A lifelike female robot – named Sophia – created by Hong Kong-based tech company Hanson Robotics may be the future of everything from medical treatment and therapy, to marketing, advertising and education.
Sophia’s creator, David Hanson, a man trying to achieve “sentience in machines by 2020” says her primary function is not only to serve, but also to build meaningful relationships with humans, remembering faces, and learning new information as she goes.
Alongside another humanoid robot from Hanson Robotics – called ‘Han’ – Sophia is capable of having full blown conversations and even emotional arguments. Can humans and super-intelligent computers coexist? Work alongside each other? Fall in love?
The two teams working to develop the most humanlike robots on the planet — often dubbed androids — are Hanson Robotics and Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories.
Hanson said that one day robots will be indistinguishable from humans. Robots will, according to the scientist, walk, play, teach, help and form real relationships with people:
“The artificial intelligence will evolve to the point where they will truly be our friends,” he said. “Not in ways that dehumanize us, but in ways the rehumanize us, that decrease the trend of the distance between people and instead connect us with people as well as with robots.”
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