In recent months, Saudi Arabia's first and only robot citizen Sophia has been making the waves online, but it hasn't all been positive.
Facebook's Director of Artificial Intelligence Research, Yann LeCun, recently called Sophia a sham, specifically referring to her as a 'Wizard of Oz' Artificial Intelligence.
In a tweet sent out on January 4, LeCun shared a Business Insider interview with Sophia in December with a caption that reads:
"This is to AI as prestidigitation [conjuring tricks] is to real magic. Perhaps we should call this 'Cargo Cult AI' or 'Potemkin AI' or 'Wizard-of-Oz AI'. In other words, it's complete bullsh*t (pardon my French)," LeCun tweeted.
Ben Goertzel, CEO and Chief Scientist at Sophia's creator SingularyNET, responded by explaining that he had "never pretended Sophia was close to human-level intelligence," according to Business Insider.
"Obviously I don't agree with his statements," Goertzel told Business Insider.
"I find it kind of funny. Like Facebook is obviously gathering everyone's personal data and then using machine learning to post Russian-generated fake news onto everyone's Facebook page to make them vote for Donald Trump. After using machine learning this way to manipulate people's minds, Facebook wants to take on a startup for making a loveable robot," he added.