Via Communications of the Association for Computing Machinary:
It was a spooky sight: two lifelike disembodied robot torsos
discussing the pros and cons of humans in front of a nervously tittering
audience in Hong Kong Wednesday.
Artificial intelligence is the dominant theme at this year's
sprawling RISE tech conference at Hong Kong's harborfront convention
center, but the live robot exchange took the AI debate to another level.
Handsome male humanoid Han, dressed in a pinstripe suit jacket, and
his elegant sister Sophia, modeled on Audrey Hepburn, chatted onstage
about life in the universe and everything, from their love of science
fiction to their bewilderment at "silly" reality shows.
While chief scientist Ben Goertzel of Hong Kong-based Hanson
Robotics, which invented the machines, sang their praises, the robots
seemed more skeptical of their human peers.
When Goertzel asked the duo whether robots could really be moral and
ethical, Han countered: "Humans are not necessarily the most ethical
creatures."
The robot later pointed out: "In 10 or 20 years, robots will be able to do every human job."
A gentler Sophia conceded that humans do have "some ability to reflect and self-modify."
She insisted her aim was to work together with people, before Han
"joked" he thought the robots' goal was to take over the world.
The machines had been programmed to banter and learn from each other,
and had been trained to act like humans from movies and YouTube, said
Goertzel.
Their malleable skin is controlled by dozens of motors, while
computers in their torsos help with vision and movement. They can also
connect to Wi-Fi to use cloud computing, where they will eventually
share a vast amount of knowledge, Goertzel said.
Robots could be "as smart as people" in as little as three years, he predicted....MORE
