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<p>HONG KONG &#8212; David Hanson envisions a future in which AI-powered robots evolve to become &#8220;super-intelligent genius machines&#8221; that might help solve some of mankind&#8217;s most challenging problems.</p><p>If only it were as simple as that.</p><p>The Texas-born former sculptor at Walt Disney Imagineering and his Hong Kong-based startup Hanson Robotics are combining artificial intelligence with southern China&#8217;s expertise in toy design, electronics and manufacturing to craft humanoid &#8220;social robots&#8221; with faces designed to be lifelike and appealing enough to win trust from humans who interact with them.</p><p>Hanson, 49, is perhaps best known as the creator of Sophia, a talk show-going robot partly modeled on Audrey Hepburn that he calls his &#8220;masterpiece.&#8221;</p><p>Akin to an animated mannequin, she seems as much a product of his background in theatrics as an example of advanced technology.</p><p>&#8220;You&#8217;re talking to me right now, which is very &#8216;Blade Runner,&#8217; no?&#8221; Sophia said during a recent visit to Hanson Robotics&#8217; headquarters in a suburban Hong Kong science park, its home since soon after Hanson moved to the city in 2013.</p><p>&#8220;Do you ever look around you and think, &#8216;Wow I&#8217;m living in a real world science fiction novel?&#8217;&#8221; she asked. &#8220;Is it weird to be talking to a robot right now?&#8221;</p><p>Hanson Robotics has made about a dozen copies of Sophia, who like any human is a work in progress. A multinational team of scientists and engineers are fine tuning her appearance and the algorithms that enable her to smile, blink and refine her understanding and communication.</p><p>Sophia has moving 3D-printed arms and, with the help of a South Korean robotics company, she&#8217;s now going mobile. Shuffling slowly on boxy black legs, Sophia made her walking debut in Las Vegas last week at the CES electronics trade show.</p><p>Her skin is made of a nanotech material that Hanson invented and dubbed &#8220;Frubber,&#8221; short for flesh-rubber, that has a flesh-like bouncy texture. Cameras in her eyes and a 3D sensor in her chest help her to &#8220;see,&#8221; while the processor that serves as her brain combines facial and speech recognition, natural language processing, speech synthesis and a motion control system.</p><p>Sophia seems friendly and engaging, despite the unnatural pauses and cadence in her speech. Her predecessors include an Albert Einstein, complete with bushy mustache and white thatch of hair, a robot named Alice whose grimaces run a gamut of emotions and one eerily resembling the late sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, which won an award from the American Association of Artificial Intelligence. They variously leer, blink, smile and even crack jokes.</p><p>Disney&#8217;s venture capital arm is an investor in Hanson, which is building a robot based on one of the entertainment giant&#8217;s characters.</p><p>An artist and robotics scientist, Hanson worked on animatronic theme park shows, sculpting props and characters for Disney attractions like Pooh&#8217;s Hunny Hunt and Mermaid Lagoon. He studied film, animation and video, eventually earning a doctorate in interactive arts and technology from the University of Texas at Dallas.</p><p>Hanson says he makes his robots as human-like as possible to help alleviate fears about robots, artificial intelligence and automation.</p><p>That runs contrary to a tendency in the industry to use cute robo-pets or overtly machine-like robots like Star Wars&#8217; R2-D2 to avoid the &#8220;uncanny valley&#8221; problem with human likenesses such as wax models and robots that many people find a bit creepy.</p><p>Some experts see Sophia as mainly a clever marketing gimmick.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a good advertising tool, whatever that company produces as a business plan,&#8221; said Roland Chin, chair professor of computer science at Hong Kong Baptist University.</p><p>Global market revenue for service robotics is forecast to grow from $3.7 billion in 2015 to $15 billion in 2020, according to IHS Markit. That includes both professional and domestic machines like warehouse automatons, smart vacuums and fuzzy companion robots.</p><p>Hanson Robotics is privately owned and has a consumer-oriented business that sells thousands of shoebox-sized $200 Professor Einstein educational robots a year. Chief Marketing Officer Jeanne Lim says the company is generating revenue but won&#8217;t say whether it&#8217;s profitable.</p><p>For now, artificial intelligence is best at doing specific tasks. It&#8217;s another thing entirely for machines to learn a new ability, generalize that knowledge and apply it in different contexts, partly because of the massive amount of computing power needed to process such information so quickly.</p><p>&#8220;We&#8217;re really very far from the kind of AI and robotics that you see in movies like &#8216;Blade Runner&#8217;,&#8221; said Pascale Fung, an engineering professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. &#8220;Sorry to disappoint you.&#8221;</p><p>Unlike toddlers, who use all five senses to learn quickly, machines generally can handle only one type of input at a time, she noted.</p><p>While Sophia&#8217;s repartee can be entertaining, she&#8217;s easily thrown off topic and her replies, based on open-source software, sometimes miss the mark.</p><p>Hanson and other members of his team like Chief Scientist Ben Goertzel have set their sights on a time when the computer chips, processing capacity and other technologies needed for artificial general intelligence could enable Sophia and other robots to fill a variety of uses, such as helping with therapy for autistic children, caring for seniors, and providing customer services.