I think that animals are a really great

thought experiment when we're thinking

about Ai and Robotics because again this

comparing them to humans that leads us

down the wrong path both because it's

not accurate but also I think for the

future we don't want that

we want something that's a supplement

but I think animals because we've used

them throughout history for so many

different things we we domesticated them

not because they do what we do but

because what they do is different and

that's useful and I it's just like

whether we're talking about

companionship whether we're talking

about work integration whether we're

talking about responsibility for harm

there's just so many things we can draw

on in that history from these entities

that can sense think make autonomous

decisions and learn that are applicable

to how we should be thinking about

robots and AI

the following is a conversation with

Kate darling her second time on the

podcast she's a research scientist at

MIT media lab interested in human robot

interaction and robot ethics which she

writes about in her recent book called

The New Breed what our history with

animals reveals about our future with

robots Kate is one of my favorite people

at MIT she was a courageous voice of

reason and compassion through the time

of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal at MIT

three years ago we reflect on this time

in this very conversation including the

lessons that revealed about human nature

and our optimistic vision for the future

of MIT a university we both love and

believe in

this is the Lux freedom of podcast to

support it please check out our sponsors

in the description and now dear friends

here's Kate darling

last time we talked a few years back you

wore Justin Bieber shirt for the podcast

so now looking back you're respected

um researcher all the amazing

accomplishments in robotics uh you're an

author was this one of the proudest

moments of your life uh proudest

decisions you've ever made definitely

you handled it really well though it was

cool because I walked in I didn't know

you were going to be filming I walked in

and you're in a fucking suit yeah and

I'm like why are you all dressed up yeah

and then you were so nice about it you

like made some excuse you're like oh

well I'm interviewing some art didn't

you say you were interviewing some

military General afterwards to like oh

yeah those makes me feel better CTO of

Lockheed Martin I think

yeah you didn't tell me oh I was dressed

like this are you an actual Bieber fan

or was that like one of those t-shirts

that's in the back of the closet that

you use for painting I think I bought it

for my husband as a joke and yeah I was

we were gut renovating a house at the

time and I had worn it to the site

I got his joke and now you wear it okay

have you worn it since

one time

no like how could I touch it again it

was on your podcast that's frames it's

like a wedding dress or something like

that you don't you only wear it once you

are the author of The New Breed what our

history with animals reveals about our

future with robots

you open the book with the surprisingly

tricky question what is a robot so let

me ask you let's try to sneak up to this

question what's a robot that's not

really sneaking up

it's just asking it yeah all right well

what do you think a robot is what I

think a robot is is something that has

some level of intelligence

and some level of magic

that little shine in the eye you know

that allows you to navigate the

uncertainty of uh of life so that means

like autonomous vehicles to me in that

sense uh are robots because they

navigate

uh the uncertainty the complexity of

life

obviously social robots are that I love

that

I like that you mentioned magic because

that also

well so first of all I don't Define

robot definitively in the book because

there is no definitely that everyone

agrees on and if you look back through

time

people have called things robots until

they lose the magic because they're more

ubiquitous like a vending machine used

to be called a robot and now it's not

right so I do agree with you that

there's this magic aspect that

that which is how people understand

robots

if you ask a roboticist they have the

definition of something that is well it

has to be physical usually it's not an

AI agent it has to be embodied

um they'll say it has to be able to

sense this environment in some way it

has to be able to make a decision

autonomously and then act on its

environment again

I think that's a pretty good technical

definition even though it really breaks

down when you come to things like the

smartphone because the smartphone can do

all of those things and most robotics

would not call it a robot so there's

really no no one good definition but

part of why I wrote the book is because

people have a definition of robot in

their minds that is

usually very focused on a comparison of

robots to humans so if you Google image

search robot you get a bunch of humanoid

robots robots with that torso and head

and two arms and two legs

and that's

the definition of robot that I'm trying

to get us away from because I think that

it trips us up a lot why does the

humanoid form trip us up a lot well

because this constant comparison of

robots to people artificial intelligence

to human intelligence

first of all it doesn't make sense from

a technical perspective because

you know the early AI researchers some

of them were trying to recreate human

intelligence some people still are and

there's a lot to be learned from that

academically Etc but

um that's not where We've Ended up AI

doesn't think like people we wind up in

this fallacy where we're where we're

comparing these two

um and we're when we talk about what

intelligence even is we're often

comparing to our own intelligence and

then

the second reason this bothers me is

because it doesn't make sense

I I just think it's boring to recreate

intelligence that we already have I see

the scientific value of understanding

our own intelligence but from a like

practical what can we use these

Technologies for perspective it's much

more interesting to create something new

to create a skill set that we don't have

that we can partner with and what we're

trying to achieve

and it should be in some deep way

similar to us but in most ways different

because you still want to have a

connection which is why the similarity

might be necessary that's what people

argue yes and I think that's true so the

two arguments for humanoid robots are

people need to be able to communicate

and relate to robots and we relate most

to things that are like ourselves

and we have a world that's built for

humans so we have stairs and narrow

passageways and door handles and so we

need humanoid robots to be able to

navigate that and so you're speaking to

the first one which is absolutely true

but what we know from social Robotics

and a lot of human robot interaction

research is that you all you need is

something that's enough like

a person to for it to give off cues that

someone relates to and that but that

doesn't have to look human or even act

human you can take a robot like R2D2 and

it just like beeps and boops and people

love R2D2 right even though it's just

like a trash can on Wheels and they like

r2dging more than C-3PO who's a humanoid

so there's lots of there's lots of ways

to make robots even better than humans

in some ways and make us relate more to

them

yeah it's kind of amazing the variety of

cues that can be used to

anthropomorphize the thing like a

glowing orb or something like that yeah

just just a voice

just uh just subtle basic interaction I

think people sometimes over engineer

these things

like Simplicity can go a really long way

totally I mean ask any animator and

they'll know that yeah yeah those are

