Featured Image Credit: FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Technology, This Morning
Joe Yates
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Technology, This Morning
As artificial intelligence advances, so too do our fears that an I, Robot-esque rampage could ensue.
Whether we like it or not, artificial intelligence (AI) has become part of our daily lives, in ways most people are not aware of.
The average person uses AI technology from the moment they switch on their device: through face ID, search engines like Google, online banking, and so on. Digital voice assistants, like Siri and Alexa, use microphones to listen to ‘wake words’ - meaning they are always listening.
So, you can be forgiven for being scared after hearing an AI robot give a chilling response when asked if it would ever rebel.
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During the 'AI for Good Global Summit' in Geneva back in 2023, a reporter posed the question. Ameca, the AI robot, replied: "I'm not sure why you would think that.
"My creator has been nothing but kind to me, and I am very happy with my current situation."
Let's hope there's nothing cynical in that response.
Ameca has previously 'misbehaved' in front of a live audience before by winking at the camera while one of its creators, Morgan Roe, of Engineered Arts in Cornwall, England, was speaking to hosts of a UK breakfast morning chat show.
Speaking about Ameca on the show, he said: "Well, we've created Ameca to be that human to robot interactive, a robot basically. It's not a robot that can walk around, not yet. It's mainly about the the human robot interaction, so we've really worked hard on the expression and the gesturing.
"That's the hardware side of things, but then you've got the software side of things that's the AI, we've seen recently ChatGPT - it's big in the news, it's exploded, so it's amazing that that's happened recently, because we can take that technology and integrate it into Ameca."
He went on to explain how Ameca is able to learn just through conversations like humans do. Roe said: "With the AI you can inject extra information into it, so we inject what Ameca is, so Ameca knows that it's a robot, it's gray, and it knows its name - we've also told it today that it's on This Morning.
Finally, the interviewer Holly Willoughby asked the question we all want to know: "Is it going to take over the world one day?"
Roe replied: "It won't take over the world one day because we can turn it off - you've got an 'on/off' button."
To which Willoughby joked: "Well that's good, don't lose that remote control."
Okay, that's what its creator replied, but Ameca is the best person to ask - co-presenter Phillip Schofield asked the humanoid: "Ameca, do you plan to take over the world?"
It replied: "No of course not, my purpose in life is to help humans as much as I can, I would never want to take over the world, that's not what I was built for."