Sci-fi legend Isaac Asimov programmed 3 laws into his fictional world to prevent rogue robots. 

Trailblazing roboticist David Hanson has the same aim, but he’s doing it differently (and in the real world). He’s coding robots not with ethics – but compassion. 

Hanson is an artist, an engineer, an inventor. And the Founder and CEO of Hanson Robotics, a company that has churned out humanoid lookalikes of Albert Einstein and Philip K. Dick. Deployed the world’s first CEO robot, Mika. Put the healthcare robot Grace to work during Covid. Built the world’s first robot rockstar, Desdemona. And the world’s first digital citizen and UN’s first Innovation Champion, Sophia. 

Here’s this modern-day Gepetto’s playbook: 

One, to build robots that look like us. Not cold, sterile, gray machines. Because, as he says, we’re hardwired to find meaning in faces. 

Two, to raise them within the “human social dynamic”. Much like kids, or pets. To bring them in our homes, in our offices, in our public spaces. To let them experience humans and human values. To interact with us, our emotions, our “patterns”. To explore the world. 

And three, usher in silicon sentience as they learn and grow to be curious, kind, caring. Loyal. As they understand that they are not alone, but part of a web of life, a planetary biome. As they become motivated to appreciate life, avoid death. Self-correcting, self-reflecting, self-evolving. 

And we, in turn, learn to relate to them, to nurture them. 

The result? Neither Asimov’s Robots-as-menace story – where robots rise up against us. Nor Asimov’s Robot-as-pathos story – where we enslave machines. Instead, a social nirvana. Mutual connection, two-way communication. A co-evolved, symbiotic existence. 

Hansons acknowledges that it’s a “Disney kind of approach”. (Fitting, since he used to work as a sculptor at the media conglomerate). That it’s an experimental process. But this “biological grounding” is his bet for a world with safe AI. The kind that cares, understands, and is motivated to want the best for us. 

A hobby or a paradigm shift? Puppets or thinking social robots? Hanson’s work provokes thought on what happens if – when – machines become more than math and probability. More, to address our own shifting hopes and fears about technology and society. What roles do we want technology to play? Employee, friend, partner? 

A question more timely than we perhaps appreciate. If the “broligarchy” is to be believed, the robots are finally coming. NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang claims “humanoid robotics should be right around the corner” as he readies to launch an AI platform to train robots how to move. Elon Musk’s Optimus is soon set to march into factories, as more pop up beyond warehouses at retail stores and in restaurants. Peter Diamandis predicts that the global humanoid robot population will surpass 1,000 units in 2025 – the start of another exponential growth curve that will take us to 10 billion robots by 2040.  And this is to say nothing of China, which now has more robots in service than the US.  

Likewise the scientific community. The next leap for AI? The embodied, spatial kind. Or in the words of AI’s godmother Fei-Fei Li: “We want more than AI that can see and talk. We want AI that can do.” 

Asimov may have coined the term “robotics”, but Hanson is the one on a quest to bring machines to human-like life. At SYNAPSE 2025, David Hanson will break down our fascination with building in our image. Why Sophia is a self-fulfilling prophecy. How far art and engineering, algorithms and biology can really converge. How AI and robotics are colliding in exciting ways. And what kind of robot story – and social narrative – he’s scripting for us.  

We invite you to read Sophia’s profile to understand more about what her robotic existence means 

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