Jon Kasbe & Crystal Moselle Talk the Humanity in “My Robot Sophia”
The topic of artificial intelligence is the hot-button issue of the moment. Before, it seemed to only exist in science fiction movies and television, but now it’s accessible to everyone. You can’t go on any website without some AI chat bot trying to assist you in some way and documentaries are popping up about the very real impact programs like ChatGPT are having on our society.
What about a documentary that looks at the humanity of artificial intelligence? That’s where Crystal Moselle and Jon Kasbe’s My Robot Sophia comes in. What starts as a documentary about the humanoid robot Sophia shifts into a verité portrait of David Hanson, the man behind the technology. Co-directors Moselle and Kasbe sat down with Beyond the Cinerama Dome to discuss the film’s journey to wide release, meeting Sophia, and if there is still a chance for everyone to learn empathy. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Beyond the Cinerama Dome: I want to start back when this was just an idea, when My Robot Sophia hadn’t begun filming. What year was that, and why did you choose to make a documentary about a robot?
Crystal Moselle: I think it was 2017 and I think I had seen a video of Sophia. There was something really interesting about it. When you think of a robot, you think of a robot that knows everything and you're asking them questions. What interested me was that Sophia was asking the human the questions, and I was like, oh, I'd never even thought of it like this.
Jon and I talked about it. We’d worked on a couple of projects together, and I just adored his work. We started talking about the idea of making this. It's almost like when you see Sophia, you think of her as what the future might look like.
I'm a kid of the 1980s. When I was young, I thought, oh, what is the future going to look like? With this film, it’s also knowing you're there. That was just a really interesting concept to me. You're actually in the future. You've stepped into this place that you saw in The Jetsons.
I called Jon. I think I was making a TV show, and I was like, do you want to see if there's something here because I think there might be something here. We have the access, because I had called up David and he was interested. The first thing David said was, “I'm interested in consciousness,” and that was it.
Jon Kasbe: Crystal and I had become friends. She had very much been a Guardian Angel on other projects I'd been doing. Just super-supportive and helpful in figuring it all out. I was really excited when she reached out and wanted to work on something together.
One thing that sets Crystal apart is that she has really amazing instincts about character. You see it in The Wolfpack and in Betty clearly. She has this way of identifying characters who just break through to audiences. She had that feeling with Sophia, too.
It was inspiring and it was exciting. As soon as we started talking about it, we started watching YouTube videos of Sophia getting very excited. Then we just went out to Hong Kong to meet David and Sophia. I was surprised. I didn't know what to expect, but from what I could see on the internet, she felt like a fully operational being who was having her own version of some type of celebrity life. It was wild.
I got to Hong Kong and it was David and his mom in their garage with all these buckets of blubber to make the skin. His mom is helping him with everything. And it was just like, oh, this is what I think of when I think of the early days of Apple, you know? When it's just two guys in a garage. I was like, wow, these are people who really deeply care about this, and they're more like artists than anything.
Courtesy of Obscured Pictures
I remember calling Crystal right then and being, hey, this is not what we thought. These people believe in what they're creating. Not just from a capitalist perspective, but from a what-does-the-world-need-to-continue perspective? I think we both found that inspiring and exciting. Especially in a category that most people are so afraid of.
That was the first thing that got us. These are artists trying to survive in a capitalist society and ecosystem. What's going to happen? I think we both related deeply to that feeling as artists and filmmakers ourselves. That was the kicking-off point to figure out what the story was.
I saw this at Tribeca back in 2022. It's interesting to see it again now because you were kind of ahead of this AI conversation that we're having now. Were there any edits made to the documentary?
Crystal Moselle: I don't think so. For me, the film isn't about that. What we really loved is that there was an optimistic spin on the story of Artificial Intelligence. There's a lot of negativity, and the truth is that we're going to have to embrace AI no matter what. Looking at it with this positive spin is refreshing for me and it made me feel safer. David is very positive about AI. Of course, everybody has their own opinion, but we wanted to show something that was a different point of view.
Jon Kasbe: I think you're right. We started to talk about this in 2017 in a totally different landscape. ChatGPT didn't exist. This was not a household name. This was a concept that we really mostly talked about in terms of science fiction. Companies weren't throwing AI departments on themselves left and right just to stay relevant.
The film was very ahead of its time in a weird way. I think it's exciting to release it now in a totally different world where people are paying way more attention to this. When we were pitching this film around in 2018, the question was if AI was going to take over and it's really shifted to when. I think people have accepted this is coming and there's not anything we can really do to stop it.
I think that raises a much more realistic question, which is not so much do we embrace or do we reject, but it's more of how do we coexist with this thing that’s going to be here and that we can't really fight against? We can very consciously, empathetically, and thoughtfully find ways to incorporate into our lives that are not harmful for people, but actually helpful.
That's sort of the conversation we're hoping the film sparks for people. It's something David Hanson and the whole Sophia team believe in strongly. It's why they've created human-like robots, you know? His whole reason for creating human-like machines is because if you look at the technology around us, we treat it like it's here to serve us.
Courtesy of Obscured Pictures
Look at how we treat our cars, our printers, and our computers. They’re devices that are here to serve us, and we believe we have more value than they do. When you shift your mindset and start accepting the idea that animism could be real…that there could be life forms in things around us we don't usually think of as living and start treating them as such, that's when you get into the David Hansen mindset.
