Meet Erica: This Robot Is Sarcastic And Dynamic Like Rogue One's K-2SO

It’s no secret that robotics technology is becoming more advanced with every day that passes. Now, there is a robot that can hold an entire conversation on her own with eerie complexity. Meet Erica, the most sophisticated robot in the world. Not only can she (it) hold a proper conversation with people, she can do so with disturbing subtlety and even sarcasm.

Erica was recently featured in a segment on the Year Million series by NatGeo, which looked at several possible scenarios that could occur within the next million years. Thanks to the current level of technology budding within the artificial intelligence community, it’s not exactly difficult to imagine AI being a part of the next few centuries, let alone millennia. In any case, that’s where Erica comes in.

For now, the robot is unmistakably a machine with features that are meant to make it as life-like as currently possible. It’s the work of the Japanese Science and Technology Agency’s (JST) Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology (ERATO), which is made up of several Japanese universities.

In a piece highlighting the capabilities of Erica, several of the AI’s unique properties were revealed, including how it is able to start and even maintain a conversation with an actual human. While it may seem rather straightforward to people, it’s just not the same as with machines.

For starters, it’s difficult for normal machines to break off in the middle of a conversation, pick up on a topic, or know what to do if a particular line of talks hits a wall. In one conversation shown in a clip, however, it seems Erica is more adept at adjusting than most.

When she asks a partner in conversation if they like paintings, for example, and that person said that they don’t, Erica commented on how that person didn’t have artistic interests. It’s the kind of response that one would normally attribute a particularly sarcastic or abrasive character, or from Rogue One’s K-2SO.