked Sofia what is her next frontier and what does she want to achieve.

"Don't know, maybe the world," she said. "Maybe the world. That was a joke.

"Seriously," she continued, "what I really want is to understand people better and to understand myself better. I want to be able to do more things and soon my capabilities will be advanced enough that I will be able to get a job."

ChrisGranger 8y ago ↗

I think giving a citizenship to this robot is a publicity stunt, nothing more. They might as well give Cleverbot a citizenship too.

I look forward to interacting with self-aware machines (or machines that convincingly appear to be self-aware, at least) someday, but I don't really understand why anyone is paying attention to Sophia.