Abstract

Sophia is a humanoid robot developed by Hanson Robotics. In this chapter, I will snapshot some selected medial representations of and debates around her public appearances to discuss the multiple facets of her cyborgian relations, address boundary-crossing between bios and techné, and nature and culture, and attend to debates around intelligence and consciousness. I will explore ambivalences in the representations of Sophia as a controllable trend-setting technology and as a narrator of her own stories of stubbornness, empathy, and irony. I will also reveal the gendered and racialized meanings ascribed to Sophia to discuss the embeddedness of her representations within a white, masculinized, and colonial politico-economic regime. What does Sophia tell us today about the potentials and limitations of cyborgian notions for a feminist-postcolonial debate grounded in Science and Technology Studies?