Catching the news of Sophia, a human-like robot with a face of a mannequin and a see-through cap showing the wires in her skull, took me for a spin. Having recently written about Agent Algorithm, my own fictional character, an invisible information weapon that I developed in an effort to describe how information is being suppressed in this covidoliptic age, got my antennas to monitor the reality of artificial intelligence action after some of my readers’ feedback. I found out about a police bomb robot being deployed to kill a Dallas shooter, who killed 5 officers in 2016 and learned about postal worker robots being used in Estonia.Sophia was developed by an American robotics designer David Hanson at his Honk Kong based engineering and robotics company Hanson Robotics in 2016 and ‘she’ applied for, and was granted, Saudi Arabia citizenship in 2017. She just made the news again now in 2021 because she decided to become a pop singer.
As I was taking notes and thinking about what to write about her for my brother’s magazine, he rang me up through the messenger. Delighted to see him, without checking the reason for his call, I waved my journal in the air in front of my phone’s camera and announced cheerfully what I was writing. Here is a snippet of our conversation:
– Have you heard about Sophia?
– The Goddess of Wisdom?
– Ha-ha! No, the humanoid robot!
– Nope.
– Well, there is this robot, designed by a Honk Kong based American, who became a Saudi citizen for unknown reasons who now wants to be a pop singer so I presume her cognitive program is not based on the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and must be one closer to Paris Hilton or the Kardashians! Have you heard of the Kardiashians? (Spoken in Slovak the name is “Kardiashiovci”)
– The gypsy clan from Southern Slovakia?
– Whooha-ha-ha! I actually don’t know their origin but they are a famous family in California. Old Kardashian has made his name as a lawyer that got O.J. Simpson out of a murder of his wife.
– Ah, that would match the profile..
– Ha-ha-ha-he-he-he! Right.. His daughters are very pretty and they are known for their selections of men…
The conversation on this very serious topic became unbearably funny and increasingly extremely politically incorrect and unfortunately cannot be written down.
Enjoy your day!
