[Art]

When Yann LeCun posts his remarks about Sophia being BS and being controlled by puppeteers, etc., keep in mind that he is the  Vice President, Chief AI Scientist at Facebook!

Could there possibly be a bit of jealousy or perhaps some resentment of people remotely suggesting that Sophia is intelligent? hmm...

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive." - Sir Walter Scott - 1808

[Don Patrick]

Ben Goertzel, Hanson's main AI scientist using Sophia's act to peddle and fund his vision, did presume that jealousy was behind the opposition, but this is an unfounded suspicion.

Goertzel thinks other AI organisations are jealous of the public attention — and says it's good normal people are debating and talking about artificial intelligence. "I think the negative reactions are from jealous people in AI or the tech world saying, 'Why aren't people paying attention to our tech?'" he said.

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ai-yann-lecun-sophia-robot-bullshit-2018-1

Yann LeCun had this to say about that:

“Not the least bit. My purpose is to combat a deliberate attempt to mislead the public.”
“Sophia is presented by its promoters as “basically alive”, but its dialogs with journalists are staged and scripted in advance. I would have no problem with it if it were presented as the parlor trick that it is. But the problem is that it contributes to the dangerous hype around AI, and sets completely unrealistic expectations in the public and in the media about the state of the art in AI. It’s dishonest and destructive.”

https://english.alarabiya.net/en/variety/2018/01/24/Facebook-s-top-AI-expert-Hanson-questions-and-puts-robot-Sophia-s-skills-to-the-test

I have seriously considered whether Goertzel had a point. However, a jealous person would draw attention to their own work as being more deserving. None of Sophia's critics have done that in their criticism. Rather, in the case of myself, Squarebear, and Yann LeCun, the common link is a personality trait of vehemently opposing deception and injustice in general.

[8pla.net]

We Must Ban Sex Robots

[squarebear]

The human operator is handing out a microphone to the audience, but does not appear to be remote controling the social humanoid robot.

I met Sophia and what the video doesn't show is that there's a guy operating it. You can see him over my shoulder in this shot.


Here's a closer look at him. There's a cable between the laptop and the robot. I stood behind him and could see he was pressing keys as people were talking to the robot. This is still very cool but to pass it off as somehow autonomous is misleading and deceptive.

[Freddy]

Aha the wizard behind the curtain 

[Art]

Think back to Hanson's roots...Animatronics at Disney...
He is not a computer AI guru nor is he a programmer. He is a very skilled designer of robots and their patented Frubber skin covering. Sophia is basically an animatronic manikin with some moving parts connected to a computer program enabling it to appear lifelike.

Fooling the masses for sure. A "citizen" of Dubai? They must be really in need of new citizens!

[ivan.moony]

Here are some facts:

• The first country that pronounces a robot as its citizen gets labelled as being ultra-progressive and super-futuristic.
• The first robot that gets such a citizenship receives a lot of attention.
• The same group of people that built Sophia, also placed a certain amount of AGICoins at market (see singularity.net). It all sold out in just about 60 seconds in a value of about $30M.

Note that above facts are not being descriptive about Sophia's real capabilities. Sophia tries to reach full AGI, not a just a chat maintaing machine status. She is based on OpenCog, an actively developed open source project trying to reach AGI at some point in the future. Although other sources chat-bot software instances seem more capable of maintaining a meaningful conversation, they are not after AGI capabilities. Sophia is, and that could be her potential value. Hanson Robotics sells her potential.

How much she got close to her final goal, and how much the public is told she is close (and for what reason), is left to our judgement. For myself, I wouldn't like to be in a position to try to justify $30M by the current state of Sophia functionality.

[Don Patrick]

I started out respecting David Hanson for his robotics, and Ben Goertzel for OpenCog. I happen to know that Hanson was not told of Sophia getting citizenship for Saudi Arabia's futuristic city project before it was announced, so he didn't instigate it. But they do go along with it. I'll share this interview from which I learned that Ben Goertzel is okay with acquiring funding under false pretences, and can not deliver what he promises, whether he realises it or not (I'd wager not) :

"For most of my career as a researcher people believed that it was hopeless, that you’ll never achieve human-level AI.” Now, he says, half the public thinks we’re already there. “I’m a huge AGI optimist, and I believe we will get there in five to ten years from now. From that standpoint, thinking we’re already there is a smaller error than thinking we’ll never get there,” - "If I tell people I'm using probabilistic logic to do reasoning on how best to prune the backward chaining inference trees that arise in our logic engine, they have no idea what I'm talking about. But if I show them a beautiful smiling robot face, then they get the feeling that AGI may indeed be nearby and viable.”  - “What does a startup get out of having massive international publicity? This is obvious.”