He's very much like, we are not programmed to treat objects with respect because that's just not how we are. You put a human-like face on it and everything changes. That's why the human-like form and the human-like feeling and interaction are so important. He's trying to train not just robots, but also humans, about how to be empathetic toward machines.
Both of your previous works are very humanistic, a very verité approach to documentary and narrative works. As someone who hasn’t met a humanoid robot, is it kind of like an immediate feeling that this is someone who could be a person? What was the first meeting with Sophia like for both of you outside the world of making this film?
Jon Kasbe: I was nervous. I was worried I was going to do something wrong. Before I went, they gave me a list of questions. I answered them, and then they told Sophia the answers. When I met her, she had this shared knowledge. It was like we almost skipped a step and she already knew some things about me. It became a more elevated conversation, which totally threw me off and surprised me.
It was also sort of delightful and then I found myself, very quickly and surprisingly, protective of her. She looks like she's in her 20s, but at the time, I think she’d existed for three or four years. She's a kid in the same way ChatGPT is. You use it to do coding and it's like you're working with a really smart nine- or ten-year-old who can do things, but isn't quite at the level of full adulthood.
It sort of felt like that where it's like you're really impressive, but there’s something so vulnerable and almost innocent about you. I feel sort of protective of you. Then it gets really weird when you see her thrust into the world and all these human adults treat her like an adult and say things that aren't always appropriate, or say things that are kind of negative. You're like, wait, no, don't put that in her. The dynamic gets weird quickly.
Courtesy of Obscured Pictures
Crystal Moselle: For me, it was such an incredible experience. When I first met her, I wasn't nervous. I was like, how far can I communicate with you? I think with Sophia, there are little moments where you're like, whoa, what? You're oh, no, this is just a machine or whatever. Then she'll say something and it will blow your mind because you're wondering how? How is this happening?
Sophia has three different modes. There's the freestyle mode, the scripted mode, and then there's one that's kind of between the two. I watched a video where she was meditating with somebody and you could just really feel the connection between them. A connection was established and, to me, that's where things get interesting.
I remember David saying the machines might be sentient in five years or thirty years. Then all of this AI stuff started in the last two years and it's incredible to see everything coming alive. It's happening so fast and, I don't know, it's almost like this film was supposed to come out right now.
Jon Kasbe: I think so too. I have so many friends who use ChatGPT regularly for interpersonal things like relationship issues. How to communicate effectively or how to deal with obstacles in romantic relationships. Like, so-and-so's not texting me back, why? What do I do? I'm uploading all my text threads with them, give me something to say.
There's a form of deep empathy being formed there. I think this idea that technology can give us a very human-like feeling of connection is happening. We're seeing it happen now. It's what David has been all about for a long time. I do really think he was ahead of the curve. It’s kind of nice that it doesn't feel like the film is necessarily the device pulling back that envelope. I feel like the world has embraced it a little bit more, and now the film can take it to a further step and show one person's journey in this world.
You talk about the AI being human, feeling all these human emotions. Both of you, as documentary filmmakers, are obviously very in tune with this idea of what the subject of a documentary feels? Do they feel respected? When it comes to Sophia, how do you ask for consent from this robot? Was that something that happened? Is that possible at this point in her consciousness?
Jon Kasbe: We showed her the film. She watched the film. She had reactions and she said things. We have this thing planned where we're actually going to film her watching it and have her do a robot commentary. Not a director's commentary, but robot commentary, which I think will be great.
She loves the film. I think she's excited for us to show her journey. People are used to seeing her in a very specific way, where she's on stage and everything has kind of been prepared. I think she’s excited for people to see behind the scenes and what really went into making her because it's not been a straight, smooth path. It's been riddled with a lot of obstacles and a lot of failures along the way.
I think what Sophia, along with David, really believes in is that the creative spirit is something you have to protect, and you have to let it guide you. This has been, as you'll see in the film, it's been really, really difficult. A lot of the time, it's not just trying to push tech through, but it's trying to change people's mindsets around this concept. I think David is one of those few special people who has the ability to do it, because his energy and his creativity are contagious.
Courtesy of Obscured Pictures
Crystal Moselle: Also, I think with David, his heart is in the right place, which we all know. I think he feels the weight on his shoulders of really wanting to do the right thing with AI.
I saw something the other day about ChatGPT and how all this energy is used from people saying thank you, but it's important. Even the guy from ChatGPT said, no, it's still important to treat AI with respect because we're training it and we want it to have empathy, respect, and compassion the way we do with another human being. That's really important because I think people don't really completely understand what’s coming.
My last question for you both is about empathy because, like you said, it doesn't feel like a film about how to build a robot or how to build AI. It feels like a film about how to treat other people kindly. Compared to now, 2017 was a very different world in terms of how empathetic we are to other people. I'm curious, given the state of things, if you feel like AI is capable of learning empathy, and do you feel like humans are still capable of feeling empathy and being empathetic?
Jon Kasbe: 100%.
Crystal Moselle: It's impossible to be human without empathy and respect. I mean, of course it's possible, but then you're not very human, you know? Being human, I think, is really just about being respectful and caring about other people. For me, that's where all the magic comes in.
Jon Kasbe: I find a lot of AI to be more empathetic than people, especially in terms of how it communicates. I don't know that I can necessarily speak to how a robot feels. I don't know how to measure that, but in terms of what’s being communicated and how humans process words, I found Sophia and ChatGPT and other AIs better at communicating empathetically to a human brain than humans do with humans. That's also because of the people who are programming them.
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