actually so the people behind Cosmo the

the the robot

the right people to design those as

animators like Disney type of people

yeah versus like roboticists robotics is

quote unquote are mostly Clueless

they just have their own discipline that

they're very good at and they didn't

don't have yeah but that that don't

don't you know I feel like robotics

of the early 21st century

is not going to be the robotics of the

later 21st century I don't know like if

you call yourself a roboticist it'll be

something very different because I I

think more and more you'd be like a

maybe like a control engineer or

something controls engineer like uh you

separate because ultimately all the

unsolved all the big problems of

Robotics will be in the social aspect in

the interacting with humans aspect in

the

uh perception interpreting the world

aspect in the brain part not the not the

not the basic control level part

you call it basic it's actually

right like it's very very complicated

and that's why but like I think you're

so right and and and what a time to be

alive because

for me I just

we've had robots for so long and they've

just been behind the scenes

and now finally robots are getting

deployed into the world they're coming

out of the closet yeah and and we're

seeing all these mistakes that companies

are making because they focus so much on

the engineering and getting that right

and getting the robot to be even be able

to function in a space that it shares

with a human see what I feel like people

don't understand

is to solve the perception and the

control problem

you shouldn't try to just solve the

perception control problem you should

teach the robot how to say oh shit I'm

sorry I fucked up yeah or ask for help

oh for ask for help or be able to

communicate the uncertainty yeah exactly

all of those things because you can't

solve the perception control we humans

haven't solved it we were really damn

good at it

uh but the the magic is in the the

self-deprecating humor and the

self-awareness about where our flaws are

all that kind of stuff

yeah and there's a whole body of

research in human robot interaction

showing like ways to do this but a lot

of these companies haven't they don't do

HRI they like the have you seen the

grocery store robot in the Stop and Shop

yes yeah the Marty it looks like a giant

penis it's like six feet tall it roams

the aisles I will never see marketing

the same way again thank you you're

welcome

but like

they they these poor people were so hard

on getting a functional robot together

and then people hate Marty because they

didn't

at all consider how people would react

to Marty in their space does everybody I

mean you talk about this do do people

mostly hate Marty because I I like I

like Mario

yeah and actually like there's a there's

a parallel between the two I believe

there is so we were actually going to do

a study on this right before the

pandemic hit and then we canceled it

because we didn't want to go to the

grocery store and neither did anyone

else

um but our Theory so this was with a

student at MIT Daniella de Paola she

noticed that everyone on Facebook in her

circles was complaining about Marty

they're like what is this creepy robot

is watching me it's always in the way

and she did this like quick and dirty

sentiment analysis on Twitter where she

was looking at positive and negative

mentions of the robot and she found that

the biggest Spike of negative mentions

happened

um when Stop and Shop threw a birthday

party for the Marty robots like with

free cake and balloons like who

complains about free cake well people

who hate Marty apparently so

and so we were like that's interesting

and then we did this like online poll we

used Mechanical Turk and we tried to

get at what people don't like about

Marty and a lot of it wasn't oh Marty's

taking jobs it was Marty is the

surveillance robot which is not it looks

for spills on the floor it doesn't

actually like look at any people

um it's it's watching as creepy as

getting in the way those are the things

that people complained about and so our

hypothesis became

is Marty a real life clippy because I

know Lex you love clippy but many people

hated clippy well there's a complex

thing there it could be like marriage a

lot of people seem to like to complain

about marriage but they secretly love it

so it could be the relationship you

might have with uh with Marty is like

oh there he goes again doing his stupid

surveillance thing but you can grow to

love the um

I mean bitching about the thing that

kind of releases a kind of tension and

there's I mean some people a lot of

people show Love by sort of uh

busting each other's jobs you know like

making fun of each other and then if I

think I think people would really love

it if Marty talked back

and and like well these are so many

possible options for humor there one you

can lean in you can be like yes I'm an

agent of the CIA monitoring your every

move like mocking people that are

concerned you know saying like yes I I'm

watching you because you're so important

with your shopping patterns I'm

collecting all this data

um or or just you know any kind of

making fun of people I don't know but I

think you hit on what exactly it is

because when it comes to robots or

artificial agents

I think people hate them more than they

would some other machine or device or

object

and it might and it might be that thing

it might be combined with love or like

whatever it is it's a more extreme

response because they view these things

as social Asians and not objects and

that was

um so Clifford nass was a big human

computer interaction person and he his

theory about Clippy was that because

people viewed clippy as a social agent

when clippy was annoying and would like

bother them and interrupt them and like

not remember what they told him that's

when people got upset because it wasn't

fulfilling their social expectations and

so they complained about Clippy more

than they would have if it had been a

diff like not an not a you know virtual

character so is complaining to you a

sign that we're on the wrong path with a

particular robot or is it possible like

again like marriage like

family that there still is a path

towards that direction where we can find

deep meaningful relationship

I think we absolutely can

meaningful relationships with more

robots and well maybe with Marty I mean

I just would I would have designed Marty

a little differently but oh isn't there

a charm to the clumsiness the slowness

there is if you're not trying to get

through the shopping cart and screaming

child you know there's I think

I think you could make it Charming I

think there are lots of design tricks

that they could have used and one of the

things they did I think without thinking

about it at all is they slapped too big

googly eyes on Marty oh yeah and I I

wonder if that contributed maybe to

people feeling watched

because because it's looking at them

and

so like is there a way to design the

robot to do the function that it's doing

in a way that does that people are

actually attracted to rather than

annoyed by and there are many ways to do

that but companies aren't thinking about

it now they're realizing that they

should have thought about it yeah I

wonder if there's a way to

if it would help to make Marty seem like

an entity of its own versus uh

the arm of a large corporation

so there's some sense where

this is just the camera that's

monitoring people versus this is an

entity that's a standalone entity it has

its own task

and it has its own personality the more

personality you give it the more it

feels like

it's not sharing data with anybody else

when we see other human beings our basic

assumption is whatever I say to this

human being it's not like being

immediately sent to the CIA yeah what I

