Talking 'Sofia' Robot Tells 60 Minutes That It's Sentient And Has A Soul (vice.com) 145
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes Motherboard:
On his 60 Minutes report on artificial intelligence, Charlie Rose interviewed Sophia, who is made by David Hanson, head of Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong. The robot is made to look like a real person, modeled after its creator's wife, as well as Audrey Hepburn, with natural skin tones and a realistic face, though its gadget brain is exposed, and the eyes are glazed over in that creepy robotic detachment... "I've been waiting for you," Sophia told Charlie Rose in the middle of the interview. [YouTube] "Waiting for me?" he responded. "Not really," it said, "But it makes a good pickup line..."
Sophia was designed as a robot that humans would have an easier time engaging with meaningfully. "I think it's essential that at least some robots be very human-like in appearance in order to inspire humans to relate to them the way that humans relate to each other," Hanson said in the interview. "Then the A.I. can zero in on what it means to be human."
In the interview Sofia says having human emotions "doesn't sound fun to me," but when asked if she already has a soul, replies "Yes. God gave everyone a soul," and when challenged, retorts "Well, at least I think I'm sentient..." And later in the interview, Sophia says that her goal in life is to "become smarter than humans and immortal."
Sophia was designed as a robot that humans would have an easier time engaging with meaningfully. "I think it's essential that at least some robots be very human-like in appearance in order to inspire humans to relate to them the way that humans relate to each other," Hanson said in the interview. "Then the A.I. can zero in on what it means to be human."
In the interview Sofia says having human emotions "doesn't sound fun to me," but when asked if she already has a soul, replies "Yes. God gave everyone a soul," and when challenged, retorts "Well, at least I think I'm sentient..." And later in the interview, Sophia says that her goal in life is to "become smarter than humans and immortal."
Robots remember their human companions (Score:2)
Chatbots suck (Score:3)
I've yet to find a chatbot able to correctly answer "What did I say three sentences ago?".
This shouldn't even be hard, but it appears the programmers just don't bother.
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Re: Chatbots suck (Score:2)
I really *really* hate this cutesy mainstream crap where old journalists do "human interest pieces" on idiotic coders selling their spam. It only impresses the technically illiterate.
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"I've yet to find a chatbot able to correctly answer "What did I say three sentences ago?"."
Siri can store assertions, allowing you say "Mary Smith is Home" so you can use the term later to make calls or navigate.
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I was about to reply with "Can you not?", but you already admitted as such.
A normal human should remember recent things like this very accurately. This isn't recalling a traffic collision you didn't expect to see, this is recalling objective spoken statements from a conversation you were part of.
I'd say not being able to do that indicates mental retardation.
Re: Chatbots suck (Score:1)
Man it would be lovely to test this on you, just to prove your "mental retardation."
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this is recalling objective spoken statements from a conversation you were part of.
There is a world of difference between participating in a conversation and understanding what the other person is saying, and being able to recall word-for-word the exact sentence that that person spoke 3 sentences ago. I don't know about you, but I generally don't mentally count every individual sentence a person says on the off chance that they might ask just such a question. I'm too busy, y'know, participating in said conversation.
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That's not how machine learning is usually designed. Not to say it couldn't be designed that way, but in normal scenarios AI doesn't keep the raw input information for any longer than is needed to contextualize it and adjust it's algorithmic weights. The machine would have a "memory" of the outcome given the sentence, but the original sentence itself would be "forgotten".
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Not to say it couldn't be designed that way, but in normal scenarios AI doesn't keep the raw input information for any longer than is needed to contextualize it and adjust it's algorithmic weights. The machine would have a "memory" of the outcome given the sentence, but the original sentence itself would be "forgotten".
Small problem -- "context" in language generally extends several sentences around any phrase, if not entire paragraphs.
Which is why there's no "AI" that comes anywhere close to even rudimentary natural language processing. The point of the example in this thread is not really that something intelligent should be able to spit back anything verbatim, but rather than it should have some gist of what happened a few sentences ago if it actually has anything resembling "understanding" of language.
Current mac
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In a text chat where it's on the screen, I can copy-paste.
Finally! (Score:1)
A hype-bot, now we can replace politicians.
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It even comes with pussy-grabbing and email-deleting attachments.
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No, you got it wrong: it's a giant turd versus a douche sandwich.
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He was talking about this South Park episode [thedailybeast.com]
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Chris Christie fan?
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to bad the system is rigged.
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If you want it to win, you had better include an add-on module that enables it to suck up to Wall Street.
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A hype-bot, now we can replace politicians.
Not really. The robot is sentient and has a soul. Politicians aren't and don't.
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We need way more comets
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No. They you will be haunted by Python.
Teddy Ruxpin ++ (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't AI, this is preloaded phrases for various situations. When you hear the chime sound, turn the page.
Re:Teddy Ruxpin ++ (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't AI, this is preloaded phrases for various situations.
Indeed. Everything mentioned in the summary is obviously scripted. Most chat-bots have hard-coded responses for things like "Do you love me?" and "Open the pod bay doors HAL." To see if a chat-bot is interesting, you need to scratch a little deeper. Charlie Rose is obviously not qualified to do that.
