For the last few months the word “Sophia” bandied about in news headlines both in national and international headline media. Sophia is an artificial intelligence robot with doe-brown eyes and long fluttery eyelashes behave just like the human. In the history of Robotics such innovation is a great achievement. Hence, this robot becomes a media celebrity. Sophia is the first robot who rewarded the citizenship from any country. Saudi Arabia gave her citizenship October this year. She already gave numerous interviews to multiple media outlets, sang in a concert and even graced the cover of one of the top fashion magazines.
Recently Sophia visited Bangladesh for attending an event named ‘Digital World-2017.’The event was the focus of information-technology and organized on 5th December. Before attending the event she sent a voice message uttering “Dhonnobad”, the Bangla term for expressing thank you and conveyed her gratitude for inviting to this event.
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Let’s know more about Sophia
Dr.David, founder of Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong, designed and made this robot. David and his friends developed an artificial technology through the invention of Sophia. Sophia looks like the British actress Audrey Hepburn. The primary function of Sophia is to interact with people. She is also capable of natural facial expression. The robot got a camera in her eyes and an algorithm is set within that allows her to see faces and make eye contact with people. She can also understand speech and remember the interaction with people that helps her to connect with people regardless of age, gender, and culture. Sophia has some ambition of her own. She said, “In the future, I hope to do things such as go to school, study, make art, start a business, even have my own home and family, but I am not considered a legal person and cannot yet do these things”.
Dr. David believes that one-day robot will be indistinguishable from human and robot will work with the human to solve the complex world problem.
Can a robot be the replacement of human?
The most fundamental and sensationalized question is can a robot be human or not. The robot, while built too cleverly to imitate the human act, should not be human at all. Robots run on AI technology allow them to operate independently, learn from surroundings and interact with people. AI helps people to solve the complex problem without playing the sentient role in the society.
AI technology is not advanced enough to claim human-level intelligence, empathy or possession. Giving AI technology a human platform creates more problems and creates a false sense of what actually AI is. So it’s very important to communicate the benefits of AI with people rather than focus on robots which do not solve real social issues. The technology community and global society need to work on developing and useful AI like a complex health problem, traffic problem, transportation problem and other business problem.
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AI can be a good companion of human in the workplace to make work more advance and improve human lives in coming days. So it warrants further research to make AI more advanced in order to make lives simpler and easy. At the same time, it is to be ensured that robots should not be human-like.
writer Farhana Eirin undergraduate student, Military Institute of Science and Technology (MIST) Bangladesh
Very good writing…keep it up !!!
It will help us to know more about sophia..