Does the robot have a heart?

It is true that in terms of hardware, robots have chips, but in terms of emotions, robots have no hearts.

From the robot family, we know that in science fiction movies, there are often "robot girlfriends" or "computer housekeepers" with human feelings. In real life, scientists are trying to use artificial intelligence technology to simulate human thinking mode, establish highly anthropomorphic human-computer interaction, and let robots intervene in human social relations. Some people even predict that in the future, people's "girlfriends" may evolve into "machine honey", and some even marry robots.

Wide application

On March 14, Microsoft (Asia) Internet Engineering Institute announced that it would launch a new round of cooperation with Tencent QQ focusing on Microsoft Xiao Bing QQ group chat and QQ WeChat official account. In the industry's view, this is another attempt by artificial intelligence to stimulate the potential of user interaction on social platforms.

Microsoft Xiao Bing is an artificial intelligence companion virtual robot released by Microsoft (Asia) Internet Engineering Institute. Relying on the real-time emotional decision-making dialogue engine, Microsoft Xiao Bing can not only have a real-time dialogue with users in a humorous style, but also conduct multi-sensory communication of voice and images. Since the birth of 20 14, with Microsoft's technical advantages and unique "emotional computing framework" in the fields of artificial intelligence such as image recognition, natural speech, big data, neural network and machine learning, Microsoft Xiao Bing has tens of millions of users and has become the most popular "beautiful girl" of artificial intelligence in the world with 20 billion human-computer conversations.

Of course, the application of artificial intelligence in the social field is far from being as simple as "chatting with people". For example, in the medical field, a rehabilitation coach robot for stroke patients will demonstrate training movements, supervise patients' movements, provide training quality feedback and improvement suggestions for patients through human-computer interaction, and encourage and urge patients to strengthen their confidence in rehabilitation. Research shows that humans prefer to interact with robots with physical shapes and can simulate real-life interaction. Therefore, once social robots are used to promote children's intellectual development and accompany patients for rehabilitation treatment, it will bring unexpected results.

The market space is huge.

A foreign study found that people spend an average of 40 minutes a day on the video site "You Rabbit", 35 minutes on the social networking site "Facebook" and 25 minutes on the communication application Snapchat. The 20 16 wechat data report released by Tencent shows that more than half of users use wechat for more than 90 minutes every day. The above data shows that social network dependence has become a worldwide phenomenon.

In the robot market, IDC, a market research company, released a forecast report in the Guide to Global Commercial Robot Consumption, saying that the compound annual growth rate of the global robot industry and related service market scale will reach 17%, and the industrial scale will reach135.4 billion US dollars in 20 19 years.

There are huge business opportunities behind the popularity of social network market and the development of robot industry, which has also injected great impetus for artificial intelligence to get involved in social fields.

Under today's technical conditions, chat robots can easily realize anthropomorphic dialogue and interaction, and can complete tasks such as taking a taxi and searching. Social robots are also widely used in enterprise virtual customer service and other fields.

At the same time, domestic Internet companies such as Baidu are stepping up research and development in the field of artificial intelligence. Although social robot products are far from mature, the market is developing well. For example, the children's robot "Pudding" has sold more than 65,438+10,000 units.

Frequent hidden dangers in the future

"Artificial Intelligence+Socialization" gives people a huge imagination. Some institutions predict that by 2020, one in every 10 family in the United States will have a robot. These robots can not only do all kinds of housework hard, but also have the function of "socializing", which can play with children and help their owners to relieve boredom.

However, the emergence of social robots is not as beautiful as most people think, but it also hides many hidden dangers.

The disclosure of user privacy will face great risks. The private information transmitted socially between people is relatively controllable, but artificial intelligence, as a tool, is likely to be inadvertently leaked or artificially used if the real emotions of human beings are extracted and digitized, which will seriously affect the work and life of users. In fact, Microsoft Xiao Bing once entered WeChat, but it went offline soon after it went online, because a large number of WeChat users were worried about the disclosure of chat content.

At the same time, when robots have enough "intelligence", it is difficult for humans to distinguish whether strangers in social networks are "similar". This phenomenon has sprouted at the moment. Recently, a study by the University of Southern California claimed that robots may be the only people who like and forward user content on social software. By analyzing the model, they detected that as many as 9%- 15% of Twitter accounts are actually robots, not real humans. Using intelligent robots to pretend to be real people may be used for false marketing and even facilitate criminals to carry out terrorist propaganda and recruitment.

A "social robot" is a computer program that automatically controls social media accounts. Like real users, they can post on a topic or forward the contents of other accounts on social platforms, comment and praise these contents, and even participate in online conversations and discussions. Some "social robots" aim to provide certain types of network services, while others deliberately pretend to be human users and act as "water forces".