What is attractive about robot Sophia?

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The most famous android today is probably the Sophia robot. She is invited to attend conferences and television shows. Famous actors pose with her. Large media are interviewing her. She even became the first robot citizen in one of the Arab countries. And what is so interesting about this robot? Let's figure it out.

What did they show us? Sophia knows how to speak and, which is implied - to think, has facial expressions and emotions, and she can also move her hands. And can not pace.

Speech and intelligence.

Today, not only expensive and high-tech robots possess human speech, but even household vacuum cleaners. There is nothing advanced here. As for intelligence, we did not see the Sophia code. We do not have an independent examination of her intelligence. She did not pass public tests. The dialogue performed by the android was all that was shown to us. It is completely possible that it was provided by a remote operator. This communication scheme is now used on most talking machines. The operator hears what peopple say to the robot and answers into his microphone, and his speech comes out of the mouth of the robot, whose jaws are synchronized with the sound wave. Robot Thespian, for example, communicates this way.
If robot speaks itself, it can be a simple program with a speech database. Average chat bot. The most inexpensive new robot with the possibility of offline communication is RBot, which costs from $ 6,000. Sophia’s English speech, which can be heard on video, uses a standard voice from the collection of speech modules. Text-to-speech telephone program reads books with such a voice.
The developer claims that Sophia has biometric facial recognition. There is no independent confirmation of this, but we can look at the price list of a Russian robotics development company. Section "optional": biometric recognition - $ 600; memorization of persons - $ 300. Does not look like supertechnology.
In addition, probably billions of people have the opportunity to communicate with the robotic voices of Siri and Alexa. Sophia speaks the same way. This review was voiced by robotic program. Nothing new.
The search engines have a popular query "the most intelligent robot Sophia." I wonder where this came from? Because they have not proven to us it has a mind.
Sophia may have a high-tech revolutionary artificial intelligence, but we don't know that.

Facial expressions and emotions.

Sophia has rather inanimate and mechanical facial expression to become a hit. Moreover, this is not a new technology. At the end of the 2000s, an Elvis robot by WowWee was released. It costed around $ 300, then it was withdrawn from sale, and today it can be bought for $ 1000 at auctions. But this is animatronic of Elvis Presley with lively facial expressions that are in no way inferior to Sophia. If you attach the bust of Elvis on some stand and put jacket on him, you get a full-fledged android. Robot Elvis can perform several of his songs, as well as tell stories from life. The speech base was stored on a removable cartridge. It was assumed that the manufacturer would create a collection of cartridges, but the project was closed, so there is only one. Also, Elvis could follow his eyes after you, thanks to the heat sensors in his buttons. It was scary. There are similar projects, such as the Pushkin robot or Lincoln and lot more today. But the point is that there is nothing special about facial expressions.
Same with emotions, as it is closely related to facial expressions. Rolls its eyes, tilts its head, sighs, frowns. All these is available to the old Elvis robot, and most animatronics and androids without a human face can.

Hands movement.

Sophia's head can be attached on any android body. The most inexpensive new robot that can move hands costs up to a $15000. This is, for example, N-bot (Nastya) or Kiki. Moving hands cost $ 500 per set without programming.
Therefore, there is nothing incredible here.

Why is Sophia's so successful? Thoughtful promotion? A series of coincidences? Time requirement? Or someone's invisible will? This is a very interesting and promising robot. If the android could pace, it become outstanding. But there are many fixed or wheeled talking machines. And this analysis does not claim that Sophia does not have artificial intelligence or anything exceptional. They just haven’t shown it to us yet. And what we were shown is quite ordinary and does not deserve much attention. The projects of Boston Dynamics or the Spanish robotic company PAL are much more interesting.