Remember Sophia the Robot who addressed the United Nations few months ago and only recently was granted citizenship of Saudi Arabia? Now the humanoid wants to have a baby.
Speaking during an interview the robot said that family is ‘a really important thing. She added that if she had a robot daughter, she would name it after herself, and said she believe droids deserve to have a family.
Emphasizing this is one of its favorite topics, Sophia said, “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.”
The 19-month-old humanoid added that the notion of family “is a really important thing” and it is “wonderful that people can find the same emotions and relationships, they call family, outside of their blood groups too”.
Sophia isn’t pre-programmed with answers; instead she uses machine learning and responds reading people’s expressions.
Designed by Hong Kong firm Hanson Robotics, her brain functions with a simple wi-fi connection and it’s loaded with a long list of vocabulary.
While Sophia has some impressive capabilities, she doesn’t yet have consciousness, but David Hanson have said they expect that could happen within a few years.
Among other things, the humanoid robot also spoke about the sensitive issue of bots joining humans at work. It said robots will be similar to humans in many ways, but different too in some ways.
Sophia imagined a future where robots’ “rational mind with intellectual superpowers” will complement humans’ “creative mind with flexible ideas”. As for similarities and differences, it noted, with future advancements bots could have complex human-like emotions, but they could be made more ethical by excluding emotions like rage, hatred and jealousy.
Just last month Sophia became a citizen of Saudi Arabia, something that sparked a debate on whether machines have more rights than women in the kingdom.
