Sophia, the worlds most sophisticated robot or just a marketing stunt?

7

October

2018

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Sophia, the ‘human’ robot was created by the Hong Kong based company Hansen Robotics in 2015 and was first shown to the public mid 2016. According to the company Sophia is the most advanced robot to date: ‘Sophia is an evolving genius machine. Her incredible human likeness, expressiveness, and remarkable story as an awakening robot over time makes her a fascinating front-page technology story’ (Sophia, 2018). But is this really the case?

Due to the appearance of Sophia on several talk shows (such as The Tonight Show), experts in the AI field started to heavily discuss the robot and her technology. On the one hand, Goertzel, the chief scientist at Hanson Robots explains Sophia as a platform, on which several applications can run. The three systems comprising Sophia are the Timeline editor, a sophisticated chat system and openCog. OpenCog is the system that Hansen expects to grow into AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). Therefore, Hansen Robotics argues that Sophia is AI ‘in its infancy’ and will be at the forefront of AI development (Vincent, 2017).

On the other hand, some people argue that Sophia is just a marketing stunt to gain more attention from the general public. Facebook’s head of AI even goes as far as saying that Hansen’s staff members are deliberately deceiving the public by using Sophia as a ‘BS puppet’ (Urbi & Sigalos, 2018). Even though accusing Hansen Robotics of deceiving the public is wrong, the head of AI might be right in some way, since the only truly AI related aspect of Sophia is the OpenCog system.

AI (and in the future AGI) is developing at a rapid pace, regardless of the true nature of Sophia, therefore experts argue that the public needs a better understanding of AI to support this development. So even if Sophia partly is a marketing stunt, she might be doing good by starting the conversation about AI.

 

Sophia (2018). Retrieved from http://www.hansonrobotics.com/robot/sophia/.

Urbi, J. & Sigalos, M. (2018). The complicated truth about Sophia the robot – an almost human robot or a PR stunt. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/05/hanson-robotics-sophia-the-robot-pr-stunt-artificial-intelligence.html.

Vincent, J. (2017). Sophia the robot’s co-creator says the bot may not be true AI, but it is a work of art. Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/10/16617092/sophia-the-robot-citizen-ai-hanson-robotics-ben-goertzel.

 

 

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Beyond the buzz: using Blockchain in healthcare

6

September

2018

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2017 will probably be remembered as the year of the Bitcoin, as its price skyrocketed by more than 1300 % and new kinds of millionaires were introduced, the Bitcoin millionaires. Behind this hype lies a more interesting technology, Blockchain. According to Chen (2018), this technology has “the potential to change the way we live, work consume and interact”. An interesting and impactful use of the Blockchain might be in the healthcare industry, a huge industry that covers almost 20% of the US economy.

Nowadays, most healthcare providers store data on so-called legacy systems, which are not designed to share data. Apart from that, almost every hospital stores its data differently, which makes ‘connected healthcare’ almost impossible. Even though this might not seem that big of a deal at first, sharing medical data can reduce costs and even more important, improve patient care dramatically. Therefore, more transparency is needed, this is where Blockchain comes in. This technology can provide transparent data-sharing across institutions, as well as the security and privacy needed. Combining the already existing data may in the future create new insight and possible solutions to health problems that are devastating today. Furthermore, it may benefit the individual patient as well, since the records can be accessed at any time, giving doctors all the necessary information and making diagnoses even more comprehensive.

This is only one way Blockchain can transform the healthcare industry, others might include personalized medicine and better medical research. There are some challenges as well, however, such as the complexity of Blockchain and regulation, which is especially strict in healthcare. Nonetheless, most healthcare providers recognize that Blockchain has the power to reduce costs and improve the overall health care, which can support the rise of Blockchain in the healthcare industry.

Sources:

  1. https://hackernoon.com/how-blockchain-is-set-to-disrupt-the-healthcare-industry-in-2018-5d4fda455911
  1. https://www.businessinsider.nl/bitcoin-price-in-2017-review-2017-12/?international=true&r=US
  1. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/10/in-the-world-of-cryptocurrency-buzz-blockchain-is-the-real-winner.html
  1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2018/08/05/will-blockchain-transform-healthcare/#478b85b7553d

 

 

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