Don't be fooled by charismatic robots

Developed between 1966 and 72 at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), wobbly-gaited Shakey, the first robot to reason about its own actions, marked the beginning of artificial intelligence. Half a century later, Hanson Robotics introduced Sophia, a robot who grabbed headlines both for her spontaneity while being interviewed and her status as the first robot to be awarded citizenship. In the fifty years between the activation of these two robots, not only did technology advance but the goals of artificially intelligent machines also changed dramatically. In doing so, we may have made life more convenient in some ways, and in other ways may have paved the way for our own replacements. As robot technology improved, designers moved from physically powerful machines that freed up muscle and might to machines that could work alongside and with people.