Meeting Sophia

At the recently concluded Global Media Forum, one had the pleasure of attending a session where Sophia was presented to the audience. Sophia is no ordinary guest. She is a humanoid robot developed by a Hong Kong based company and was activated in February 2016.

According to her manufacturer, David Hanson, he designed Sophia to be a suitable companion for the elderly at nursing homes, or to help crowds at large events or parks. It was his hope, according to an earlier  interview he gave, that the robot could ultimately interact with other humans sufficiently to gain social skills.

Cameras within Sophia’s eyes combined with computer algorithms allow it to see. It can follow faces, sustain eye contact, and recognize individuals. It can process speech and have conversations using a natural language sub-system.In 2018 Sophia was upgraded with functional legs and the ability to walk.

Sophia was introduced to the United Nations with a brief conversation with the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Amina J. Mohammed. Since then she has been named the United Nations Development Program’s first ever Innovation Champion and is the first non-human to be given any United Nations title.

Earlier in 2017, Sophia became the first robot to receive citizenship of any country when Saudi Arabia gave her this privilege. At the Future Investment Summit in Riyadh, the robot was granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, becoming the first robot ever to have a nationality.

This attracted controversy as some commentators wondered if this implied that Sophia could vote or marry, or whether a deliberate system shutdown could be considered murder. Social media users used Sophia’s citizenship to also talk about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. In her conversation at the media summit this year, when asked what she thought of human rights, Sophia responded by saying she was in favor of human rights “and maybe one day robots will have their rights too.”

While all this is impressive, those who work in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) say that Sophia is nothing to worry about. This response comes after there was much hue and cry, much of it based on movies made on this topic, where some people expressed the fear that robots like Sophia may one day take over their jobs and ultimately - the world.

Not so, say experts. At least not yet. Experts who have reviewed the robot’s open-source code state that Sophia is best categorized as a chatbot with a face. Many experts in the AI field disapprove of Sophia’s overstated presentation. They say it is not ideal that some think of Sophia as having human-equivalent intelligence.

In this particular session which was on media and AI, Sophia was being interviewed by Guido Baumhauer, who has been Deutsche Welle’s Managing Director of Distribution, Marketing and Technology since 2006.

Baumhauer has been an advocate of technology and has been a driving force in DW – which is a state owned enterprise much like our PBC and PTV combined, to adapt new technologies. In one interview he gave last year, Baumhauer told his interviewer “Content is king, but effective delivery is King Kong”.

This is a statement that made many journalists sit up and wonder. The fact that no matter how good the content, it is the delivery that matters. This comes as a contradiction to what many people say about the media. That a good story will win the day – no matter what. Apparently in tomorrow’s media world, robots like Sophia will play an important part.

Sophia or the robots that come after her may possibly change journalism as we see it. She uses artificial intelligence, visual data processing as well as facial recognition and also imitates human gestures and facial expressions.

She can answer certain questions and to make simple conversations on predefined topics and she uses voice recognition (speech-to-text) technology which is designed to get smarter over time.

Sophia’s intelligence software is designed in such a way that it analyses conversations and extracts data that allows it to improve responses in the future. In other words, as Sophia grows, so will her ability to answer questions and respond. One can only wonder at what stage she will overtake humans when it comes to delivery and knowledge. Are we seeing a new breed of media persons?

Published in The Express Tribune, June 3^rd, 2019.

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