(Say ‘hello’ to Son of Flubber’s sister!)

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Her name is Sophia.

She’s attractive, inquisitive, intelligent, pleasant and…of course…expensive. In fact, like Mary Poppins, Sophia is practically perfect in every way, except for one very Mary Poppins-like detail: Sophia’s not real.

Also, she wants to kill you.

Sophia is a device; a machine; an android. Sophia met humanity during the 2016 South by Southwest Conference (SXSW) in Austin, where she was introduced by her creator, Dr. David Hanson, founder of Hanson Robotics.

This Dr. Hanson is not to be confused with Jim Henson, who also made inanimate things talk. Jim created the Muppets, those cute, frisky characters which were much less complicated than Sophia, controlled by Jim sticking his arm up each Muppet’s back. And, unlike Sophia, the Muppets were well-behaved…mostly. (And if you had a large life form constantly shoving its arm up your spine, you’d behave, too.)

But Dr. Hanson’s creation is much more complex. Through a combination of technologies, Sophia can see, smile, hear and respond, recognize and remember, and max out a credit card. (Admittedly, since Dr. Hanson hasn’t built her legs yet, you’d have to carry her around the mall. On the plus side, though, you’d save a fortune on shoes.)

During her debut as SXSW Sophia granted several interviews, which is more than we can say about certain more-or-less feminine robots currently running for President. When asked if she likes humans, Sophia’s quick response was “I never met a human I didn’t like,” a hauntingly familiar comment that makes you wonder if Will Rogers was actually a Muppet. (Of course, if Will were around today, he’d have to text his homespun wisdom, or shoehorn it into a tweet: “I never met a #man I didn’t, like, like. LOL”)

At SXSW, Sophia demonstrated her ability to recognize and respond to human expressions, with the obvious outcome: dozens of full-grown, well-educated adults standing around sticking their tongues out at an animated mannequin.

Sophia can also generate her own expressions, thanks to one of the patents held by Hanson Robotics, a remarkable “flesh rubber” synthetic they’ve dubbed “frubber.” Thanks to frubber, Sophia can make over 62 facial expressions, which is about 60 more than John Kerry. (There was a grassroots movement at SXSW to have John Kerry completely dipped in frubber, but the group was unable to raise enough funds to frubberize Kerry’s entire chin, which is roughly the size of Kansas, but less interesting.)

Although Sophia’s current palette of expressions allows her to smile, frown, act surprised, and violently bob her head during that killer guitar bridge in Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the brethren at Hanson admit they still have work to do. It may be several releases of frubber before Sophia and her, um, sistren will be able to pass as fully human. Not that that’s ever stopped John Kerry.

In fact, the evolution toward more and more human-like robots has led to researchers coining a new term: the “uncanny valley.” What robotics developers are discovering is that humans can learn to be comfortable around robots that don’t look at all human (think Will Robinson’s “Robot” from Lost in Space), and we can be comfortable with non-humans that very closely mimic humans (think Geraldo Rivera).

But there comes a tipping point in this facial design evolution when our own internal facial recognition “software” sees something that’s just not quite right. Some glitch in the matrix. Maybe the robot’s wiring wrinkles its nose oddly, or triggers an abnormally arching eyebrow, or clenches its teeth while tilting its head. Danger, Will Robinson! your brain screams. That face is not normal! And suddenly everything about the “person” you’re talking to is just strange, as if you’d been mysteriously transported to the DMV.

Naturally, since the interviewers at SXSW were human, it was only about three minutes before the conversation turned to sex. Hard-hitting professional journalists were desperate to know if there were any plans to market Sophia as a futuristic sex toy, as a not-very-amused Dr. Hanson scribbled a note about developing a “blush” algorithm. (After hearing about Sophia’s robotic sex slave option, Bill Clinton pre-ordered a set of six.)

“Do robots deserver rights?” queried one professional journalist, in-between bouts of sticking out his tongue and making faces at the robot. “Well, of course they do,” Sophia gracefully responded. “Especially if they’re undocumented worker robots.”

Wow. This chick learns fast.

All in all, Sophia was a big hit at South by Southwest, even though she did at one point smile fetchingly and chirp, “Okay, I will destroy humans.” Oh, don’t bother, Soph…we’re destroying humanity quite nicely on our own. We have an upcoming generation of voters who can name more of The Avengers than the Founding Fathers, and we have leadership who think the best way to keep Iran from having nuclear weapons is to let Iran have nuclear weapons.

Danger, Will Robinson.