This year's annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting - hosted by the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation from Sept. 26 to Sept. 29 in New York City - will feature speeches from Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Ted Danson, but also from an unexpected non-human guest: a robot named Pepper, reported The Weekly Standard.
Pepper is a "social humanoid robot" from Japan, created in 2014 in collaboration with SoftBank, but is not just any old robot. Pepper "is the first humanoid robot in the world capable of recognizing universal emotions" such as joy, anger, surprise, sadness and doubt, "exploring and reacting to his environment and proactively sparking interactions," according to the biography provided to the Clinton Foundation.
Pepper's bio explains that he is "equipped with many features for communicating naturally with those around him through the most intuitive interface we know: voice, touch and emotions."
"Pepper analyzes users' expressions, body language, and voice tones with the latest advances in voice and emotion recognition to adapt his behavior to better suit their mood. As you continue to interact with him, Pepper will start to recognize you and learn about your tastes."
Pepper is set to appear on the third day of the gathering, Monday, Sept. 28, for a panel titled, "Looking to the Next Frontier." Other participants joining Pepper in the talk include Branson, the founder of Virgin Group; MIT professor Sangeeta Bhatia, and Fereshteh Forough, founder and president of Code to Inspire.
Along with his human counterparts, Pepper is described as one of the "leaders from the private, public and civil society sectors" who will talk about disruptive technologies and how these ideas can benefit all of society rather than just a few.
The panel will be moderated by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium.
While former President Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea will both attend and participate in the event, Hillary, the current Democratic presidential front-runner, will be on the campaign trail.