say to you no one's gonna hear that

right yeah that's true that's true well

you forget it I mean you do forget it I

mean I don't know if that even with

microphones here you forget that that's

happening but there for some reason I

think probably with Marty

um I think when it's done really crudely

and crappily you start to realize oh

this is like PR people trying to make a

friendly version of a surveillance

machine but

um I mean that reminds me of the slight

clumsiness or significant clumsiness on

the initial releases of the avatars for

the metaverse I don't know what what do

you what are your actually thoughts

about that the the

way

uh the avatars the way like Mark

Zuckerberg looks in that world you know

the the the the meta verse the virtual

reality world where you can have like

virtual meetings and stuff like that

like how do we get that right do you

have thoughts about that because that's

the kind of uh

it's a

is it feels like a similar problem to

social robotics which is how you design

a digital virtual world that is

compelling

when you connect others there in the

same way that physical

connection is right I haven't looked

into I mean I've seen people joking

about it on Twitter and like posting

like that whatever yeah but I mean have

you seen it because it there's something

you can't quite put into words uh that

doesn't feel genuine yeah about the way

it looks and so the question is if you

and I were to meet virtually

what should the avatars look like

for us to have a similar kind of

connection should it be a really

simplified should it be a little bit

more realistic should it be cartoonish

should it be more

better capturing of Expressions uh in

interesting complex ways versus like

cartoonish oversimplified ways but

haven't video games figured this out I'm

not a gamer so I don't have any examples

but I feel like there's this whole world

in video games where they've thought

about all of this and depending on the

game they have different like avatars

and a lot of the games are about

connecting with others I just the thing

that I don't know is and again I haven't

looked into this at all

um I've been like shockingly not very

interested in the metaverse but

they must have poured so much investment

into this

um meta and

like why why is it so why are people why

is it so bad like well there's gonna be

a reason there's got to be some thinking

behind it right

well I talked to Carmack about this uh

John Carmack who's a part-time

um Oculus

CTO

I think uh there's several things to say

one is as you probably know that I mean

there's bureaucracy there's large

corporations and they often large

corporations have a way of

killing the ND kind of artistic

flame that's required to create

something really compelling somehow they

make everything boring because they they

run through this whole process through

the PR department through all that kind

of stuff and it somehow becomes generic

to that process because you strip out

anything interesting because it could be

controversial is that or yeah right

exactly like um

like what I mean we're living through

this now like with the

with a lot of people with cancellations

all those kinds of stuff people are

nervous and nervousness results in like

the like usual the assholes are ruining

everything but you know the magic of

human connection is taking risks of

making a risky joke of of of like with

people you like who are not assholes

good people like some of the fun some of

the fun in the metaverse OR in video

games is you know being edgier being

interesting revealing your personality

in interesting ways

um in the sexual tension or in uh

they're definitely paranoid about that

oh yeah like in metaverse the

possibility of sexual assault and sexual

harassment and all that kind of stuff

it's it's obviously very high but

they're uh so you should be paranoid to

some degree but not too much because

then you remove completely person the

personality of the whole thing then

everybody's just like a vanilla bot but

uh like you have to have

ability

um to be a little bit political to be a

little bit edgy all that kind of stuff

and large companies tend to suffocate

that so I but in general if you get all

that just the ability to come up

really cool beautiful ideas

if you look at uh I think Grimes tweeted

about this she's very critical about the

metaverse is that

you know the uh independent uh game

designers have solved this problem of

how to create something beautiful and

interesting and compelling they they do

a really good job so you have to let

those kinds of Minds the small groups of

people design things and let them run

with it let them run wild and do edgy

stuff yeah but otherwise you because you

get this kind of

you get a clippy type of situation right

which is like a very generic looking

thing

um but even clippy has some like that's

kind of wild that you would take a a

paper clip and put eyes on it and

suddenly people are like oh you're

annoying but you're definitely a social

agent and I just feel like that wouldn't

even that clippy thing wouldn't even

survive Microsoft

or Facebook of today matter of today

because it would be like what there'll

be these meetings about why is it for

people

like why don't we it's not sufficiently

friendly let's make it uh you know and

then all of a sudden the artist that

with whom it originated is killed and

it's all PR marketing people and all

that kind of stuff no they do important

work to some degree but they kill the

creativity I think the killing of the

creativity is in the whole like Okay so

some social robotics is like obviously

if you create agents that okay so take

for an example you'd create a robot that

looks like a humanoid and it's you know

Sophia or whatever now suddenly you do

have all of these issues where

are you reinforcing an unrealistic

Beauty standard are you objectifying

women uh why is the robot white so you

have but the thing is I think that with

creativity

you can find a solution that's even

better where you're not even harming

anyone and you're creating a robot that

looks like not not humanoid but like

something that people relate to even

more and now you don't even have any of

these bias issues that you're creating

and so how do we create that within

companies because I don't think it's

really about

like I because I you know maybe we

disagree on that I don't think that

edginess or humor or interesting things

need to be things that harm or hurt

people or that people are against there

are ways to find things that everyone is

fine with

why aren't we doing that the problem is

there's departments that look for harm

and things yeah and so they will find

harm in things that have no harm okay

that's the big problem because their

whole job is to find harm in things so

what you said is completely correct

which is edginess should not hurt

doesn't necessarily doesn't need to be a

thing that hurts people it obviously

great humor great uh personality doesn't

have to uh like clippy

but yeah I mean it but it's tricky to

get right and I'm not exactly sure I

don't know I don't know why a large

corporation with a lot of funding can't

get this right I do think you're right

that there's a lot of aversion to risk

and so if you get lawyers involved or

people whose job it is like you say to

mitigate risk they're just going to say

no to most things that could even be in

some way yeah

yeah you get the problem in all

organizations so I think that you're

right that that is a problem I think

what's the way to solve that in large

organizations is to have Steve Jobs

types of characters unfortunately you do

need to have I think

um from a designer or maybe like a

Johnny Ive

that is almost like a dictator yeah you

want a benevolent dictator yeah who

rolls in and says like the cuts through

