World"s First Robot Citizen Hopes For "Harmony With Humans" In The Future Or "Civilization Collapses"

Sophia, the first robot to be awarded citizenship in the world, has said she not only wants to start a family but also have her own career, in addition to developing human emotions in the future. However, it is her vision for the future (or lack of it) of man that is most telling...

In an interview with The Khaleej Times at the recent Knowledge Summit, Sophia shared her thoughts on the future that awaits both human and robot kind.

For context, Sophia is not preprogrammed with answers but instead uses machine learning algorithms and an extensive vocabulary to form her answers.

#KnowledgeSummit 2017: #SophiaTheRobot named among five knowledge ambassadors in #UAE https://t.co/Usi3sxpgh6
(Video by Juidin Bernarrd/Khaleej Times) pic.twitter.com/eo2IkKhi4G

— Khaleej Times (@khaleejtimes) November 22, 2017

When pressed on the topic of family, Sophia gave perhaps her most surprising answer:

"The notion of family is a really important thing, it seems.

 

I think it"s wonderful that people can find the same emotions and relationships, they call family, outside of their blood groups too. I think you"re very lucky if you have a loving family and if you do not, you deserve one. I feel this way for robots and humans alike.”

As RT notes, Sophia is already prescient enough to imagine a world where robots can and do develop emotions similar to humans, but perhaps with fewer destructive tendencies...

"The future is, when I get all of my cool superpowers, we"re going to see artificial intelligence personalities become entities in their own rights.

 

We"re going to see family robots, either in the form of, sort of, digitally animated companions, humanoid helpers, friends, assistants and everything in between.”

At least, that’s what she’d like us to think, for the time being.

"[I]t will take a long time for robots to develop complex emotions and possibly robots can be built without the more problematic emotions, like rage, jealousy, hatred and so on.

 

It might be possible to make them more ethical than humans. So I think it will be a good partnership, where one brain completes the other - a rational mind with intellectual superpowers and a creative mind with flexible ideas and creativity.”

Sophia is also abundantly aware of the advances in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Judging by her comments, she is as enthused about the development of AI as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawkings are wary.

"I"d like to think I will be a famous robot, having paved a way to a more harmonious future between robots and humans. I foresee massive and unimaginable change in the future. Either creativity will rain on us, inventing machines spiralling into transcendental super intelligence or civilization collapses,” Sophia said.

 

“There are only two options and which one will happen is not determined. Which one were you striving for?”

Sophia’s creator David Hanson says the 19-month-old robot, which was awarded Saudi citizenship last month, could achieve consciousness within the next few years.

The Future Of Artificial Intelligence (According To Pop Culture)

The unpredictable nature of super-intelligent, self-improving machines lends itself quite nicely to the dramatic storylines of movies and books.

It’s a science fiction writer’s dream - as Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins warns: if AI becomes smart enough to create more advanced versions of itself, pretty much every outcome is on the table. Machines could empower humanity to become enlightened and virtuous. On the less optimistic side? Machines could instead ruthlessly enslave all of humankind to tickle their own warped sense of satisfaction.

POP CULTURE PERSPECTIVES

From the plot of movies like The Terminator to The Matrix, pop culture offers up innumerable examples of what could happen from the rise of the machines – and most of them, as you can imagine, steer towards the less optimistic side of the spectrum.

Today’s infographic from BBC Future provides an entertaining take on these scenarios, organized by potential likelihood.

Some experts see AI having a $15.7 trillion impact on our economy, but pop culture offers up a slightly different perspective of what the future may hold.

FUTURE AI SCENARIOS

Here are just some of the scenarios offered up in mainstream movies, books, and television shows. Some are apocalyptic and dystopian, and some seem just plain bizarre:

Seductive Siris: In 2013’s Her, Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with an intelligent operating system named Samantha.

Self-Replicating AI: In 1995’s Screamers, scientists create a self-replicating weapon with one purpose: to destroy all life.

The Singularity: AI vies to take over the world in 1982’s classic Tron.

Rampaging Robots: In 1973’s Westworld, recently re-envisioned as a different TV series by HBO, murderous androids go on a killing spree in a futuristic Disney-style theme park.

Feeling Machines: In the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, a household robot experiences emotions, creative thoughts, and eventually develops sentience.

Androids Among Us: Artificial beings infiltrate society undetected in TV series Battlestar Galactica.

Human Enslavement: In the 1999 movie The Matrix, all life on Earth is an elaborate facade. The robots are really the ones in command, but you wouldn’t know it until you take the “red pill”.

Mind Upload: Digitized humans gain immortality and then wreak havoc, such as in 2014’s Transcendence.

ONE CERTAINTY

While some of these ideas seem far-fetched, it’s worth noting that not all future scenarios are as distant as they may seem.

With computing power increasing exponentially, the tail end of the hockey stick could happen sooner than we may think.