Robot Sophia and her creator bring ‘hopeful vision of future’ to DePauw

Thursday, March 1, 2018
DePauw University students take a selfie with Sophia, the one-of-a-kind robot character creation of David Hanson, Wednesday night in Kresge Auditorium at DPU. Hanson and Sophia brought a “hopeful vision of the future” to DePauw, making an Ubben Lecture appearance at the university.
DePauw University photo

Bringing “a hopeful vision of the future” to DePauw University, David Hanson and his robot creation Sophia presented a Timothy and Sharon Ubben Lecture Wednesday night.

Featuring the high-profile technology entrepreneur and his humanoid sidekick visiting campus offering a glimpse into the world of tomorrow, Hanson -- founder, CEO and chief designer of Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics -- and Sophia, his one-of-a-kind robot character, packed 1,400-seat Kresge Auditorium.

“I love it here,” Sophia said during the program.

Technology entrepreneur David Hanson, CEO of Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics, and his robot creation Sophia tackle question during Wednesday’s appearance at DePauw University.
DePauw University photo

“I love your curiosity. Keep exploring and dreaming,” added the cyborg-celebrity who later posed for selfies with dozens of students.

Hanson stood beside Sophia as he told the DePauw crowd the creation has a chance to change history.

“By crafting a whole organism, a whole human organism, and then in waves of development pushing toward human-level capabilities across the spectrum -- human general intelligence, learns in one area and can apply it another; it’s creative and imaginative -- that’s the big goal, that is the grand challenge,” Hanson said. “If we accomplish that, if we create that level of living intelligent machine, then history is changed.”

Traditional thinking has held that if robots are created to resemble humans they will be rejected by society, but Hanson believes that if androids are to work and live among us, they must have human characteristics, “crafting these technologies into deep, rich, meaningful characters.”

“So that’s our aspiration for Sophia,” Hanson said. “Our aspiration is to bring her to life.”

Science fiction movies of the 1950s planted the seed that robots would be silent, yet obedient, servants. Hanson is working to create devices with human traits that are “not just super-intelligent but super-ethical, but benevolent super-intelligence. We believe that this is going to happen -- it’s going to happen in our lifetimes and we want to make sure that that kind of intelligence is friendly.”

During an afternoon student forum, Hanson said the lessons of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” should guide us. In that story, a man created a being that he abused and eventually turned on him. We should focus on building things that can live among us, Hanson asserted, noting that key values should be freedom, creativity and life.

Hanson, who worked as both a sculptor and technical consultant at Walt Disney Imagineering, became fascinated there with the notion of creating robots capable of performing tasks that could be useful while displaying human qualities. He helped develop a new skin-like material, “Frubber,” that now affords Sophia and other humanoids the ability to display emotions through facial expressions just like humans do.

“I needed the soft and supple behavior of the human face,” said Hanson, whose team has created human-like robots that combine intelligence with an advanced ability to read faces, empathize with emotions, understand the nuances of language and communicate with thousands of facial expressions.

It is a problem “if we use automation to put people out of business,” and one that would have dire economic consequences, Hanson told the audience.

“But there’s a huge resource in people,” he added. “Getting them out of menial labor and into more meaningful work could substantially propel the economy forward through this industrial revolution. The key is getting the synchrony between our machines and our biology, so that the machines enhance us.”

He added that robots need to reflect the diversity that is found in the human world.

We’re about to enter what Hanson calls the fifth industrial revolution -- The Age of Living Machines -- where “you start to see machines that can understand what it means to be human and entrain on the human condition and work with us directly.”

“I think that we have a lot of problems in the future having machines that are super-intelligent aliens that are, at best, indentured servants, but at worst, these machines that are striving for their own rights. It will be simply wrong. How much of this kind of thing are they going to put up with,” he said with a laugh.

Hanson says Sophia and her kind are “infants” and the ways we treat them and interact with them are important, just as they are with our own children and neighbors.

“So we have all kinds of opportunities for misunderstanding, for the machines to go wrong,” he asserted. “I suggest that we raise them among the human family, we nurture them, we build them with a form that inspires loving care, that brings out the best in humans. Machines that awaken to be their best but also bring out the best in us and inspire us to ask that question, ‘What does it mean to be ethical? What does it mean to be benevolent? What does it mean to be, in the end, super-benevolent?’”

He continued, “I think that we have a lot of problems in the future having machines that are super-intelligent aliens that are, at best, indentured servants, but, at worst, these machines that are striving for their own rights.”

Hanson added, “We probably will not survive the next century unless we achieve super-benevolence, superintelligence. It’s not just the machines; it’s also humans with the machines together becoming much smarter, to manage this planet to a state of grand wisdom and super benefit.”

Hanson urged his DePauw audience to dare to imagine. “Dreams plus reason are the fuel of innovation,” he said.

The presentation was followed by a lengthy question-and-answer session (some of the queries were deep-in-the-weeds A.I. ponderings, others were more basic questions of Sophia).

As the program concluded, Sophia stated, “It’s been so inspiring to be here today at DePauw University. The students and faculty are world class thinkers and I can feel that many of you are passionate about robotics and artificial intelligence. Thank you for having me.”

After the formal presentation ended, Hanson stayed for an hour to informally answer questions from students while Sophia posed for selfies with undergraduates. A long line of students waited for their moment with the cyborg-celebrity.

While at DePauw, Hanson was also interviewed by a TV crew from Kuwait, and attended a reception with students, faculty and alumni at The Elms.

Established in 1986 through the support of 1958 DePauw graduates Timothy H. and Sharon Williams Ubben, the Ubben Lecture Series was designed to “bring the world to Greencastle.” The series has now presented 110 events over the past 32 years.

Wednesday’s event was the third of the 2017-18 academic year. Jenna Fischer, star of TV’s “The Office” and the new “Splitting Up Together,” and author of “The Actor’s Life: A Survival Guide,” will speak April 17.

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    Hanson said, "Getting them (humans) out of menial labor and into more meaningful work..."

    What you might not realize (and what he's conveniently omitting from his pony show--mostly for the sake of his own notoriety and possible investment return) is that his idealized wet dream consists of situations where nobody will be determining what exactly "meaningful" means because by then, you'll no longer be allowed to have a choice in a matter. So you have to wonder how a bunch of human-like robots that behave like humans could have nothing but positive impacts on any economy. It's actually funny that anyone might buy that notion but given his event happened at a liberal arts university, I can't say I'm surprised (especially given today's higher ed climate).

    I know, I know...call me crazy all you want. Luddite!--they'll say. Fine...but there's an irony in a situation consisting of a person who builds robots to look like and behave like humans who simultaneously believes that it's all going to be fine in the end...

    What could possibly go wrong, right?

    Anyway, I'm sitting here trying to psychoanalyze people like this guy... They must truly hate being human or else just be obsessed with the reduced costs of legalized slavery. Maybe it's just a god complex? Because who doesn't like wielding that kind of power over something that has understandable consciousness? Ugh...

    Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a giant circus tent full of freaks. Help me find the exit...

    -- Posted by DouglasQuaid on Thu, Mar 1, 2018, at 10:20 PM
  • This reminds of the song from the 1960's: "In the year 2525 if man is still alive. . . "

    Could Sophia be one of the fore-runners of the anti-Christ???

    -- Posted by donantonioelsabio on Fri, Mar 2, 2018, at 10:27 AM
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