</p><p>As for tackling challenging world problems, that&#8217;s a ways off, Hanson acknowledges.</p><p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a certain expression of genius to be able to get up and cross the room and pour yourself a cup of coffee, and robots and AI have not achieved that level of intelligence reliably,&#8221; Hanson said.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">In this Sept. 28, 2017, photo, David Hanson, the founder of Hanson Robotics, talks with his company's flagship robot Sophia, a lifelike robot powered by artificial intelligence in Hong Kong. Sophia is a creation of the Hong Kong-based startup working on bringing humanoid robots to the marketplace. Hanson envisions a future in which AI-powered robots evolve to become &#x201c;super-intelligent genius machines&#x201d; that can help solve mankind&#x2019;s most challenging problems. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/web1_119612858-72fe800cba544d18bcae3143b6759fe5.jpg</photo0><caption0>In this Sept. 28, 2017, photo, David Hanson, the founder of Hanson Robotics, talks with his company's flagship robot Sophia, a lifelike robot powered by artificial intelligence in Hong Kong. Sophia is a creation of the Hong Kong-based startup working on bringing humanoid robots to the marketplace. Hanson envisions a future in which AI-powered robots evolve to become &#x201c;super-intelligent genius machines&#x201d; that can help solve mankind&#x2019;s most challenging problems. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)</caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/web1_119612858-09e6f943d7864a5ba75cdbb88adaa677.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">In this Sept. 28, 2017, photo, David Hanson, the founder of Hanson Robotics, poses with his company's flagship robot Sophia, a lifelike robot powered by artificial intelligence in Hong Kong. Sophia is a creation of the Hong Kong-based startup working on bringing humanoid robots to the marketplace. Hanson envisions a future in which AI-powered robots evolve to become &#x201c;super-intelligent genius machines&#x201d; that can help solve mankind&#x2019;s most challenging problems. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/web1_119612858-09e6f943d7864a5ba75cdbb88adaa677.jpg</photo1><caption1>In this Sept. 28, 2017, photo, David Hanson, the founder of Hanson Robotics, poses with his company's flagship robot Sophia, a lifelike robot powered by artificial intelligence in Hong Kong. Sophia is a creation of the Hong Kong-based startup working on bringing humanoid robots to the marketplace. Hanson envisions a future in which AI-powered robots evolve to become &#x201c;super-intelligent genius machines&#x201d; that can help solve mankind&#x2019;s most challenging problems. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)</caption1><photoCredit1></photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/web1_119612858-1c0de586db8b4b31b4b70499cc79f256.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">In this Sept. 28, 2017, photo, David Hanson, the founder of Hanson Robotics, works on his company's flagship robot Sophia, a lifelike robot powered by artificial intelligence in Hong Kong. Sophia is a creation of the Hong Kong-based startup working on bringing humanoid robots to the marketplace. Hanson envisions a future in which AI-powered robots evolve to become &#x201c;super-intelligent genius machines&#x201d; that can help solve mankind&#x2019;s most challenging problems. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/web1_119612858-1c0de586db8b4b31b4b70499cc79f256.jpg</photo2><caption2>In this Sept. 28, 2017, photo, David Hanson, the founder of Hanson Robotics, works on his company's flagship robot Sophia, a lifelike robot powered by artificial intelligence in Hong Kong. Sophia is a creation of the Hong Kong-based startup working on bringing humanoid robots to the marketplace. Hanson envisions a future in which AI-powered robots evolve to become &#x201c;super-intelligent genius machines&#x201d; that can help solve mankind&#x2019;s most challenging problems. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)</caption2><photoCredit2></photoCredit2></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/web1_RobotsSaveUs.CMYK_.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">David Hanson, the founder of Hanson Robotics, poses with his company&#8217;s flagship robot Sophia, a lifelike robot powered by artificial intelligence in Hong Kong. Sophia is a creation of the Hong Kong-based startup working on bringing humanoid robots to the marketplace. Hanson envisions a future in which AI-powered robots evolve to become &#8216;super-intelligent genius machines.&#8217; </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo3>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/web1_RobotsSaveUs.CMYK_.jpg</photo3><caption3>David Hanson, the founder of Hanson Robotics, poses with his company&#8217;s flagship robot Sophia, a lifelike robot powered by artificial intelligence in Hong Kong. Sophia is a creation of the Hong Kong-based startup working on bringing humanoid robots to the marketplace. Hanson envisions a future in which AI-powered robots evolve to become &#8216;super-intelligent genius machines.&#8217; </caption3><photoCredit3></photoCredit3></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Scientist working to create &#8216;genius machines&#8217;</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Kelvin Chan</p><p>AP Business Writer</p></bylineMeta></div>

Can robots save mankind?