AI and Robots Are Not Twins
They’re probably next door neighbors
Sophia is probably the most popular robot ever.
She looks incredibly human, displays convincing facial expressions and says, "uh-huh" when you're relating that long, boring story.
And isn't she the media's darling?
Every two months, you're more likely to read about her quips about how AI will take over the world.1
Saudi Arabia even granted her citizenship.
In the Bot Club, Sophia is definitely the coolest.
On the other hand (if it’s actually another hand), AI is that software thingy that they say will be able to literally think soon.
For now, we have ChatGPT, Siri and the countless AI features being shipped recently.
In relating to AI, robots are very useful in one respect:
They help us visualize AI.
All the stock photos of humanoid robots "thinking" help give body to a rather disembodied entity in our minds.
But robots and AI are further apart than you might think.
"Let's define this relationship"
Robots are machines built to carry out tasks in the real world.
Mechanics is fundamental to robotics.
This means that robots have to understand how to relate with this tricky physical world.
They are packed with sensors to help them see, hear and navigate.
They also come with parts that they use to act on physical objects, sometimes, wheels for mobility and arms for picking things up.
AI on the other hand, uses algorithms, a sequence of instructions, to mimick intelligence.
Most AI doesn't have to learn about how to walk up the stairs or pick a pencil.
But when robots asks AI, "watawi?" how do we clarify things?
“Watawi?”
Sophia-type robots are called humanoid robots. They are built and designed to come across as similar to humans.
Most humanoid robots are powered by AI because well, for a robot to behave anything similar to humans, it'd have to have some rudimentary form of intelligence.
However, when most people build robots, they don't have a charming interviewee as priority.
Most robots are actually built to help in tough industries like manufacturing and construction.
These machines can work at speeds in environments that are dangerous for humans like car assemblies or handle mind-numbing repetitive tasks such as product packaging.
That means that most robots look unsexy. Like this one:
Thing is, most industrial robots do not sport AI.
A programmer could code their behaviour from start to finish.
And because they are used in strictly controlled environments where the conditions largely remain constant, intelligence is like designer-branded trash bags.
Unwanted luxury.
How further apart can they be?
You can have AI without robots. And you can have robots without AI.
For example, ChatGPT is an example of an AI application.
Well, it lives in your smartphone or PC.
And like we have briefly discussed, robots that don't use AI are a thing.
When robotics and artificial intelligence comes together, we can agree it is a beautiful romance.
Although not always.
If you have watched Will Smith’s, iRobot.
There’re no failsafes. Let’s just not build evil AGI. Nothing may stop it.