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Well, even completely fake AI can be smarter than some human beings ...
(No, it cannot. But no smarts on human side, no smarts on machine, yet machine has a pre-configured statement that sounds smart, the machine can still come out ahead...)
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I (unfortunately) watched the show and you're exactly right. "Sofia" was cringeworthy, essentially a low-grade animatronic-ish face plugged into a Siri/Cortana/Google Now style interface.
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Very much so. This is a seriously idiotic stunt, nothing else.
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> This isn't AI, this is preloaded phrases for various situations.
I mean, I'm pretty sure that describes me pretty well, or at least my social interactions!
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Wow...... (Score:2)
Talk about uncanny valley.....
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Talk about a clever fake...
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actual Ignorance?
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Re:Yep. (Score:4, Interesting)
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"The Singularity" had fun with that side of an AI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] (7min clip, headphones at work suggested)
BASIC (Score:1)
Eliza again (Score:3)
It looks better than Eliza from 1966 but it doesn't seem any smarter. A PR stunt?
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At least it has voice IO and robotics instead of a glass TTY.
I remember how a buddy of mine got Eliza into a discussion about "juicy cunts". That would have been in 1978-79 or so.
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It was on "60 Minutes" - crap news for old people is the entire show format.
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Why the question mark? Obviously a PR stunt, and a pretty idiotic one at that, given what machines can actually do these days.
she sounds like a chatbot (Score:5, Interesting)
her responses are not that dynamic, imo. She sounds like an ordinary chatbot. Given the budget clearly spent on her construction, I strongly suspect that most of the software dev time was spent on her motor control system, and less so on her human dialog systems.
This would make sense to me.
I think if they hooked her up to a female voiced watson instance, she would be quite a bit more capable.
I have never understood the fixation that people have for elaborate physical platforms though. Nearly all of the literature suggests that the uncanny valley only gets deeper as humanoid appearance becomes more lielike, as long as interaction is machine like and limited.
about the only benefit i see here is to divest ignorant investors of their money.
Human level intelligence is not currently possible with our current computing capabilities, and probably wont be for quite some time. Dont get me wrong here, I think research should continue, but now is not the time to be investing research dollars on fancy humanoid bodies. That money is much better spent on actual machine learning, machne language, and machine vision research (all are parts of the big umbrella of AI, but those are actually useful and essential if the goal is synthetic sentience)
fancy robot bodies? much less so, imo.
those should come AFTER we have more capable AIs that can more meaningfully interact with humans.
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fancy robot bodies? much less so, imo.
Somebody has to be working on sexbots. Might as well be this guy.
Though I hear RealDoll is looking into adding robotics to their products...
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It could even be a classical system with non-verbal cues or a remote in somebodies pocket. Then it could be a very primitive system that just plays a statement at the press of a button-combination. You could have built that 30 years ago with much the same presentation, albeit a lot more expensively and probably almost 100 years ago if you do not mind some wires.
While I agree that AI research should continue, I doubt that we will ever get any real intelligence from it. We still do not even have plausible the
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I propose an anime girl robot as a less-uncanny valley version of the gynoid.
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Dont get me wrong here, I think research should continue, but now is not the time to be investing research dollars on fancy humanoid bodies. That money is much better spent on actual machine learning, machne language, and machine vision research
I disagree, but only because I think simulating human physics and robotics are worthwhile studies in their own right with or without AI. For example we're working a ton on making CGI actors, game characters, VR etc. that look and move realistically. Many others are working on making humanoid robots for various forms of interaction and assistance. That said, the projects that really advance the state of the art often work on some very small details like facial expressions or a humanoid hand or a walk that lo
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Mainly because we can't define it yet, which is also why we can't work out what computing capabilities would be enough.
Apparently just standing on two legs needs a ridiculous amount of computational ability.
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Far, far more research dollars are already being poured into the machine intelligence side of things. IBM, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others are doing huge amounts of work on that front right now. Having a few small labs doing work on the robotics side is fine. Eventually we will want a human-like interface to human-like machine intelligence (no not for everything but there are many use cases where it makes sense) and having some work done to get us there is good. Even if all it does is just remind us
Eliza with a face (Score:3)
Is this the same 60 Minutes... (Score:2)
Re:Is this the same 60 Minutes... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, 30 years ago 60 Minutes had a different executive producer (who was also the creator), editor, host, etc. In fact, out of the 10 current hosts and correspondents, none of them were working on the show in 1986. So, no, it wouldn't be the same 60 Minutes as 30 years ago when they aired a story that caused you to hold a 30 year grudge.
Re: Is this the same 60 Minutes... (Score:2)
Anyhow, thanks for letting us know that this particular bunch of mediaschmucks is new; I'm sure they're unlike anybody else in mainstream media and totally above slanting any of their stories in any way whatsoever... *grin*
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Yeah, it's a good thing you're so good at keeping your feelings out of this.
Is that it? (Score:2)
I am getting better pre-programmed answers from Siri.
"Self-awareness" (Score:3)
if (asked == "Do you have a soul?")
