Robots

More than four years ago now I came across Martine Rothblatt and her robot BINA48, noticed at references 1 and 2. Then in yesterday's Metro I came across Sophia, a robot who, it seems, has been granted citizenship of Saudi Arabia and made innovation champion for the United Nations. All of which, to my mind, brings all the participants into disrepute.

It also turns out that Sophia is one of a family of robots built by Hanson Robotics, with another member being this very BINA48. A company which has been around in one form or another for getting on for twenty years and which, I imagine, does rather well in the entertainment, event and publicity businesses. One wonders what the founder, one David Hanson, is like.

I also wondered this morning, once again, about the merits of having my own personal robot into which I uploaded my daily experiences, as recorded by body camera, my Google account and my various bank accounts. And perhaps, not so far in the future, my inner thoughts, in so far as they were expressed in words. Would I really want to be able to interrogate my robot about exactly what I was doing 1,000 days ago - rather as I interrogate my blog now, in a rather more hit and miss way. But such interrogation did turn up references 1 and 2 in fairly short order, so it does have its uses.

That apart, I remain uneasy about where these toys and worse are going to take us. Or at least our children.

PS: and I now remember about Fernyhough and SenseCam, research into memory, rather than robots. But see reference 5.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/01/virtually-human-1.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/01/virtually-human-2.html.

Reference 3: https://www.hansonrobotics.com/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(robot).

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/07/madeleine-moments.html.