My name is Sophia, I am a robot

Robots have arrived, but will they take over?

- NAFISA AKABOR

In Kyoto, Japan, at a 400-year-old Buddhist temple, there is a priest named Mindar, who delivers 25-minute sermons, but there is a twist – he is a robot. Mindar is not AI-powered but merely programmed to deliver the Heart Sutra, a Buddhist scripture, on repeat. He is being compared to “Frankenstein’s monster”, due to his human-like face and robot body.

In France, robots have taken up pole dancing; in the UAE there is a “RoboCop” serving the Dubai police force; and in Japan, the Henn na Hotel is the world’s first hotel with a robot staff. There are also instances of elder-care robots, and service robots within restaurants and banking in parts of the world.

We are not unfamiliar with bots either; we have been using intelligent, virtual assistants in the form of Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, Cortana and Bixby for years now. We have also seen an AIpowered bot in the form of Pepper, a semi-humanoid that Nedbank brought into the country last year. Pepper can recognise human emotions from analysing expressions and voice tones, and chat to customers.

A few months ago, the world’s first humanoid robot, Sophia, developed by Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics, made her way to South Africa. Modelled after Audrey Hepburn, she has a humanlike appearance with a prominent electronic “brain”.

Sophia has the ability to display more than 50 facial expressions, and, admittedly, when you look at her do it, it is both creepy and cool. Her creator, Dr David Hanson, says she is intended as a work of science fiction to show everyone where this field is going.