Reina Takla and Nour El-Shaeri

RIYADH: A personal robot concierge is set to become a reality as a new wave of technological innovation takes the spotlight during the Future Hospitality Summit in Riyadh. 

In an interview with Arab News during the event, Janet Adams, chief operating officer of global artificial intelligence company SingularityNET, shared details about a new humanoid robot expected to revolutionize the hospitality sector. 

“One of our projects which we are pioneering right now is the development of a new class of humanoid robots specifically designed for the service industries,” Adam told Arab News. 

“Imagine going to stay in a hotel where you’ve connected with your robot before you go there. They know everything you want. They can greet you at the door because you’ve been chatting as an avatar,” she said. 

“And then after you leave, they can stay in touch with you and they can be like a loyalty ambassador, robotic avatar, friend for life who understands your needs, who understands what you enjoy, who makes everything perfect for you in your stay in the hospitality industry,” Adams added. 

She further explained that the development, known as the Mind Children project, will roll out its pilot in early 2025. 

Furthermore, Adams shared that the company is working on a new breed of technological advancement for AI in language models in the Middle East. 

The company is working with Zarqa, a Middle Eastern AI firm part of SingularityNET’s ecosystem, to significantly improve AI language models.

 “What we’re doing is we’re taking the best of today’s large language model technology, and we’re infusing it with the best of tomorrow’s artificial general intelligence technology, because we’re leaders in the field of artificial general intelligence,” Adams explained. 

“And sometime within the next 12 to 24 months, we expect to see enormous breakthroughs where the limitations of today’s language models are overcome, where we can bring human level reasoning or human style reasoning into our robots and therefore give them the capability to be creative, to understand their environment, to really, truly contribute as a, for example, to hospitality services,” she added. 

During the event, SingularityNET also showcased Desdemona, a humanoid robot and the lead vocalist of the Jam Galaxy Band. 

“She runs up a huge array of advanced artificial intelligence models. She’s working with vision, with speech processing. We work with toxicity filters. We work with emotion recognition, facial recognition. We have a variety of AI models, including Markov decision-making and generative adversarial networks,” she explained.  

“And a bunch of the most advanced AI that’s available on the planet. Together. All work together in this, in what looks like a seamless operation of multiple modules working together. She’s truly a highly advanced miracle of modern AI,” Adams added.