FAQs
1. Who is Sophia the Robot?
Sophia the Robot was developed and created by Hanson Robotics in 2015 and was introduced to the world in 2016. It is recognized as one of the most advanced technologies in artificial intelligence, as Sophia can make numerous facial expressions, answer questions, and make jokes. Sophia has appeared many times in the world media and on Twitter, and caused controversy when it was granted citizenship by Saudi Arabia in 2017.
2. Why are you guys doing this?
We are fascinated by the moral questions Sophia poses, particularly those questions that are hidden behind humorous or sarcastic remarks. The only way to truly explore those questions was through an in-depth digital project–this in-depth digital project, to be exact! For more information, please go to our about page.
3. What digital tools did you use?
We collected our representative sample of tweets using Google Sheets. Once those were collected, we used a Google Sheets plug-in called AYLIEN (yes, we know the irony) to complete sentiment analysis. We also used text analysis sites like Voyant and Palladio to formulate basic ideas on patterns in our research. We would like to thank The College of Wooster student Catherine Lockwood for providing information about AYLIEN and sentiment analysis
4. What is sentiment analysis, exactly?
Sentiment analysis is a way of understanding the feeling toward a certain subject in a set of data. It is used often to understand the sentiment of topics on social media sites such as Twitter. If you are curious about sentiment analysis, you should check out our sentiment analysis blog post!
5. These tweets aren’t even that funny!
While on some level, humor is subjective, we worked hard to collect tweets that either used typically humorous conventions, such as sarcasm, or utilized new media like gifs, memes, or photos to make a joke about Sophia. While there are lots of humorous tweets about Sophia that include swearing or innuendo, we did not visibly include those on this site (some were included in our representative sample for analysis).
6. Why should I care about the uncanny valley?
The uncanny valley is a fundamentally important way humans view the world. Our limits of empathy and understanding cannot be understood without it. “When the aliens come, will you be able to connect with them” may sound like a silly, if not borderline apocalyptic question, but with every new advance it becomes more real. If you would like to learn about the uncanny valley, check out our uncanny valley blog post!
More About the AI Discussion :
Can we build AI without losing control over it?
Sam Harris
Scared of superintelligent AI? You should be, says neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris — and not just in some theoretical way. We’re going to build superhuman machines, says Harris, but we haven’t yet grappled with the problems associated with creating something that may treat us the way we treat ants.
Don't fear super-intelligent AI
Grady Booch
New tech spawns new anxieties, says scientist and philosopher Grady Booch, but we don’t need to be afraid an all-powerful, unfeeling AI. Booch allays our worst (sci-fi induced) fears about superintelligent computers by explaining how we’ll teach, not program, them to share our values. Rather than worry about an unlikely existential threat, he urges us to consider how artificial intelligence will enhance human life.
True Artificial Intelligence will change
everything
Juergen Schmidhuber
Artificial Intelligence Scientist. Scientific Director of the Swiss AI Lab, IDSIA, DTI, SUPSI; Prof. of AI, Faculty of Informatics, USI, Lugano; Co-founder & Chief Scientist, NNAISENSE, Switzerland. Prof. Jürgen Schmidhuber has been called the father of modern Artificial Intelligence. His lab’s deep learning methods have revolutionized machine learning and are now available on 3 billion smartphones, and used billions of times per day, e.g. for Facebook’s automatic translation, Google’s speech recognition, Apple’s Siri & QuickType, Amazon’s Alexa, etc. His research group also established the field of mathematically rigorous universal AI and optimal universal problem solvers…
The Real Reason to be Afraid of Artificial Intelligence
Peter Haas
A robotics researcher afraid of robots, Peter Haas, invites us into his world of understand where the threats of robots and artificial intelligence lie. Before we get to Sci-Fi robot death machines, there’s something right in front of us we need to confront – ourselves. Peter is the Associate Director of the Brown University Humanity Centered Robotics Initiative. He was the Co-Founder and COO of XactSense, a UAV manufacturer working on LIDAR mapping and autonomous navigation. Prior to XactSense, Peter founded AIDG – a small hardware enterprise accelerator in emerging markets. Peter received both TED and Echoing Green fellowships. He has been a speaker at TED Global, The World Bank, Harvard University and other venues. He holds a Philosophy B.A. from Yale. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.