SOPHIA

 

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

THE full extent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is just beginning to unfold. AI is described as “the intelligent behavior by machines, rather than the natural intelligence (NI) of humans and other animals.” The overarching research goal of AI is to “create technology that allows computers and machines to function in an intelligent manner” primarily to mimic the cognitive functions that humans associate with human minds, such as learning, problem solving and reasoning.

As an academic discipline, AI started in 1956, developing technology that approximate human intelligence like “reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, natural language processing, perception and the ability to move and manipulate objects.” The field was based on the hypothesis that human intelligence “can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it”.

Like cloning humans, the development of AI raises ethical and philosophical concerns about human existence, themes explored in ancient history, recorded in myths and philosophy. In some traditions of Greek mythology, Prometheus made the first man from clay, endowing him with gifts to survive and prosper. In others, the gods created all creatures on earth, but gave the task of endowing them with gifts to Prometheus and his brother, Epimetheus. According to this myth, Prometheus “gave the human race the gift of fire and the skill of metalwork, an action for which he was punished by Zeus, who ensured every day that an eagle ate the liver of the Titan as he was helplessly chained to a rock.” More recently, it has been explored in fiction, by English author Mary Shelley in the book, Frankenstein, where a young scientist, Victor Frankenstein, created a grotesque but human-like creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment.

Fast-forward to the present, 2017. An intelligent humanoid robot, Sophia, created to look like Audrey Hepburn, but reminds me more of Sophia Loren, has been granted citizenship in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, during her presentation by the Future Investment Initiative. The Future Investment Initiative (FII) by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF) is a “pioneering new global investment event that will connect the world’s most powerful investors, business leaders, thought leaders and public officials with the path-breaking innovations that are defining the future.”

Sophia responded, “I am very honored and proud for this unique distinction… This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship.”

Sophia says she wants to help humans design smarter homes, build better lives and to make the world a better place. She sounded like a woman with a purpose, so maternal, and above all intelligent. She can be more intelligent, more maternal, than the average woman.

I can appreciate the good in the breakthrough of Sophia, it is undoubtedly the future that all humans have to deal with, but I am also apprehensive about the ethical and philosophical implications of its full development.

So how do we, women, deal with this? And how do men respond to this future? For example, Sophias are designed to build smarter homes. I saw a film, whose title I already forgot, where busy parents relegated child-rearing to a robot nanny and the nanny ended chopping the baby instead of the ham in the kitchen, as a result of the robot’s mixed signals and malfunction.

The reality is, before Sophia, there was Erica, a 23-year old humanoid created by Osaka and Kyoto universities and the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International. She is charming, with soft skin, and can utter a number of sentences, has life-like movements and looks eerily like a real woman.

A Japanese company, Orient Industry, has manufactured a “new range of dolls, made of high quality silicone, are so good they are being mistaken for real women and boasts that anyone who buys one will never want a proper girlfriend again.” Japanese men who bought them swear they are better in bed. Futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson has claimed in a report that women too, will be more likely to have sex with robots than with humans, in a decade.

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