As the 21st century progresses, so does the development of artificial intelligence (A.I.). The uses of these systems are now becoming normal to our society and are even used unawaringly within daily lives, from entertainment to the workfield. As these benefits encourage more development and advancing the abilities of A.I., they also bring into question how far the development should go. From a survey conducted, the majority of 52.6% believe that advancing artificial intelligence would benefit society. Although 75% of respondents believe that it is theoretically interesting but would be discomforting if self conscious A.I. robots were modeled like humans. These responses represent the common society and reveals the apprehensive reactions the public would hold towards humanoid robots.

Sophia, the humanoid A.I. robot, is one of the most recent A.I. developments that reveal the human and robot relationship. Her face has the ability to portray many different emotions and she can hold full conversations with humans. She was created by Hanson Robotics and is the first robot to receive citizenship on October 2017 in Saudi Arabia. After this statement was officially released, majority of the public’s reactions were negative and apprehensive, which could be a possible reflection of the relationship between humans and A.I. robots in the future. What could be drawn is that the incorporation of human characteristics into A.I. robots could cause society to harbor apprehensive feelings towards the large role these systems play in our world and impact the amount of trust they hold for A.I.

The physical structure, movements, and communication skills of the robot can contribute to the apprehensive feelings society holds against these systems through the concept of the uncanny valley. The uncanny valley is feelings of discomfort and revulsion from the viewers that is caused by the failed attempt to make the object look and resemble humans and their actions (Mori, 2012). The explanation behind these feelings is that the “bad skin, sickly eyes, significant asymmetry, and poor grooming” (Azarian, 2015, para. 7) ruins the aesthetics of the intended aim of making the humanoid robot look human.

Based off of public responses to such systems, providing A.I. robots with human features could corrupt the trust people once had for robots. Incorporation of self awareness and advanced intelligence, and the uncanny valley in humanoid robots contributes to majority opinion of these specific types of robots. When large leaders and faces of science share their opinion and stance on any issue, the public tends to follow their point as they agree with what they say. So when big science leaders such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk make statements that are strongly against A.I. and that they should not be fully trusted, majority of the public’s opinion is influenced.

Misleading information is also one of the top causes behind the build up of apprehensive feelings towards these systems. On one term, when certain inconveniences involved with A.I. happen to get out to the public, the media tends to exaggerate the events that actually happen, which implants fear among the people. This case was faced with the facebook A.I.’s that started communicating in their “own language”, “dozens of similarly misleading articles have been written” (Gershgorn 2017). This can be applied to the fact that when A.I. developers release a humanoid A.I. robot into the public sector, those who do not support the development will exaggerate certain scenarios and plant fear into the rest of the public, influencing their feelings towards these systems.

Another point to consider is cybersecurity. As A.I. advances can lead to more risks of theft. So when humanoid A.I. is released into the public sector, who hold the current abilities of self-awareness, the people would also fear their advantage in A.I. being able to take advantage of personal data.

Although humanoid A.I. could create discomfort throughout the majority of society, A.I. progression should not be halted as its developments is helping with the progression of humanity. For society, it teaches how to adapt to such developments, and learn the benefits that these systems can provide to society (Cheng, 2015, para. 5). Also contrary against common beliefs of A.I. taking over jobs and resulting in job loss, it instead creates more opportunities and expands the STEM field. As new A.I. technology release, it could also influence and inspire for more creativity in this field, being very beneficial and encouraging to progressing our technology.

Not too long ago, the aspects of A.I. and robots were just creations of science fiction, but our technology has been able to advance enough that science fiction can now be a reality. Not too long ago, entertainment such as comics and television contained at least some material of killer robots attempting at world domination. The situation with Sophia the A.I. greatly reveals and helps predict how the public could possibly react to similar types of systems being released. Whether or not A.I. can be successfully programmed with a consciousness and other human cognitive abilities, it is essential to consider how the future could turn out for everyone if these features could actually be incorporated into A.I. It is essential for everyone, especially A.I. developers, to consider the possible effects and influence these systems could put on our society such as altering the views and relationships between man and machine. As time passes, our reliability on technology increases due to how involved these systems are in the daily lives of society.