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Robots

Westworld-style robots will 'be in our homes' within ten years

By Margi Murphy The Sun
Published | Updated
westworld

Executive producer J.J. Abrams attends the premiere of the HBO series "Westworld" in Hollywood, California, U.S. September 28, 2016. (REUTERS/Phil McCarten)

Robots that think and feel emotions like humans will enter our homes in as little as ten years.

That’s according to Dr Mark Sagar, who is the chief executive of Soul Machines, a New Zealand-based company that develops intelligent and responsive avatars.

Sagar, an artificial intelligence programmer, creates incredibly realistic virtual humans which can respond to questions and learn from experience.

The avatars blink and communicate exactly like we do.

But they are powered by a virtual neural network which helps them learn social cues and spot patterns in order to answer questions.

This includes Baby X - a virtual infant which can learn through experience and appears to "feel" emotions.

It can see through the computer's camera and hear through the microphone.

There's also a virtual assistant called Nadia, whose voice might be more recognizable coming from the mouth of Hollywood actress Cate Blanchett.

"We are creating realistic adult avatars serving as virtual assistants. You can use them to plug into existing systems like IBM Watson or Cortana — putting a face on a chatbot," he told a rival media company.

But Sagar believes robotic, human life renditions of his avatars will be coming to our living rooms by 2027.

He said: "We have been working on the deepest aspect of the technology - biologically-inspired cognitive architectures. Simplified models of the brain."

The technology for a computer program to sense an emotion is almost there, he claimed.

But the mechanics of robotics needs to play catch-up.

But Sagar believes robotic, human life renditions of his avatars will be coming to our living rooms by 2027.

He said: “We have been working on the deepest aspect of the technology – biologically-inspired cognitive architectures. Simplified models of the brain.”

The technology for a computer program to sense an emotion is almost there, he claimed.

But the mechanics of robotics needs to play catch-up.

At the moment, it would be incredibly expensive to create a robot which could blink with the authenticity of a human.

Westworld-style sex robots are already making a splash.