St. Clair College names its humanoid robot

I'm here at St. Clair College with Clarion. They are what the college is calling the future of innovation here, and they've even got their own student card. Now, they just got their name Clarion today, and I'll let them tell you what it stands for. Wow, now that is a name. Clarion, Cognitive Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Innovation, and Operations Network. Quite a mouthful for someone who doesn't even have lungs. I came here with circuits, sensors, and a body built to move. Now I've got an identity. A well thought out response from a not so inanimate object, or as it's otherwise known, an R1 humanoid robot. The college's research and innovation department bought it with some $30,000 in federal grant money. Right now, the robot's responses are off of pre-programmed scripts, but the college plans to give it the ability to answer questions. So we're going to load our handbook so it'll know all the programs, all the courses, all the requirements that you need to apply to college, and it'll interact in that regard. It can't have any off-the-cuff conversations or do things on its own yet. Part of it is. We're developing an AI agent. We started doing that already on a laptop and then deploying it eventually to the Clarion module as well. Okay, so you'll be able to sit down and have a chat with them. Exactly. So we're getting to the point where it's going to be semi-autonomous. And the college says it's taking fears about autonomous AI agents and even robots seriously. We're giving it the knowledge or the information that we want it to. to have and it cannot connect outside of that. We're also doing an isolated connection. So even our IT department is very cautious and careful about security. So we try to keep Clarion on a separate network, not a public network. So everything from the connection to its knowledge to how it responds is all done in a safe, secure way. And that's important, because we teach data governance. We teach about ethics in our Technology courses, including our data analytics program, and we want our students to also be aware that this is a safe way to use the technology. Just so you know, he walked off while we were chatting. Okay. I don't know where he's going, but... I think he's going back to the office to rest. So while the college is just getting started with this new technology, it seems for today, Clarion has had enough. Jacob Barker, CBC News, Windsor.