In Las Vegas this week you can learn a lot about the exciting potential of artificial intelligence. You can also be left wondering whether AI is a triumph of marketing, yet to deliver real improvements to the economy and the way we live.
One of my first stops here was at a University of Las Vegas robotics lab. Scientists there were working on projects ranging from drones to virtual reality, but they were also collaborating with the team behind one of the stars of the robot world,
Sophia is a humanoid robot with a face that strays dangerously close to that “Uncanny Valley” where machines look just a little too human for comfort. She achieved fame and some notoriety when Saudi Arabia named her its first robot citizen, a stunt which saw many question whether machines were now being given freedoms denied to Saudi women.
Sophia is the work of Hanson Robotics, an American firm with a base in Hong Kong. We had come to see her take her first halting steps on legs which are the work of this university lab.
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