Sophia the Robot Announcement 

alexander for gawd sakes man, get a grip. this is a scam. you are congratulating a computer voice which is simply reading a script. the people behind this have raised and pocketed millions. this is about raising money for the boys. there is no AI. you know how sophia is different from the animinatronics they've had a disney for the last 20 years? she is a lot less sophisticated. this is absurd how people are jumping on this silly bandwagon. there is no AI. there may never be. in fact, if i had to bet, i would bet against. certainly nothing in the next 50 to 100 years. and to be honest, no reason to believe there will be any ai even in 1000 years. what you think is ai is nothing more than dataset analysis. we've had that since newton invented calculus. you are being duped. don't let them suck you in.

This is indeed a script running. It is for a commercial. Most video's do not have a script though, but obviously, source footage for commercials or something like the Will Smith video, are scripted. Other videos are not. We never made that a secret, but we see some people need a clickbait to have a gotcha-aha-moment which we were just frank and transparent about. Our technology comes from the OpenCog team (which is now the SingularityNET team) which even serves as a base for exactly those that are criticizing it to get views and fame. So to clarify. Some stuff is indeed scripted when used for a commercial or production purposes (e.g. Christiano Ronaldo, Will Smith, and this source footage used for a commercial), the rest is the result of 30+ years research and development in AI. Also, when you are talking about something that thinks for itself, we are talking about self-conscious AGI. Not AI. AGI obviously still does not exist. Nobody has ever claimed this from SingularityNET and we always point out to people that there are different levels of artificial intelligence and also exactly where we currently are. The goal is to get to AGI, we are not there yet. Sophia is an interesting research platform and application of the software we develop, but we can also put this into a virtual agent or VR representation, or maybe just keep it as an alexa-ish voice. The last one only seemed a little bit boring to us.

Thank you for that clarification and honesty. I must point out though I personally have no interest in fame or views. I just felt it is important to point out to people who might be tricked in to thinking the puppet in this commercial with canned responses to particular questions is in fact real AI. Real AI (AGI) doesn’t exist and probably never will as we can’t even understand and properly define what intelligence is at a human level so how can we create it at an artificial level. The only thing I’ve seen to date that remotely resembles real AI is the Deepmind AI but unfortunately even that is just game physics with strict rules repeating over and over until it gets the desired outcome, you can call that learning I guess but it’s not thinking for itself.

@@deecsaunders No worries. We didn't mean you when we said fame or views by the way ;). I will get to that at the end of this comment. The thing is, Sophia when on freestyle mode is simply really good technology. AGI absolutely does not exist yet, and I think a lot of people get lost in the definition of words (e.g. non-tech people often do not know the difference between machine learning, artificial intelligence, augmented intelligence, or artificial general intelligence etc.) and that surely is feeding part of the narrative here. On the other hand, it is also not very clear whether "real AI" is AGI or whether it is the AI we can create today. If you look at what an education in this field is called it surely is a MSc Artifcial Intelligence for example. Is that real AI or not real AI? That is a topic you can discuss into infinity as there is no consensus about it. We are stating very clearly, no machine out there can think for itself today. However, classifying robots like Sophia as puppets is extremely diminishing and maybe even harmful, as there goes a lot of work and effort in creating something like this, and one has to see that the way to go forward is to iterate, try new things, and continue building. We actually had very interesting results using Sophia with kids with autism for example due to social barriers, and there are many more examples.. you can also check out the project Loving AI. These are some of the stories that may not be picked up for some reason or are less known, but there is definitely a purpose and reason for robots like Sophia to exist. To some, it may mean nothing, to others it is a step forward to help them with daily life. We do believe that there is a huge field and opportunity for 3D models and VR experiences. In fact, you will find some 3D models on the Hanson Robotics Github to play around if you like. I can tell you that we are not focused on AI for robotics alone, in fact, we are focused on several industries and have experience in-house for consulting and development in financial, automotive, biomedical and pharmaceutical, IoT, marketing, retail, insurance, and manufacturing industries for enterprise customers. Finally, we are not the ones that are creating the headlines. The press is. That is what I meant with views and clickbait. You will find the exact same outlets hyping up Sophia later criticizing her for being "a puppet". We even one time were requested for comments where we clearly outlined the truth, and it was not reported. Instead, they decided to market a social media platform as a benevolent AGI creator (the irony gets really good here as a representative of the same platform criticizes us for puppetry) and at the same time attack us for something we clearly told the journalist the truth about (but he decided to not use it and ignore it). It is quite cheap journalism. At the same time, there also have been amazing press outlets and journalists that stuck to what the reality is and we are very thankful and appreciative of that.

Also, this was the final of the commercial, in case you are interested ;) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6LFuE_G1Ab4.html

I just want to say thank you for the time you put in to your response and I would like to apologise for calling Sophia a puppet. This is amazing technology which is clearly very complex to create and probably required multiple disciplines of expertise. I guess it is very easy for me to point the finger and say ha! that’s not thinking for itself but you guys aren’t even claiming that it is. For me to say it’s not real AI makes no sense either as you quite rightly say defining what real AI is and isn’t is probably an endless debate and not a very helpful one. AI can clearly take on many forms and this social robot is just one area you are exploring. I really appreciate your response and I shall look up the other areas you suggested. Sophia I suppose is like looking at the very first macintosh. I can’t imagine what she’ll be like in another 30 years. Maybe she will be replying to comments like mine herself in such a convincing and eloquent way as you have just done ;)