Have you ever thought about robots taking over the world? I’m pretty sure everyone has had this fear as a kid after seeing tons of sci fi movies like I, Robot, The Matrix, Terminator. However, after we finished these movies we would think that something like that could never happen; robots could never take over, right?

Now that we’re older we realize that technology is far more advanced that we thought it was, and it keeps developing every day. Now we realize that we can talk to our phones and they’ll answer us. Now we see actual smart robots that are capable of learning from experiences such as Sophia.

When I first saw a picture of Sophia, I was interested in its capabilities. Was it really able to talk like a human and connect with you on an emotional level? Those questions drove me to watch a video where she went to “The Tonight’s Show” for an interview (watch
video here). After I heard her say one sentence I was speechless. It was like seeing something out of a movie. She was able to talk and make facial expressions to connect better with the person talking. Sophia learned from the conversation and she made jokes (and they were good jokes), she was able to make the entire audience laugh. That’s when I thought: “oh no we’ve actually created robots that look like humans and are able to learn. We’re lost.”

But is Sophia actually smart? Can she think? Can she truly understand human emotions that way humans do? The answer is no. No robot will ever achieve consciousness, they only have algorithms that drive their conversational skills that makes it possible for people to feel the “human” connection. Humans might think that robots are able to think and feel because of how their conversation is going; however, their answers are so calculated by the algorithms written in the code that it makes it easy to belief that they feel emotions.

The thing that surprised me the most about Sophia was seeing her facial expressions. If you haven’t seen the video yet, you really need to watch it NOW! People connect better with other people though facial expressions. For example, if you see someone smiling, it will make you want to smile too and it you see someone crying, it will make you feel at least a little sad. When Sophia made those expressions, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t stop looking at her face, I wanted to find any sign of her being a robot in her face. I noticed her eyes looked very robotic, but that made her even creepier.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Sophia because she is something I’ve never seen before. I am curious about everything about her, and I want to know what future development Hanson Robotics will make. Along with that love, there’s also some hint of fear. It’s the fear of the unknow, the childhood fears of technology taking over. It’s not just science fiction now, it’s real life. Will we ever create robots that are able to create other robots? Will robots be smarter than every single person in Earth? Will they overpower us?