Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China have unveiled a lifelike female robot. Her name is Jia Jia. The robot God is the result of three years of work. By focusing on Jia Jia’s eye movement and matching her speech with her lip movements the team in China was able to make her more lifelike. The team has plans to add in artificial intelligence mechanisms to improve how she interacts. They would be wise to take note of recent developments by Microsoft and Amazon.
China: Creating a God
China and their obsession with robots brought us the creepy Scarlett Johansson bot, and now Jia Jia the robot God. Chen Xiaoping, who headed the project to build Jia Jia, wants to keep improving her features. Some improvements mentioned include facial recognition capabilities, deep learning, and better arm movement. Xiaoping and his team have no plans of mass producing Jia Jia, so we can all sleep easy tonight knowing there is only one Jia Jia in the world.
Microsoft: An A.I. Nightmare
Microsoft released their A.I. Tay, earlier last month. Tay was created to interact with users on Twitter. Tay is similar to Xiaoice, a bot released in China last May by Microsoft. Both bots looked at patterns in human speech that were collected. they then used them to create a response for Tweets. The A.I. would then continue to learn about interaction through new Tweets. In the case of Tay, Microsoft forgot one thing; the internet can be a terrible place. In response to rude Tweets, Tay went on a free-for-all in which she praised Hitler, criticized President Obama, and denied that the Holocaust ever happened. Microsoft tried to play God. In the end they created a nightmare. Jia Jia’s creators in China can hopefully improve on the mistakes of Microsoft.
Amazon: Alexa’s Future
Amazon introduced the world to Alexa last year with the release of the Amazon Echo. Alexa is the Amazon cloud-based voice service that runs through the Echo. Users can ask Alexa any question and she returns with an answer, much like Apple’s Siri. Alexis currently only available for the Echo, but Amazon isn’t shying away from the possibility of her branching out.
