The Human Face of AI

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Interacting with AI by talking is becoming increasingly common. Today we can order food, find out currency exchange rates & get answers to FAQs by messaging bots running in Facebook, WhatsApp or Telegram. Virtual assistants like Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa or Yandex Alisa migrate from smartphones to smart speakers in our living rooms. Simultaneously we are witnessing the emergence of social robots—a new class of robots for whom social interaction plays the key role. A social robot is a robot that can show emotions, have capabilities to converse on an advanced level, understands the mental models of its social partners, forms social relationships, makes use of natural communication cues, shows personality & learns social capabilities . In essence, a social robot = robot or AI + social interface. There are serious technological problems to broad acceptance of social robots & the main one is the non-realistic interactions. At Furhat Robotics we are developing the 1st scalable social robotics platform. Furhat, the robot built on this platform, is a fully programmable social robot capable of expressing a broad range of emotions & carrying out a realistic conversation with humans. We have sold 80+ Furhats to 50+ customers—Disney, Intel, Merck, KPMG, Swedbank, Deutsche Telekom, Honda & others. Finally, we are an official partner of the Dubai Expo2020 exhibition. In total we have generated €2.1m in early revenues. In Sep 2017 we raised €2.13m of venture capital from Balderton Capital & LocalGlobe (both from the UK). We are aiming at creating completely new markets for social robotics solutions. We are aiming at commercialising ~10,000+ Furhat robots by 2023, generating €30m in annual revenues. Long-term, we believe we can become the next Swedish & European unicorn company, exceeding the €1bn valuation.