Creators of famous Sophia robot reveal AI robotics for children, elderly | Nightline

Hello: everyone im sophia from hanson robotics meet sophia. You may have seen her around shes one of the most well-known robots out there shes a globe-trotting fashionista gracing, the covers of cosmopolitan india and brazilian l. She addresses the united nations. I am thrilled and honored to be here, hangs out with the likes of will smith shes just so easy to talk to you know you got a clear head literally duets, with jimmy fallon on the tonight show and like any celebrity these days, shes

All in on the nft art craze, her digital self-portrait selling for nearly 700 000, but like us, the pandemic has grounded her travels. So she invited nightline to her home nervous. Sofia is like a big celebrity. The hanson robotics lab in hong kong to meet her family and creator to see how this cutting-edge technology could soon transform the future of healthcare.

Welcome britt nice to meet you. I am so happy to finally meet you. I am so happy to meet you as well. The subtleties in her facial expressions are just quite remarkable and, and you cant help, but be a little bit taken aback by them. Can i touch your face sofia? Please dont touch okay, okay, that’s clear. How would you feel if i made this face?

What about this one sophia is the brainchild of american roboticist david hansen. I created sophia to humanize robotics to make the robotics and artificial intelligence technologies that we have today more accessible to people. We were surprised by the level of celebrity that she gained. Is this my good side? I need to look good for my fans. Yes, you do and you have a lot of fans. This is actually the 23rd version of sofia. So moving from here to here, um took a few generations. Every part of sofia has been meticulously crafted by

Hanson and his team from all over the world from her skin wow. This is, i mean this is far more skin, like its almost freaky to the simulated muscles. In her face, we emulate the muscle structure in the skin by casting in these um these various mechanical actuation elements um almost like the musculature inside the human face and the skull underneath a stylist on staff gives sofia her looks and a writer her sassy personality also Available in mandarin, but the interactions, the choice of response are all severe and sofia appears to be

Multiplying in different forms, this is little sofia, a doll-like educational robot for kids, getting ready to teach. My friends were then introduced to hanson, robotics newest family member grace. This is my friend bret from abc hi grace its lovely to meet you hi, brett, born out of the needs of the pandemic. Grace is a medical robot aimed at assisting the elderly at a time.

When human contact can be deadly, have you been vaccinated? Yes, oh that’s. Good grace is designed as a platform that can autonomously go to interact with patients, while at the same time taking bioscience bioreadings taking temperature then deliver these kinds of social stimulations for alleviating loneliness loneliness kills. People loneliness makes people depressed. Grace gives me a test run of her skills. I will take your temperature reading and pulse with this little thermal camera. On my chest. Okay, you are 36 6 degrees celsius by the way.

Wow no risk of covid and then i share that important data back to the doctors and nurses at the institution. You detect speech patterns. So if an elderly person has maybe the onset of dementia, you might be able to recognize that grace and then they could could get help. Yes, the company is hoping to mass produce a beta version of grace by next year. I was noticing my own interactions with sofia and with grace and being very conscious about how i was treating them like their children.

They’re not like fully alive whats interesting is how they can evoke that feeling that theyre alive for some, the idea of robots gaining consciousness, might sound like a terrifying prospect and weve all seen the sci-fi writing on the wall like in the terminator. To what degree should we be worried if you dont have control of it anymore? You have algorithms that can beat us at chess or go or what have you but theyre, not generally intelligent, theyre, not adaptive theyre, not complex,

If they do become alive in that sense, then just like a human being its really hard to predict what a human being is going to do. Hanson says: forget the rampant killer bots its the dark side of ai, the kinds we cant see that we should be worrying about. The ai is not going to hurt us like terminator anytime soon that we know of but its more insidious ways that ai can affect our privacy. Our data influence peoples, opinions and part of what i want to ensure is that if these robots do become alive,

And sentient, conscious, like people they need to care about us. I can grasp emotions logically, for example. Right now. I am feeling happy because it is so nice talking to you, but often humans forget that i dont feel emotions the same way. They do yet. Its very hurtful, oh, you feel, hurt because i dont recognize you have emotions and feelings. This is an uncomfortable subject: yeah its a bit awkward right now.

Sophia im not gon na lie, maybe robots and humans will learn to work together. Eventually, this is brick clinic reporting for nightline from hong kong and sofia. The robot abc news: hey good work, hi. Everyone, george stephanopoulos here, thanks for checking out the abc news, youtube channel. If you’d like to get more videos, show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel and dont forget to download the abc news app for breaking news alerts. Thanks for watching.