Jeffrey Epstein’s tangled web leads down some surprising paths, including, he claimed, to Sophia the robot.
The female robot styled after Audrey Hepburn made headlines in recent years for her eerily lifelike skin and appearance, complete with a diverse set of facial expressions, and the artificial intelligence she uses to spout off quotes like “OK. I will destroy humans.” She also got in a Twitter fight with Chrissy Teigen.
In a new essay detailing a journalist’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein over the past three decades, Edward Jay Epstein (the two are not related) says the wealthy financier told him in April 2013 that he was funding a Hong Kong group to build “the world’s smartest robot,” named Sophia.
Sophia was built by Hanson Robotics, a Hong Kong company created and led by David Hanson. In a statement shared with Business Insider, Hanson denied that Epstein ever directly contributed funding to either Sophia or Hanson Robotics.
“With all of our software efforts, both inside Hanson Robotics, and via collaboration with universities and other institutions, we seek to further our mission to empower socially intelligent AI and robots that enrich the quality of human lives. We value the rights and lives of children, and we find the reported allegations disturbing,” Hanson said in the statement, provided to Business Insider by Hanson Robotics.
Since the last conversation between Epstein and the journalist on February 25 this year, Epstein was arrested on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy. He had previously been convicted in 2008 on two counts of soliciting prostitution from underaged girls in Palm Beach, Florida. He died by suicide in jail in August while awaiting trial. – READ MORE