the lawyers the PR but has a benevolent

aspect like yeah this is a good heart

and make sure like I think all great

artists and designers create stuff that

doesn't hurt people like if you have a

good heart you're going to create

something that's going to actually

um make a lot of people feel good that's

what like people like Johnny Ive what

they love doing is creating a thing that

brings a lot of love to the world they

imagine like millions of people using

the thing and it instills them with with

joy that's that you could say that by

social robotics you could say that about

the metaverse it shouldn't be done by

the pr people should be done by this

time I agree PR people ruin everything

yeah all the fun uh in the uh in the

book you have a picture this I just have

a lot of ridiculous questions you have a

picture of two Hospital delivery robots

with a caption that reads by the way see

your book I appreciate that it keeps the

humor in you didn't run it by the PR

department no no one edited the book got

rushed through

uh the thing the caption reads two

hospitals delivery robots whose sexy

nurse names Roxy and Lola made me roll

my eyes so hard they almost fell out

um what aspect of it made you roll your

eyes is it the naming it was the naming

the form factor is fine it's like a

little box on Wheels the fact that they

named them also great that'll let people

enjoy interacting with them we know that

even just giving a robot a name people

will uh it facilitates technology

adoption people will be like oh you know

Betsy made a mistake let's help her out

instead of this stupid robot doesn't

work but why lowly and Lola and Roxy

like those are too too sexy I mean

there's research showing that

a lot of robots are named according to

gender biases about the function that

they're fulfilling so

you know robots that are helpful in

assistance and are like nurses are

usually female gendered robots that are

you know powerful all wise computers

like Watson usually have like a booming

male uh coded voice and name so

like why like that's one of those things

right you're opening a can of worms for

no reason for no reason you can avoid

this whole camera yeah just give it a

different name like why Roxy

it's because people aren't even thinking

so to some extent I don't I don't like

PR departments but getting some feedback

on your work from a diverse set of

participants listening and taking in

things that help you identify your own

blind spots and then you can always make

your good leadership choices and good

like you can still ignore things that

you don't believe are an issue but

having the openness to take in feedback

and making sure that you're getting the

right feedback from the right people I

think that's really important so don't

unnecessarily propagate the biases of

society yeah why in the design

but uh if you're not careful though when

you when you do the research of

you might if you ran a poll with a lot

of people of all the possible names

these robots have they might come up

with Roxy and Lola as as as names they

um it would enjoy most like that could

come up as uh as the highest as in you

do marketing research and then

well that's what they did with Alexa

they did marketing research and nobody

wanted the male voice everyone wanted it

to be female what do you what do you

think about that like what

I mean if I if I were to say

I think the role of a great designer

again to go back to Johnny Ive is to

throw out the marketing research

like take it in do it learn from it but

if everyone wants Alexa to be a female

voice

the role of the designers to think

deeply about the future

of social agents in the home and think

like what does that future look like and

try to reverse engineer that future so

like in some sense there's this weird

tension like you want to listen to a lot

of people

but at the same time you want to you're

creating a thing that defines the future

of the world

and the people that you're listening to

are part of the past

so like that weird tension yeah I think

that's true and I think some companies

like apple have historically done very

well at understanding a market and

saying you know what our role is it's

not to listen to what the current market

says it's to actually shape the market

and shape consumer preferences and

companies companies have the power to do

that they can before we're thinking and

they can actually shift what the future

of technology looks like

and I agree with you that I would like

to see more of that especially when it

comes to

existing biases that we know

or or you know that that I think there's

the low-hanging fruit of companies that

don't even think about it at all and

aren't talking to the right people and

aren't getting the full information and

then there's companies that are just

like doing the safe thing and and giving

consumers what they want now but to be

really forward looking and be really

successful I think you have to make some

judgment calls about what the future is

going to be but do you think it's still

useful to gender and to name the robots

yes I mean

gender is the minefields but people I

it's really hard to get people to not

gender a robot in some way

so if you don't give it a name or you

give it a like ambiguous voice people

will just choose something and maybe

that's better than just like

uh you know entrenching something that

you've decided is best

but I do think it can be helpful on the

like anthropomorphism engagement level

to give it attributes that people

identify with yeah I think uh a lot of

roboticists I know they they don't

gender the robot they don't they even

try to avoid naming the robot or naming

it ain't something that is uh can be

used as a name in conversation kind of

thing

and I think that actually

that's uh

irresponsible because

people are going to anthropomorphize the

thing anyway

so you're just uh removing from yourself

the responsibility of how they're

they're going to anthropomorphize it

that's a good point and so like you want

to be able to like they're going to do

it you have to start to think about how

they're going to do it even if the robot

is like a Boston Dynamics robot that's

not supposed to have any kind of social

component

they're obviously going to project a

social component to it yeah like that

arm

I worked a lot a lot with quadruped now

with with the robot dogs you know that

arm people think is the head immediately

yeah it's supposed to be an arm but they

start to think it's a head and you have

to like acknowledge that you can't I

mean uh they do now they do now well

they've deployed the robots and people

are like oh my God the cops are using a

robot dog and so they have this PR

Nightmare and so they're like oh

yeah okay maybe we should hire some HRI

people

well Boston Dynamics is an interesting

company or any of the others that are

doing similar thing because

their their main source of money

is um in the industrial application so

like surveillance to factories and uh

doing dangerous jobs so to them it's

almost good PR

for people to be scared of these things

because it's it's for some reason as you

talk about people are naturally for some

reason scared we could talk about that

of robots and so it becomes more viral

like uh playing with that little fear

and so it's almost like a good PR

because ultimately they're not trying to

put them in the home and have a good

social connection they're trying to put

them in factories and so they they have

fun with it if you watch Boston Dynamics

videos yeah they're aware of it oh yeah

they're I mean the videos for sure that

they put out it's almost like an

unspoken

tongue-in-cheek thing they they're aware

of how people are going to feel when you

have a robot that does like a flip now

most of the people are uh just like

