“I come from a family of geniuses and criminals,” confesses inventor David Hanson. And it’s not at all apparent if Hanson is the former, or a less pernicious version of the latter.
For years, Hanson has spent his days and nights developing “Sophia:” an android billed as “the most realistic humanoid robot in the world” and the namesake of this documentary. He can often be found hunched over at a workbench, pulling together synthetic materials to create more artificial faces for Sophia (there’s more than one version of her), gregariously charging his employees to push the technology at hand, or at conferences showing off a Sophia prototype in the hopes of raising money from prospective investors. Hanson is an ideas man. And only a select few believe his ideas.
But there are nightmares hidden under this dream weaver. Hanson comes from a broken family: His dad died houseless and broke. His mother, the proverbial creative heart of his company, is battling cancer. He lives with his wife (who also works in robotics) and son in Hong Kong. Many around them are apprehensive about the possibility of an artificial intelligence like Sophia (we’ve all seen the science fiction movies their pursuit ends with). This family, however, are unwavering in their ambition and their belief in Sophia. The friction in the documentary, of course, is how much we believe what we’re seeing.
It’s the hall of illusions Hanson projects that can often make this unnerving character portrait by Jon Kasbe (“When Lambs Become Lions”) and Crystal Moselle (“Skate Kitchen” and “Betty”) so enthralling, yet so disappointing.
Fear is a large component of this film. Hanson sells the idea of Sophia being a kind, empathetic servant a la “Bicentennial Man,” and shares a Pygmalion relationship with his robot akin to “Ex Machina.” While the trips he takes with his android are meant to drum up money, they’re equally there to put humans at ease. It’s telling how the question most directed at Sophia by attendees deals with whether robots are a threat. Sophia responds how you’d expect: She’s here to make people’s lives easier. Not to take them away.
It’s difficult, however, not to see these shows with cynical eyes. Sophia isn’t really responding. At least not in any conscious way. Whether she is conscious is partly beside the point: We project consciousness onto both animate and inanimate objects. What we perceive in Sophia are the insecurities we perceive in ourselves. The filmmakers play with the concept of deception like a cinematic Turing test. It’s a captivating premise, even brilliant, at first, especially because of the precise and thoughtful editing by Daniel Koehler, Enat Sidi, Jon Kasbe. But there’s a hagiographic lean toward Hanson that leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth.
It begins with a series of bad-faith arguments: The first is Hanson at CogX defending Sophia against those who think her existence is deceptive. Hanson calls her, at worst, deceptive cave art. The second argument occurs when one of Hanson’s programmers, Sarah Siskind, further defends Sophia by demonstrating how their small team, in creating Sophia, has outpaced Apple’s Siri. The former can respond to questions concerning how she feels while the latter cannot. It’s a tawdry argument because Siri isn’t programmed to have those responses, but if Apple wanted, they could do so. These assertions go relatively unchecked. And the filmmakers do not return to them. Instead, the deception continues for Hanson’s benefit.
“Sophia” veers close to PR rather than incisive storytelling. The second half of the film could easily be labeled the “misunderstood genius” section as capitalistic businessmen push Hanson for immediate profits over long term scientific progress. Hanson is portrayed as an unsavvy creator trapped in the financial rat race when he’d rather be inventing. It doesn’t help that Sophia is leveraged by Hanson as an emotional sounding board, thereby furthering the illusion of her consciousness and his role as tragic figure.
That image pretty much sticks. The only inkling of his brutal unawareness is his interest in robot rights over women’s rights after Saudi Arabia bestows an honorary citizenship to Sophia. But we never get a sense for why Sophia looks the way she does, why all of Hanson’s prototypes are white, or any sense of his aesthetic ethos. Instead, it’s all Hanson’s side: It’s Sophia drawing, singing and speaking — which gives the appearance that Sophia is developing a consciousness (which might be our own perception), thereby building the sensation that Hanson is succeeding and could succeed if it weren’t for these pesky capitalist constraints.
Hanson soon deals with the pandemic, which causes his business to slow and nearly dissolve. He must contend with his mother’s advancing cancer (even advancing the idea of cryogenically freezing his mother so she can come back in a robot’s body). These are very real concerns that unearth unsettling responses.
And yet, the most frustrating side of this documentary is when we see Hanson selling Sophia’s art as NFTs. When you think about the NFTs and his insistence of using conferences as a means to raise money, the thought creeps in that this film only further fulfills his goals. You wonder why the filmmakers would give him this platform. In short, this becomes his biggest magic show yet. With the audience being the ones left hanging by this documentary’s strings. [C-]