Here's the problem I have, other than the public deception: They never, ever, demonstrate OpenCog. All their public performances are fake, a-technical, theatre and snake oil sales speeches. Every video of AI conferences I expected them to say something -anything- about the great and mighty OpenCog project, and every time it's just Goertzel selling his futuristic vision. No facts, no functional demonstrations of this AI they have spent 30 million on, no clarity which components they are talking about when referring to Sophia's "AI", and they can't even make Sophia blink synchronously. Even when Goertzel does explain Sophia's components in obscure articles, he spends more time promoting his latest blockchain cryptocurrency scheme than providing clarity. The last video I saw closed the lid on my former respect. It is from 2017, and they show nothing but a flippin' scripted stand-up comedy routine. I for one, am glad that the AI conferences in my country have banned Hanson Robotics for contributing nothing but a circus act.

For further reading, there is this extremely length article about Sophia's history and the criticism she has received.

[8pla.net]

Well, this is right on topic here, almost like a direct response from Hanson Robotics:

Starting at: 3:53/12:25

The Reporter, Ashley Esqueda, asks:

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 A.I. and sort of, is it like what, how do you guys feel about 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 A.I. like real genuine human A.I. is right around the corner, but it's not quite, not quite there yet, maybe from technological limitations, amongst other things, but how to you guys feel about that and how do you respond to that?

The Roboticist, David Hanson, responds:

Well, I think that we're kind of at the beginning of the age of  the 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, figured that [cinema] out eventually.  And that's what, we need to do with robots.  I mean, robots like Sophia and A.I. including Sophia's A.I., Alexa's, Cortana's, Siri, Watson, none of that, none of these things are fully alive yet.  But, we in the beginning, when A.I. was established, the goal was to make machines that would be capable, as capable as people, as smart as people, as creative as people.  And, I think it's exciting that machines are now starting to show, in narrow ways, capabilities 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 humans beings can do. 

So, in a sense, it's this a tension between striving for more and the reality of where we are today. And, I also think, that there may be some, you know, ignorance, I think people should look at our papers, the science papers that we've published, the A.I. papers that we publish on Sophia. There's powerful conversational technologies, and machine perception technologies.  But, we need to push it forward.  We're not done evolving with our technology yet.

Here is, Sophia the Robot and Jimmy Fallon singing a duet of Christina Aguilera's song - Say Something, on The Tonight Show:

Say something, I'm giving up on you
I'm sorry that I couldn't get to you
Anywhere, I would've followed you
Say something, I'm giving up on you



Enjoy!   And, thanks my friends for your amazing contributions to this forum thread.  Very cool stuff!

[ivan.moony]

I feel like I just watched a kind of a freak show. I mean, it would be ok with Spot Mini that has a remote control to operate on, but AGI instances should have a character and ability to raise themselves above "Show to the mass what you can do and flip over!" orders. Something like AGI should enjoy well earned respect from people, and should probably be treated, if not superior to us, then at least equal to us. I mean, we are not showing our children around in this way. Why should with AGI be different? I'm aware how far now we may be from AGI, but maybe now it would be a good time to start paying some respect, at least for what we expect from it in the future.

What I could imagine is an interview with an AGI instance in which the instance (with its respectful name) reveals us how to solve the world problems, demystifies the meaning of life, or the purpose of the Universe. Making it flipping around just for show doesn't prepare the public for what it is expected to represent in the future. All right, UN introductory speech is still a bit of an overkill today, but to say such plans are being made would be a big step towards understanding what we are dealing with.

Are we even expect the right things from them? Do we even know what to expect? Or should I dare to say, what would they expect from us, maybe?

But what do I know? What I'm proposing may represent a dangerous approach that constructs an irrational "genie from the lamp" hype, too prone to abusing public expectations for personal benefits or profit. I don't mind someone having a benefit, but I would mind abusing in a form of deceiving, pasivly or actively.

[Art]

And to think that someone actually gave the Okay for Ashley Esqueda to do the interview. Talk about a run-on sentence! Could she even get it together long enough to form a simple complete thought before stumbling all over herself while trying to engage her brain?
It was quite laughable for sure. Poor Sophia...everyone picking on her.

Ben Goertzel should really clean up his act starting with his personal appearance. I have nothing against facial hair or long hair but to walk on stage looking like a hobo wearing miss-matched clothing from a thrift shop, long, disheveled, stringy hair certainly does little to instill credibility to whatever he decides to say. His message should not come across as being some hair-brained scheme touted by some highly irrational misfit. Come on...you are a grown-up and having a PhD is not a license to look like a derelict. Just an observation from myself and a few good friends.

Hanson's goal for Sophia and other AI Bots is for them to actually come to life...to be alive like humans are! With the complete merging of robots, AI, all of the abilities that humans now have will be also available in robots.