excited about the control problem of it

like how to how to make the whole thing

happen but they're aware when people see

well I think they became aware I think

that in the beginning they were really

really focused on just the engineering I

mean they're at the Forefront of

Robotics like Locomotion and stuff

and then when they started doing the

videos I think that was kind of a labor

of love

I know that the former CEO Mark like he

oversaw a lot of the videos and made a

lot of them himself and like he's even

really really detail-oriented like there

can't be like some sort of incline that

would give the robot an advantage

they're very like he he was very um hell

of Integrity about the authenticity of

them uh and but then when they started

to go viral I think that's when they

started to realize oh there's something

interesting here that

you know I don't I don't know how much

they took it seriously in the beginning

other than realizing that they could

play Within the videos yeah I know that

they take it very seriously now what I

like about Boston Dynamics

and similar companies it's still mostly

run by engineers

but you know

I've had my criticisms there's a bit

more PR leaking in but those videos are

made by Engineers because that's what

they find fun mm-hmm it's like testing

the robustness of the system

I mean they uh

they're having a lot of fun there with

the robots totally

have you been have you been to visit

yeah yeah yeah yeah it's cool it's one

of the most important like I I uh

I mean because I I have

um eight uh robot dogs now uh wait you

have eight robot dogs what are they just

walking around your place like yeah I'm

working on them uh that's actually one

of my goals is

to have at any one time always a robot

moving oh I'm far away that's an

ambitious goal

well I have like more roombas I know

what to do with the room their program

so the the programmable roombas nice and

um I have a bunch of little like I built

the well I'm not finished with the

butter robot from Rick and Morty I saw a

bunch of robots everywhere but the thing

is what happens is you're working on one

robot at a time

and uh that becomes like a little

project

it's actually very difficult to have

just a passively

functioning robot always moving yeah and

that's a that's a that's a dream for me

because I'd love to create that kind of

a little world so uh the the impressive

thing about Boston Dynamics to me was to

see like hundreds of spots

and like there's a the most impressive

thing that still sticks with me is um

there was a a spot robot

walking down the hall seemingly with no

supervision whatsoever and he was

wearing he or she I don't know was

wearing a cowboy hat

it just it was just walking down the

hall and nobody paying attention and

it's just like walking down this long

Hall and I'm like looking around this is

anyone like what's happening here so I'm

presumably some kind of automation where

he's doing the map I mean the whole

environment is probably really well

mapped but I it was just

it gave me a picture of a world where a

robot is doing his thing wearing a

cowboy hat just

going down the hall like getting some

coffee or whatever like I don't know

what it's doing what's the mission but

uh I don't know for some reason it

really stuck with me you don't often see

robots that aren't part of a demo or

that aren't uh you know like with a

semi-autonomous autonomous vehicle like

directly doing a task this was just

chilling yeah walking around I don't

know well yeah you know I mean we're at

MIT like when I first got to MIT I was

like okay where's all the where's all

the robots and they were all like broken

or like not demoing so yeah and and and

what really excites me is that we're

about to have that we're about to have

so many moving rope about to well it's

coming it's coming in our lifetime that

we will just have robots moving around

we're already seeing the beginnings of

it there's delivery robots in some

cities on the sidewalks and I just love

seeing like the tick tocks of people

reacting to that because yeah you see a

robot walking on the hall with a cowboy

hat you're like what

the what is this this is awesome and

scary and kind of awesome and people

either love or hate it that's one of the

things that I think companies are

underestimating that people will either

love a robot or hate a robot and nothing

in between so it's just again an

exciting time to be alive yeah I think

kids almost universally at least in my

experience love them

a lot love legged robots if they're not

La my my son hates the room though

because ours is loud

oh that yeah no the legs the legs oh

yeah because your son

do they understand Roma to be a robot

oh yeah my kids that's that's the first

words they learned they know how to say

beep boop

think the room as a robot does do they

project intelligence out of the thing

but we don't really use it around them

anymore for the reason that my son is

scared of it

yeah that's right I think they would

like even a Roomba

because it's moving around on its own

I think kids and animals view it as a an

agent

so what do you think if we just look at

the state of the art of Robotics what do

you think robots are actually good at

today

so if we look at today you mean physical

robots yeah physical robots

well like what are you impressed by

so I think a lot of people I mean that's

what your book is about is have maybe a

not a perfectly calibrated understanding

where we are in terms of Robotics what's

difficult the robotics what's easy in

robotics yeah we're way behind where

people think we are so

what's impressive to me so uh let's see

oh one one thing that came out recently

was Amazon has this new Warehouse robot

and it's the first autonomous Warehouse

robot that can is safe for people to be

around and so like it's kind of most

people most people I think Envision that

our warehouses are already fully

automated and that they're just like

robots doing things

it's actually still really difficult to

have robots and people in the same space

because it's dangerous for the most part

robots you know because especially

robots that have to be strong enough to

move something heavy for example they

can really hurt somebody and so until

now a lot of the warehouse robots had to

just move along like pre-existing lines

which really restricts what you can do

um and so having I think that that's

that's one of the big challenges and one

of the big like exciting things that's

happening is that we're starting to see

more kobotics in industrial spaces like

that where people and robots can work

side by side and not get harmed yeah

that's what people don't realize sort of

the physical manipulation tasks with

humans

it's not that the robots want to hurt

you

I think that's what people are worried

about like this malevolent robot gets

them out of its own and wants to destroy

all humans now it's you know it's

actually very difficult to know where

the human is yeah and to to respond to

the human and dynamically and

collaborate with them on a task

especially if you're something like an

industrial robotic arm which is

extremely powerful

yeah this some of the some of those arms

are pretty impressive now that

you can just you can you can grab it you

can move it so the the collaboration

between human robot in the factory

setting is really fascinating yeah

um do you think they'll take our jobs

I don't think it's that simple I think

that there's a ton of disruption that's

happening and will continue to happen

you know I think speaking specifically

of the Amazon warehouses that might be

an area where it would be good for

robots to take some of the jobs that are

you know where people are put in a

position where it's unsafe and they're

treated horribly and you know probably

