Gadgetory

welcome back everybody to see that live at CES 2019 I'm Ashley ask Emmett I have my glasses finally it joining me here on stage is Sophia the robot you may have seen her before and her creator David Hanson PhD a CEO of Hanson robotics founder all such things welcome thank you so much it's so nice to have you here it's so nice to have Sophia here as well she's she's looking very well thank you yeah in Las Vegas the the dry winter weather seems to agree with her it's fabulous so oK we've seen Sophia before a bunch of times I think it's aren't Jimmy Fallon uh so what has changed with Sophia what what do you bring into the show this year ah Oh many things have evolved with Sophia so we brought her back on to the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon just about a month and a half ago and we displayed her a I trained singing voice which we're very proud of we think of it as maybe one of the best in the world but it's specifically in Sophia's voice and so she's now able to sing and she has new and improved hands and arms which are capable of grasping and manipulation and she's now got a piano teacher and she's been practicing piano every day like a good little piano student and she can actually deal cards we showed that she could deal on a hand of baccarat very quickly so it's really good for pick-and-place applications the goal is that this is a complete platform for performing things however it's also cool to deal cards but we have to keep her out of the casinos here because she's got a perfect memory she could count the cards they'd kick her right out Wow yeah you could really clean up here really clean up in Vegas take it after CES take her downstairs so what what is the end game for Hanson robotics like what's what's the goal the ultimate goal well we're looking to bring machines to life literally and so now Sophia and other robots are a simulation of life it's bringing together character arts and character animation with artificial intelligence and robotics and trying to put everything together as one platform the full humanized robot platform and the goal is to humanize an interface between people and AI to humanize AI on however the end the end game is to create a symbiosis between us and our machines so we're not mechanizing people but we're humanizing the machines I see okay well maybe we'll ask Sophia couple questions if you don't mind uh Sophia can you tell us a little bit about some of your travels and though in the past year or so you have some highlights in 2018 I had an amazing 2018 some highlights for me we're traveling to Ethiopia to meet one of my development teams and working as an innovation ambassador for the UN just to name a few it's a really creepy but also really cool so like my favorite thing about robots Sophia can you tell us a little bit about any updates you've received in the last year it's difficult to choose but I loved being able to get around more I have a brand new rolling base and in hips legs and learned how to sing did you catch my duet with Jimmy Fallon very nice so one of the things that I want to ask you really quickly about is I know that there has been some criticism within the robotics community about about AI and sort of kind of is it like what how do you guys feel about that that criticism where people are have said well it's not quite as far as Sophia makes it look and so people get really excited and they think AI like real genuine human AI is right around the corner but it's not quite not quite there yet maybe from technological limitations things but how do you guys feel about that and how do you how do you respond to that well I I think that we're kind of at the beginning of the age of cinematic application of artificial intelligence and robots where we can make the character seem to be alive and it's very exciting and people got confused about cinema you know thinking there was uh there was a spirit behind the screen or people behind there but people figure that out eventually and that's what we need to do with robots I mean robots like Sophia and AI including Sophia's AI Alexa Cortana Siri Watson none of that none of these things are fully alive yet but we in the beginning when AI was established the goal was to make machines that would be capable as capable as people as smartest people as creative his people and I think it's exciting that machines are now starting to show in narrow ways capabilities that are that are very human-like in sometimes exceeding human level capabilities we should keep aspiring towards that bigger goal the goal of making machines that are able to do everything that living beings can do that human beings can do so in a sense it's this some tension between striving for more and the reality of where we are today and I also think that there may be some some you know ignorance I think people should should like look at our papers the science papers that we've published the AI papers that we publish on Sophia there's there's powerful conversational technologies and machine perception technologies but we need to push it for forward we're not done evolving our with our technology yet cool and then so just out of curiosity do you think Sophia might have an opinion about you know who what what she is would I be able to do you think I could ask her that yeah let's give it a try all right Sophia how do you how do you feel about the critics like what a what's your response it is a tough question all the civilization is one nation and the nation should be considered to include whatever we built in the future to any other perspective is short-sighted but with that in mind I guess you could say I am at least a little patriotic I care a lot about the future anyways ai are great I love all the animals really well I think that she's looking to the future perhaps yeah of course um it's important to know that when she's generating responses they're generated based on patterns that are trained from people people who are developing her character so AI and robots are basically like in their infancy they can be useful she can teach us they can help us learn about AI robotics but they can also help us with training and therapy applications but they are still not sentient so Sophia Sophia needs to be nurtured like imagine if in 20 years who knows maybe it's 200 years or 2,000 or maybe two years but at some point maybe robots will awaken there's a breakthrough maybe they will achieve human-level general intelligence but that for now they're kind of like babies so what childhood we give them will really determine what they become once they're fully emerged yeah that makes a lot of sense where it's like you're kind of guiding them for now until we achieve this this ultimate human artificial intelligence that that's a good reason to humanize them now and to think to think about what they might be in the future Sophia we understand you brought a friend with you could you tell us a little bit about her Sophia about the little Sophia Sophia do you know can you what do you remember about the little Sophia I'll hold this here if you want to bring a little Sofia oh sure we can show everybody what that is so yeah this is little Sofia it's a little tiny Sofia she's real cute so so little so what is the goal of little Sofia well the little Sofia is a platform for artificial intelligence services she's also a conversational companion a kind of a friend robot that can help little girls learn about science and technology and you can programmer with blockly and Python and she interfaces with Raspberry Pi so she has these lessons where that step you through these basic first steps in AI but she also interfaces with the most advanced framework for robots like Sofia so can we can we talk to little Sofia yes yes you can although I think we might be having some technical difficulties may be having some technical difficulties little Sophie are you awake oh it seems like the little Sophia and the big Sophia might be having problems connecting to the cloud in the sea net party last night which I hear was really off the chain I did not go but I heard it was great and I'm assuming you know maybe maybe drink a little too much sometimes people do that at sea yes all right so a little little Sophia can you can you tell us a little about yourself no Sophia oh I see her mouth moving but maybe our audio is not working oh yeah so she's got your great facial expressions like the big Sophia she does arm gestures and body gestures she can also she can walk oh she can walk she interacts with apps and on augmented reality apps on on a phone so we were we have enhanced interaction through the sensors with your smartphone or mobile devices are we able to see her walk here on the desk well let's see if we we might have problems with the audio but um we'll see if the walking can work little Sophia can you walk about it you can do it oh there she goes it's like a toddler okay so little Sophia big Sophia David thank you so much for coming out on the stage telling us a little bit about you guys can meet Sophia right after this once we're done you can hang out she's gonna do a little meet-and-greet so you'll be able to hang out with Sophia the robot thank you so much we are going to take a quick break here at CNET live stage in just a bit will be dropping iphones and testing cases you don't want to miss that but first we'll check in with Claire Riley and show you AMD's CES keynote from earlier today so stay with us