The Case for Giving Robots an Identity

The first time Stephanie Dinkins met Bina48, in 2014, she worried the thing was dead. "She was turned off," Dinkins says. Dinkins caught the robot's stare and knew she'd found her muse. Bina48 had been conceived several years earlier by Martine Rothblatt, the polymathic entrepreneur. Rothblatt fashioned the AI-powered bot in the likeness of her wife, Bina, training its speech patterns on a database of Bina-isms.