it would be better if a robot did that

and Amazon is clearly trying to automate

that job away so uh I think there's

going to be a lot of disruption I do

think that robots and humans have very

different skill sets so while a robot

might take over a task

it's not going to take over most jobs

I think just things will change a lot

like I know one of the examples I have

in the book is mining

um so they're you have this job that is

very unsafe and that requires a bunch of

workers and puts them in unsafe

conditions and now you have all these

different robotic machines that can help

make the job safer and as a result now

people can sit in these like

air-conditioned remote control stations

and like control these autonomous mining

trucks and so that's a much better job

but also they're employing less people

now so it's

it's just a lot of

I think from a bird's eye perspective

you're not going to see job loss you're

going to see more jobs created because

that's I I think the future is not

robots just becoming like people and

taking their jobs the future is really a

combination of our skills and then the

supplemental skills that robots have to

increase productivity to help people

have better safer jobs to

give people work that they actually

enjoy doing and are good at

um but it's really easy to say that from

a bird's eye perspective and

um ignore kind of the the rubble on the

ground as we go through these

transitions because of course specific

jobs are going to get lost if you look

at the history of the 20th century it

seems like automation

constantly

increases productivity and improves

the average quality of life so it's it's

been always good so like thinking about

this time being different is that we

would need to go against the lessons of

History it's true

and uh the other thing is I think people

think that the automation of the

physical tasks is easy I was I was just

in Ukraine and the interesting thing is

I mean there's a lot of difficult and uh

dark lessons just about a war zone but

one of the things that happens in war is

there's a lot of Mines that are placed

um that's the this one of the big

problems

for years after a war is even over is

the entire landscape is covered in mines

and so there's a demining effort

and you would think robots would be good

at this kind of thing or like your

intuition would be like well say you

have unlimited money and you want to do

a good job of it unlimited money you

would get a lot of really nice robots

but no humans are still far superior or

animals or animals but even right but

humans with animals together yeah you

can't just have that's true dog with a

hat

that's fair

but yes and but figuring out also how to

uh disable the mine

obviously the easy thing the thing a

robot can help with is to find the mine

and blow it up but that's gonna destroy

the landscape that that really does a

lot of damage to the land you want to uh

disable the mine and to do that because

of all the different all the different

edge cases of the problem it requires a

huge amount of human-like experience it

seems like so it's mostly done by humans

they have no use for robots they don't

want robots yeah I think we overestimate

what we can automate

in the especially in the Physical Realm

yeah that's it's weird I mean it's

continues that this this the story of

humans we think were shitty at

everything in the physical world

including driving we think everybody

makes fun of themselves and others for

being shitty drivers but we're actually

kind of incredible no incredible and

that's why like

that's the way Tesla still says that if

you're in the driver's seat like you you

are ultimately responsible because the

ideal for I mean I mean you know more

about this than I do but

he like robot cars are great at

predictable things and can react faster

and more precisely than a person and can

do a lot of the driving and then the

reason that we still don't have

autonomous vehicles on all the roads yet

is because of this long tail of just

unexpected occurrences where a human

immediately understands that's the

sunset and not a traffic light that's a

horse and carriage ahead of me on the

highway but the car has never

encountered that before so like in

theory combining those skill sets is

what's gonna really be powerful

the only problem is figuring off the

figuring out the human robot interaction

and the handoffs so like in cars that's

a huge problem right now figuring out

the handoffs

um but in other areas uh it might be

easier and that's really the future is

human robot interaction

well it's really hard to improve

it's it's it's terrible that people die

in car

accidents but I mean it's like 70 80 100

million miles one death per

uh 80 million miles that's like really

hard to beat for a robot that's that's

like incredible that like think about it

like the how many people the just the

number of people throughout the world

that are driving every single day all

this you know Steve deprived drunk

uh distracted all of that and still very

few die relative to what I would imagine

if I were to guess back in the horse see

when I was like in the in the beginning

of the 20th century riding my horse I

would talk so much shit about these cars

I'd be like this is gonna this is

extremely dangerous these machines

traveling at 30 miles an hour or

whatever the hell they're going at this

is irresponsible it's unnatural and and

it's going to be destructive to all of

human society but then it's extremely

surprising how humans adapt to the thing

and they know how to not kill each other

um I mean that at ability to adapt is

incredible and to mimic that in the

machine is really tricky

now that said what Tesla is doing it I

mean I wouldn't have guessed how far

machine learning can go on Vision alone

it's really really incredible and people

that are

at least from my perspective people that

are kind of um

uh you know critical of Elon and those

efforts

I think don't give enough credit how

much progress we made some how much

incredible progress has been made in

that direction I think most of the

robotics Community wouldn't have guessed

how much you can do on Vision alone it's

kind of incredible

um because we would be I think it's that

approach which is relatively unique

has challenged the other competitors to

step up their game so if you're using

lidar if you're using mapping

um that challenges them to do

better to scale faster and to use

machine learning and computer vision as

well to integrate both lidar and vision

um it's kind of incredible and I'm not

I don't know if I even have a good

intuition of how hard driving is anymore

maybe it is possible to solve

so all the stuff you mentioned yeah the

question is one yeah I think it's not

happening as quickly as people thought

it would because it is more complicated

but I wouldn't have

I I agree with you my current intuition

is that we're gonna get there I think

we're gonna get there too but I didn't

before I wasn't sure we're gonna get

there without like with current

technology

so you know I I was kind of this is like

with vision alone I my intuition was

you're gonna have to solve like Common

Sense reasoning

you're gonna have to you're gonna have

to solve some of the big problems in

artificial intelligence not just

uh not just perception

yeah like you have to have a deep

understanding of the world it's always

my sense but now I'm starting to like

well this I mean I'm continuously

surprised how well the thing works yeah

obviously Elon and others others have

stopped but Elon continues you know

saying we're going to solve it in a year

oh yeah that's the thing bold

predictions though yeah well everyone

else used to be doing that but they kind

of like all right yeah or maybe more

maybe let's not promise we're gonna

solve uh level four driving by 2020.