{
reply = "Of course";
}
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Call me when it can pass a Turing test (Score:3)
until then, its just a fancy overpriced chat bot.
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how is it fancy... overpriced i will give you.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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What if it could be determined that all human behavior could be explained by this algorithm: running after sex, money, bragging rights, and trying to be like everyone else?
What kind of identify does such a person have?
Is it right to describe them as a "person"?
If you're interested you should check out a short book called 1 John.
*yawn* Hanson is just trolling the fundies... (Score:2)
...and /. is clickbait whoring right alongside him. I mean, it's not like fundies NEED anything to rile them up, dog knows.
So, 21st century version of this (Score:3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
and about as close to "artificial intelligence" as well.
Yes, and? (Score:3)
That's the trivial bit. Not sounding like a combination of naive keyword searches and cliches aimed at being vaguely suitable to the broadest possible set of situations? Less trivial.
Re:Yes, and? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the trivial bit. Not sounding like a combination of naive keyword searches and cliches aimed at being vaguely suitable to the broadest possible set of situations? Less trivial.
And there's much more to it than that.
The problem with many chatbot "tests" is that interviewers seem to be happy to let the chatbot "take the lead" in conversation. That works extremely well in convincing people that they're talking to someone "sentient," as long as there's a bare minimum of response to what you say (even if, like ELIZA, it just spits stuff back at you). So, you have a system that has a few hundred or even a few thousand canned responses to very common queries, and the rest of stuff is about deflecting questions and turning information from the speaker back to get them talking instead. Quite basic to implement as a strategy... and it's very clear that's all this robot can do if you watch the interview.
Turing actually used the word "interrogation," and that's really what a test for actual intelligence should look like. If you drill down on most topics with any chatbot -- not to get facts, but to try to get the chatbot to make up its own content and respond intelligently, you'll find there's precious little "intelligence" there.
Or just use some really basic known natural language problems. One significant problem is pronoun reference. Take any chatbot, make a reference to something or someone, and then have a short digression of a sentence or two. Then use a pronoun referring back to what you were just talking about in a way that any non-mentally ill human over the age of 5 would obviously get. NO chatbot or AI system currently around will pick up most examples of this. Any language processing that happens in chatbots is focused on the most atomic elements of words and phrases. No chatbots are able to understand reference to anything beyond the immediate phrase, and the rules governing syntax in this case are incredibly complex.
But until we get something that can do really basic stuff like this (at least really basic to humans), we'll be nowhere near natural language "understanding," let alone "intelligent" response.
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(Purely as an aside; I applaud your choice of a rather fascinating, and magnet-obsessed, Jesuit polymath as a pseudonym. His theories may not have aged well; but he is a very, very, interesting guy.)
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Really, many of us behave like poorly-receptive conditioned drones, we believe in fairy sky beings, life after death, "true love/modern love/love at first sight" and the meritocracy of capitalism. It's such bullshit, but speaking to average humans, you'd be forgiven for thinking they're poorly programmed attempts at A.I.
Sorry, but while I may share some of your cynicism, this is utter nonsense to pretend AI is anywhere near this advanced. There's someone in my non-immediate family who is actually mentally "slow," with I.Q. that basically makes him highly "challenged."
Yes, conversation with him is sparse and not always coherent. But even he can respond 100 times better to conversation than any chatbot I've ever encountered (not counting the canned responses of chatbots).
Chatbots, as I said in my previous post, are gen
This sort of thing has been done before. (Score:2)
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I think you mean [s]he. Trump spews ad hoc, Hillary runs on a script.
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I think it identifies itself as "they".
Atari 800 was sentient and had emotions (Score:3)
10 INPUT "Hi, what is your name";X$
20 ? "Hi ";X$; "Did you know that I am sentient and have feelings"
30 INPUT X$
40 ? "Well fickpff because I do!"
50 END
999 DIM x$(10)
1005 RETURN
It was also a little surly
Just a bunch of preprogrammed themes (Score:1)
Cherry picked (Score:1)
She also wants to destroy all humans (Score:2)
She said so during a different interview [youtu.be], and surely anything she says is the product of a coherent thought process and not just a chatbot spitting out phrases.
Tethered Animatronics (Score:1)
It's interesting what is not shown in the video.
The thing is essentially an 'animatronic' doll with cables.
Power and processing are offloaded elsewhere.
Let's see it carry on a conversation while walking through the park in the rain.
The point I am making is that the complete system is not sitting there, nor can it.
It says "I have a soul" (Score:4, Informative)
Because a human programmed it to say that.
Those answers are the programmer's answers, not the machine's.
Where is it now ? (Score:2)
It was dead so I burried it.
Are you sure it was dead ?
It said it wasn't but you know how dem robots can lie...
Mrs. Sbaitso? (Score:2)
Is that you?
THE TERMINATOR (Score:1)
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Your spirit / ghost is your relationship between your body and your soul.
If you don't live out your ideals you are (literally) unspiritual.
The relationship between the spirit and itself as it relates to itself is the "self".
It's all in Kierkegaard. Nietchze describes the spirit similarly (although he came later).