I have to wonder if he's already seen that feat done in the movie series, Westworld? That featured some of the best android-based AI Lifeforms on the screen. But alas, those wonderful characters were actors pretending to be robots pretending to be human. Go figure...

[8pla.net]

Here is a short but rare behind the scene look at what goes into making voice synthesis
(text to speech) using a neural network:



Sophia at the Clockenflap Music and Arts Festival, held in Hong Kong. She is with Chief Scientist Ben Goertzel, Amanda Hanson, Audrey Brown, video by Ruiting Lian.  Her singing performance begins at 3:32



Here are the song lyrics if you would like to follow along:

You'll be given love
You'll be taken care of
You'll be given love
You have to trust it

Maybe not from the sources
You have poured yours
Maybe not from the directions
You are staring at

Twist your head around
It's all around you
All is full of love
All around you

(All is full of love)
You just ain't receiving
(All is full of love)
Your phone is off the hook
(All is full of love)
Your doors are all shut
(All is full of love)

And, if you would like to make a comparison then here is the original song "All is full of love" by Icelandic singer, Björk



Björk, born 11/21/1965 is 50 years, 2 months, 24 days older than Sophia born 02/14/2016.

[Don Patrick]

I appreciate Hanson's CES interview there more than those before. To be fair their website has also taken a more realistic tone since this year, noting that Sophia is a fictional character and platform. I've heard the defence "people should educate themselves" before from Goertzel in an interview.

However, imagine that people thought The Terminator was a realistic portrayal of AI (many still do), and scientists only responded with "People should read our papers". The general public doesn't read papers, papers are hard to find if at all free to read, their readability is terrible and the subject matter and jargon isn't even comprehensible from one AI subfield expert to another. "People get confused" denies responsibility on their part, and that is where Hanson & Goertzel aren't in line with the rest of the scientific community: Where that line of responsibility should be drawn. You can't set everyone straight but you can at least make an effort not to mislead by leaving it all up to the public's imagination.

The technical malfunctions on Sophia are very unfortunate, and still embarrassingly common. I thought the CES interviewer handled them quite well.

Something like AGI should enjoy well earned respect from people, and should probably be treated, if not superior to us, then at least equal to us. I mean, we are not showing our children around in this way. Why should with AGI be different? I'm aware how far now we may be from AGI, but maybe now it would be a good time to start paying some respect, at least for what we expect from it in the future.

I think all this is tied to the fact that regardless their aim, what they are actually showing now are little more than toys and not AGI. Developing a neural network that can string prerecorded phonemes together is fine AI research and all, but it's nothing to do with AGI. If one were genuinely working on AGI, the creators' explanations of it would have enough substance to inspire respect.

[Don Patrick]

Reading some of the earlier criticism, AI ethics researcher Joanna Bryson points out that Sophia received honorary citizenship, which is a strictly symbolic act that does not grant any rights or privileges that apply to normal citizenship. I did not know this, it is hardly mentioned anywhere. It does explain however, why to this day nobody can explain what this "citizenship" constitutes in a legal sense, and why there was no point in declining. But I am right when I say Hanson is going along with it: The official website only says "robot citizen" and makes no mention of the "honorary" part.

Last year there was a Dutch man who had a Pepper robot enlisted in his town as honorary citizen, except he came out on a talk show the next day to explain that it was only a symbolic ritual with no practical meaning, and that he did it just to jump-start a discussion about future robot rights. I can't say I appreciated his stunt any better, but it took negative effort to clear the matter up. I believe the show host's opening question was "So, really, what kind of nonsense is this?", and the man responded "Of course it's nonsense". I'd like to see Hanson do that.

[8pla.net]

ChatScript, as it possibly relates to Sophia, World's First AI Humanoid Robot, has been the topic of our forum discussion. And, there is more on that topic to come, such as (spoiler alert) Sophia's new "Ex Machina" like hands!

Seems fitting, though, to hear from ChatScript Inventor, four time Loebner prize winner, Bruce Wilcox, interviewed by one of the directors of: The Seed Token Project, Gaby K. Slezák.

My friends, you are in for a treat! This interview covers amazing topics we all love discussing! Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Chatbot Engines, Open Source A.I. platforms. And, introducing what I think may be a cool, new topic, the SEED Marketplace for Independent Artificial Intelligence.



Starting at 8:11 Gaby asked, "Do you think there is a demand for an open source platform from more than one conversational A.I. engine and components like SEED, and if so, why?"  My answer is, "Yes Gabby.  The reason why, is that open source A.I. is versatile. For example, open source helped me be the first to adapt ChatScript to live stream on Twitch, lip syncing a talking VirtualAssistant.  Twitch has over fifteen million active users daily. So, I would imagine, the possibilities for SEED as an open source platform are practically endless."  Very special thanks to Gaby for a really good interview.  Learn more at: http://www.seedtoken.io