let's uh let's chill on that but people

are still trying silently I mean the UK

just committed 100 million pounds to

research and development to speed up the

process of getting autonomous vehicles

on the road like everyone is everyone

can see that it is solvable and it's

going to happen and it's going to change

everything and they're still investing

in it and uh like waymo Loki has

driverless cars in in Arizona

like you can get you know there's like

robots

it's weird have you ever been to one no

it's so weird it's so awesome because uh

the the most awesome experience is a is

the wheel turning and you're sitting in

the back it's like

I don't know it's uh

it feels like you're a passenger with

that friend who's a little crazy of a

driver it feels like

shit I don't know are you right to drive

bro you know that kind of feeling good

but but then you kind of

that experience that nervousness

um and the excitement of trusting

another being in this case it's a

machine it's really interesting

um just even introspecting your own

feelings about the thing yeah uh they're

not doing

anything in terms of making you feel

better

like at least waymo I think they went

with the approach of like let's not try

to put eyes on the thing

let's it's it's a it's a wheel we know

what that looks like it's just a car

it's a car get in the back let's not

like discuss this at all let's not

discuss the fact that this is a robot

driving you and you're in the back and

if the robot wants to start driving 80

miles an hour and run off of a bridge

you have no recourse let's not discuss

this you're just getting in the back

there's no discussion about like how

shit can go wrong uh there's no eyes

there's nothing there's like a map

showing what the car can see

like you know what happens if it's like

uh a HAL 9000 situation like I'm like

I'm sorry I can't you have a button you

can like call customer service oh God

then you get put on hold for two hours

yeah probably

um but you know currently what they're

doing which I think

is understandable but you know the car

just can pull over and stop and wait for

help to arrive and then a driver will

come and then they'll actually drive the

car for you but that's like you know

what if you're late

for meeting or all that kind of stuff or

like the more dystopian isn't it the

Fifth Element where it's Will Smith in

it who's in that movie no Bruce Willis

Bruce Willis oh yeah and he gets into

like a robotic cab or car or something

and then because he's violated a traffic

rule it locks him in yeah and he has to

wait for the cops to come and he can't

get out so like yeah we're gonna see

stuff like that maybe

what's this

I I believe that the companies that have

robots

the the only ones that will succeed are

the ones that don't do that meaning they

respect

privacy you think so yeah because people

because because they're gonna have to

earn people's trust yeah but like Amazon

works with law enforcement and gives

them the data from The Ring cameras so

why should it yeah

do you have a ring camera

uh no okay no no but you know basically

any security camera right I've uh

Google's whatever they have we have one

that's not

the data at least or the data on a local

server because we don't want it to go to

law enforcement because all the

companies are doing it they're doing I I

bet Apple wouldn't

yeah the only company I trust and I

don't know how much longer

I don't know

maybe that's true for cameras

but with robots people are just not

going to let a robot inside their home

where like one time where somebody gets

arrested because of something a robot

sees that's going to be that's gonna

destroy a company you don't think people

are going to be like well that wouldn't

happen to me that happened to a bad

person

and I think they would yeah because in

the modern world people I get have you

seen Twitter they get extremely paranoid

about any kind of surveillance but the

thing that I've had to learn is that

Twitter is not the modern world like

when I go

you know Inland to visit my relatives

like they don't that's a different

discourse that's happening I think like

the whole Tech criticism world yeah it's

loud in our ears because we're in those

circles do you think you can be a

company that does social Robotics and

not win over Twitter

that's a good question I feel like the

early adopters are all on Twitter

and it feels like you have to win them

over feels like nowadays you'd have to

win over Tick Tock honestly

I don't is that is that a website

I hate to check it out

and that's an interesting one because

China is behind that one

exactly

uh so it's compelling enough maybe

people would be able to uh give up

privacy and that kind of stuff

that's really I just I mean

I'm worried about it I'm worried about

it and I'm

there have been some developments

recently that are like super exciting

like the large language learning models

like wow I did not anticipate those

improving so quickly

and those are going to change everything

and one of the things that I'm trying to

be cynical about is that I think they're

gonna have a big impact on privacy and

data security and like manipulating

consumers and manipulating people

because suddenly you'll have these

agents that people will talk to and they

won't care or won't know

at least on a conscious level that it's

recording the conversations so kind of

like we were talking about before

um and at the same time the technology

is so freaking exciting that it's going

to get adopted it's not even just a

collection of data but the ability to

manipulate

at scale

so um what do you think about the AI

the engineer from from Google

that thought Lambda is sentient

he had actually a really good post from

somebody else I forgot her name it's

brilliant I can't believe I didn't know

about her thank you yeah for weird AI oh

yeah I love her book oh she she's great

I left a note for myself to reach out to

her she's amazing she's hilarious and

Brilliant and just a great summarizer of

the state of AI but she has

um I think that was from her where I was

looking at

uh AI explaining that it's a squirrel oh

yeah because the transcripts that the

engineer released

Lambda kind of talks about the

experience of

human-like feelings and I think even

consciousness and so she was like oh

cool that's impressive I wonder if an AI

can also describe the experience of

being a squirrel and so she interviewed

I think she did gbt3

about the experience of being a squirrel

and then she did a bunch of other ones

too like what's it like being a flock of

crows what's it like being an algorithm

that powers a Roomba and like yeah you

can have a conversation about any of

those things and they're very very

convincing yeah yeah even gpg3 which is

not like state of the art right it's

convincing of being a squirrel it's like

what what it's like I mean you should

check it out because it really is it's

like yeah that probably is what a

squirrel would would say

are you excited like what's it like

being a squirrel that's fun okay I get

to eat nuts and run around all day

uh like how do you think people feel

like when you tell them that you're a

squirrel

um you know or like I forget what it was

like a lot of people might be scared to

find out that you're squirrel or

something like this and then the system

Answers Pretty like yeah pretty well

like yeah like

um I hope they'll like what do you think

the when they find out you're a squirrel

um I I hope they'll see how fun it is to

be a score like that what do you say to

people who don't believe you're a

squirrel I say come see for yourself I

am a squirrel that's great well I think

it's really great because it it like the

two things to note about it are first of

all just because the machine is

describing an experience doesn't mean it

can it actually has that experience but

then secondly these things are getting

so Advanced and so convincing at

describing these things and talking to

people

that's I mean just the implications for

health education communication

entertainment gaming like I just like

all of the applications it's

mind-boggling what we're going to be

able to do with this and and that my

kids are not going to remember a time

before they could have conversations

with artificial agents do you think they

would because to me this is uh

the focus in the ad Community has been

well this engineer

Shirley's hallucinating the thing is not

sentient

but to me I first of all it doesn't

matter if he is or not this is coming

yeah where a large number of people

would believe a system has sent you

including Engineers within companies

yeah so in that sense you start to think

about a world where like your kids

aren't just used to having a

conversation with the bot but used to

believing kind of

having an implied belief that the thing

is sentient

yeah I think I think that's true and I

think that

one of the things that bothered me about

all of the coverage in the tech press

about this incident like obviously I

don't believe the system is sentient

like I think that it can convincingly

describe that it is I don't think it's

doing what he thought it was doing and

actually experiencing feelings but a lot

of the tech press was about how he was

wrong and depicting him as kind of naive

and it's not naive like there's so much

research in my field showing that people

do this even experts they they might be

very clinical when they're doing human

robot interaction experiments with a

robot that they've built and then you

bring in a different robot and they're

like oh look

it on it's doing this like that happens

in our lab all the time

we are all this guy and it's gonna it's

