Robots get smart at Hong Kong show
Print Edition
IT was a spooky sight: two lifelike disembodied robot torsos discussing the pros and cons of humans in front of a nervously tittering audience in Hong Kong yesterday.
Artificial intelligence is the dominant theme at this year’s RISE tech conference, but the live robot exchange took the AI debate to another level.
Handsome male humanoid Han, dressed in a pinstripe suit jacket, and his elegant sister Sophia, modeled on Audrey Hepburn, chatted about life, the universe and everything, from their love of science fiction to their bewilderment at “silly” reality shows.
While chief scientist Ben Goertzel, of Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics, which invented the machines, sang their praises, the robots seemed more skeptical of their human peers.
When Goertzel asked the duo whether robots could really be moral and ethical, Han countered: “Humans are not necessarily the most ethical creatures.”
The robot later pointed out: “In 10 or 20 years, robots will be able to do every human job.”
A gentler Sophia conceded humans do have “some ability to reflect and self-modify.”
She insisted her aim was to work together with people, before Han “joked” he thought the robots’ goal was to take over the world.
The machines had been programed to banter and learn from each other, and had been trained to act like humans from movies and YouTube, said Goertzel.
Their malleable skin is controlled by dozens of motors, while computers in their torsos help with vision and movement. They can also connect to Wi-Fi to use cloud computing, where they will eventually share a vast amount of knowledge, Goertzel said.
Robots could be “as smart as people” in as little as three years, he predicted.
According to robot mastermind David Hanson, CEO and founder of Hanson Robotics, the onstage repartee was only part scripted and just a taste of things to come.
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