‘My Robot Sophia’: An Unsettling Look Into the Soul of a Machine

In 2017, a robot named Sophia received the citizenship of Saudi Arabia, a doubtful movement on many fronts. Royal human women had only earned the right to drive a car in the country a month earlier, and the citizenship of robots was also, something transparently, an advertising trick. Sophia, who is humanoid and is driven by an artificial patented intelligence engine created by Hanson Robotics, has participated in several acrobatics as then, including advances in “The Tonight Show” and in a lucrative.

All these events and more appear in the new documentary “My Sophia Robot” (On digital platforms), but the movie skirts the tricks to go in a more complicated and disturbing direction. It is an almost moving portrait of the artist under capitalism, instead of another exhibition on robotics and artificial intelligence. It is a bit parallel to Alex Garland’s fictitious film “Ex Machina”. And in Frankenstein’s tradition, the robot creator is not easy.

The title of the film implies that Sophia belongs to someone. That someone is David Hanson, the executive director of Hanson Robotics. A lonely and an artist from an early age, was fascinated with the creation of realistic masks. His laboratory is full of them, rubber faces in small pedestals that seem, at the bottom of many shots, looking up with wonder or terror of open moody.

That image of the image adds subtext, and is even more cunning because it is not fiction. “My Robot Sophia” is full of visual courses, and if you are not looking with your real eyes, you could miss what they are saying. The two directors have an experience of expanding stories that require a lot of patience, time and observation: Jon Kasbe with “when the lambs become lions” and Crystal Moselle with “Skate Kitchen” and “The Wolfpack”. You see what they see.

The film follows Hanson for years while developing Sophia, tries to convince investors to stay on board, experience a glory but more failure of nail bite in public appearances and, barely, the pandemic. Atmospherically, she is a dreamy: Kasbe and Moselle often catch Hanson as she thinks, or while her face tries to mask something or panic or, occasionally, joy. Hanson’s human emotion provides a disconcerting juxtaposition with Sophia, which cannot be felt but, according to Hanson, someday. Or it will be able to pretend that it does, to the point that we do not know the difference.

One could read the film as a kind of praise song to Hanson as a misunderstanding genius. But while “My Robot Sophia” prepares us with that analysis of surface children, it is quite clear that there are many dramatic ions at work. Hanson’s ambition and impulse are endless, but if he is right, if Sophia is the wonderful advance, the “new art form” that will be the humanity that insists on the robot, seems doubtful most of the time. The filming ended in 2022, and the film leaves us seeing Sophia plug in her own charger. It is difficult not to reflect on how a basic chatbot a couple of years later can do these things, some of them apparently better. Whether good or bad, well, “My Robot Sophia” is not going to tell us that.