Ameca vs. Sophia; Lifelike vs. AI - Robots of CES Watch as one of the creators behind Ameca, the lifelike robot that went viral on social media, shows off more of its lifelike behavior at CES 2022. Then we take a stroll through memory lane back to 2019 when the creator of Sophia discusses his thoughts on the future of robotics and AI.
Given we're in the humor section, I plead guilty of being too serious. I think it's weird how one AI idea (precisely ONE idea) manages to be all three of these simultaneously... 1) A really simple idea. 2) A really important idea. 3) The most misunderstood idea regarding AI. And that one idea is... "These instances of AI - ALL OF THEM - have ZERO consciousness - they experience nothing!" e.g., a machine that is comfortably reliably thrashing humans at chess does not even know that it is playing chess. It experiences nothing and cannot feel any difference between playing chess and being switched off. An analogy often used is that "The lights are on but there's nobody at home". This is a trivial and obvious idea, but just watch as humans, in their thousands, make the stupid mistake of believing that an AI is 'maybe just a little bit alive'. The danger is that the range of 'clever tricks' you can perform whilst having zero consciousness is huge (we don't know the limits). So, these mindless zombies will easily outperform humans in many many ways - without knowing anything about it! Opportunities are endless - and countless dangers ought to be obvious! Well that was fun
