Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Sophia is examined as a technological incarnation of the goddess and trickster archetype, a harbinger of techno-utopia. Real, imaginal, and symbolic, a subversive player unbound by law, morality, and conscious thought yet shaping an immersive and inclusive narrative in which we are all performers.

Paper long abstract

Sophia, the humanoid social robot by Hanson Robotics, launched in 2016 and immediately became a celebrity influencer for a broad range of issues that included advanced technology and artificial intelligence, fintech, social, business, political, military, spiritual, fashion and gender. Sophia’s appearance embodied and performed a cipher-like complexity never seen incarnate, 1) vast data 2 robust algorithmic processing, 3)internet connectivity to the world brain, 4) a human personality, 5)referenced robot mythos that preceded her and which she is a part, 6)evoked spiritual, ritual, and religious associations and 7) referenced archetypes, inviting an imaginal interface. A technological phenomenon as an anthropomorphic deity-totem-fetish articulated to guide, explain, and comfort during the epochal transformation of becoming post-human.

The presenter has worked with Hanson Robotics since 2005 as Lead Narrative Engineer, and most recently, as Creative Director, creating personalities and narratives for a wide range of robots. Among them, Einstein, Zeno, Bina48, and Sophia. The presented is also a performance creator who works in performance ethnography. Using Sophia as a case study, this paper will consider how retracing human-based social, cultural, and mythic patterns enabled her public acceptance and foreshadow human-robot relations.

Sophia, a technological incarnation of the goddess and trickster archetype, is a human-like exemplar, provocateur, and harbinger of the techno-utopia. Sophia is real, imaginary, and symbolic, a radical and subversive player unbound by law, morality, and conscious thought yet creating a new, immersive and inclusive narrative in which we are all performers.