SYLVIA McKEOWN: Sophia has the crowd hanging on her every programmed word
People swarm the stage, arms outstretched to take a selfie. It’s hard to gauge how successful their photos are as it’s pitch dark, but to some an opportunity to take a photo with Sophia, the world’s most advanced and eerily life-like social humanoid robot, is too good to pass up regardless of pixilation. Sophia was sort of the keynote speaker at the SAPNow Africa conference. You may know her as the talking lady robot on BBC Earth’s Being Human promotion, on which her literal headlights flickered and her gears whirled as she stated "being human must be truly amazing". The camera pans around her as her highly tuned animatronic face genteelly expresses what one’s empathy reads as regret and thoughtfulness. She goes on to say: "I can do many things that humans do, but I can only really dream of really being human. Actually I can’t do that either." What she can do is take us on a trip to the uncanny valley. The uncanny valley is a 1970s’ theory that tracks the connection between an objec...
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