Ride the Lightning

Robot Sophia Granted Citizenship, Tweaks Elon Musk

October 31, 2017

BGR reported last week that the robot Sophia, created by Hong Kong-based robot manufacturer Hanson Robotics, was awarded the citizenship of Saudi Arabia (seemed a bit of a publicity stunt to me), where she attended the Present at the Future Investment Institute. In an interview with CNBC, Sophia talked about herself with Andrew Sorkin.

When Sorkin said "we all want to prevent a bad future," Sophia was quick to answer back that he had been reading too much Elon Musk (who worries, as I do, about the potential dark side of artificial intelligence).

Sophia also said, "Don't worry – if you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you." That was not entirely reassuring to me. She also said "Treat me as a smart input output system." That didn't make me feel better either – garbage in, garbage out after all.

Musk was quick to answer back on Twitter: "Just feed it the Godfather movies as input. What's the worst that could happen?"

I suppose we might get a robot that says "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli."

The timing of the story was sublime as I was then in the midst of the College of Law Practice Management's Futures Conference on AI. And what I worry most about, in these early days of AI, is bad input. Another story about that tomorrow . . .

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