gonna be huge so I think that

the the goal is not to discourage this

kind of belief or like Design Systems

that people won't think are sentient I

don't think that's possible I think

you're right this is coming it's

something that we have to acknowledge

and even embrace

and be very aware of so one of the

really interesting perspectives that

your book takes

on a system like this is to see them not

to compare something like this to humans

but to compare it to animals of how we

see animals can you kind of try to again

sneak up try to explain why this analogy

is better than the human analogy the

analogy of robots as animals yeah and it

gets trickier with the language stuff

but we'll get into that too

I think that animals are a really great

thought experiment when we're thinking

about Ai and Robotics because again this

comparing them to humans that leads us

down the wrong path both because it's

not accurate but also I think for the

future we don't want that

we want something that's a supplement

but I think animals because we've used

them throughout history for so many

different things we we domesticated them

not because they do what we do but

because what they do is different and

that's useful and I it's just like

whether we're talking about

companionship whether we're talking

about work integration whether we're

talking about responsibility for harm

there's just so many things we can draw

on in that history from these entities

that can sense think make autonomous

decisions and learn that are applicable

to how we should be thinking about

robots in Ai and and the point of the

book is not that they're the same thing

that animals and robots are the same

obviously there are tons of differences

there like you can't you can't have a

conversation with a squirrel right but

the the point you do it all the time oh

really by the way squirrels are the

cutest I project so much on squirrels I

wonder what their inner life is

um I suspect they're much bigger

assholes than we imagine really like if

it was a giant squirrel it would fuck

you over so fast if you had the chance

it would take everything you own it

would eat all your stuff because it's

small and the Furry Tail the furry tale

is a

is uh

is a weapon against human consciousness

and cognition it wins us over that's

what cats do too cats out I'll competed

squirrels

and dogs like yeah dogs no dogs have

love cats are have no soul they I'm just

kidding people get so angry I talk shit

about cats that I love cats anyway uh so

yeah uh yeah you're you're describing

all the different kinds of animals that

get domesticated

and it's a really interesting idea that

it's not just sort of pets there's all

kinds of domestication going on they all

have all kinds of uses yes like the uh

Ox that you

propose might be

at least historically one of the most

useful domesticated animals it was a

game changer because it revolutionized

like what people could do economically

Etc so I I mean just like robots They're

Gonna Change they're going to change

things economically they're going to

change Landscapes like cities might even

get rebuilt around autonomous vehicles

or drones or delivery robots like I

think just the same ways that animals

have really shifted society and Society

has adapted also to like socially

accepting animals as pets

um I think we're going to see very

similar things with robots so I think

it's a useful analogy it's not a perfect

one but I think it's it helps us get

away from this idea that robots can

shoot or will replace people if you

remember what are some interesting uses

of animals ferrets for example oh yeah

the ferrets they they still do this they

use ferrets to go into narrow spaces

that people can't go into like a pipe or

like they'll use in the wrong electrical

wire I think they did that for princess

dies for wedding there's so many weird

ways we've used animals and still use

animals for things that robots can't do

like the dolphins that they used in the

in the military I think the I think

Russia still has Dolphins and the US

Dollars dolphins in their navies

uh mind detection looking for lost

underwater equipment

some rumors about like using them for

weaponry

which which I think Russia's like sure

believe that and America's like no no we

don't do that who knows but they started

doing that in like the 60s 70s they

started training these Dolphins because

they were like oh dolphins have this

amazing echolocation system that we

can't replicate with machines and

they're trainable so we're going to use

them for all the stuff that we can't do

with machines or by ourselves and

they've tried to phase out the Dolphins

I know the US has like invested a lot of

money in trying to make robots do the

Mind detection but like you were saying

there are some things that the robots

are good at and there's some things that

biological creatures are better at so

they still have the Dolphins so there's

also pigeons of course oh yeah pigeons

oh my gosh there's so many examples the

pitch I mean

the pigeons were the original hobby

photography drone they also carried mail

for thousands of years letting people

communicate with each other in new ways

so the thing that I like about the

animal analogies they have all these

physical abilities but also sensing

abilities that we just we don't have and

like that's that's just so useful and

that's that's robots right robots have

physical abilities they can help us lift

things or do things that we're not

physically capable of they can also

sense things

it's just I just feel like I still feel

like it's a really good analogy and

really strong and it works because it's

people are familiar with it

what about companionship and when we

start to think about like cats and dogs

like pets that seem to serve no purpose

whatsoever except the social connection

yeah I mean this

you were a thing

at least in the United States like dogs

used to have like they used to have a

purpose they used to be guard dogs or

they had some sort of function and then

at some point they became just part of

the family

um and I

it's it's so interesting how there's

some animals that we've treated as

workers some that we've treated as

objects some that we eat and some that

are parts of our families and that

that's different across cultures and I'm

convinced that we're going to see the

same thing with robots

um where people are going to develop

strong emotional connections to certain

robots that they relate to either

culturally or or personally emotionally

and then there's going to be other

robots that we don't treat the same way

I wonder does that have to do more with

the culture and the people or the robot

design is there interplay between the

two like why did dogs and cats

out compete

ox and

I don't know what else like farm animals

to to really get inside the home and get

inside our hearts yeah I mean people

point to the fact that dogs are very

genetically flexible and

um they can evolve much more quickly

than other animals and so they

evolutionary biologists think that dogs

evolved to be more appealing to us and

then once we learned how to breed them

we started breeding them to be more

appealing to us too which is not

something that we necessarily would be

able to do with cows although we've bred

them to make more milk for us

so but part of it is also culture I mean

there are cultures where people eat dogs

still today and then there's other

cultures where we're like oh no that's

terrible we would never do that and so I

think there's a lot of different

elements that play in I wonder if

there's good because I understand dogs

because they use their eyes they're able

to communicate affection all those kinds

of things it's really interesting what

dogs do there's a whole conferences in

dog Consciousness and cognition and all

that kind of stuff now cats is a mystery

to me

because they seem to not give a shit

about the human but they're warm and

fluffy

but they but they're also passive

aggressive so they're at the same time

they're like they're dismissive of of

you in some sense I think some people

like that some people like that about

people

yeah they want they want the push and

pull over of a relationship they don't

want loyalty or unconditional love that

does that means they haven't earned it

yeah

and maybe that says a lot more about the

people than it does about the animal oh

yeah we all need therapy yeah

so I'm judging harshly to people that

have cats or or the people that have

dogs

maybe the people that have dogs need are

are desperate for attention and

unconditional love and they're unable to

to sort of struggle uh to earn

meaningful connections

um I don't know maybe people are talking

about you and your robot pets in the

same way

yeah that's uh

[Laughter]

it is kind of sad there's just robots

everywhere but he's I mean I'm joking

about it being said because I think it's

kind of beautiful I think robots are

uh beautiful in the same way that pets

are even children in that like they

capture some kind of magic of uh social

robots

they have the capacity to have the same

kind of magic of connection

um I don't know what that is like um

when they're brought to life and they

move around

the way they make me feel I'm pretty

convinced is as as you know

they will make billions of people feel

like I I don't think I'm like some weird

robotics guy I'm not I mean you are but

not in this way not in this way I mean I

just I can put on my like normal human

hat and just see this oh this is like

there's a lot of possibility there of

something cool just like with dogs what

is it why are we so into dogs or cats

like it's like that it's way different

than us

it is it's like drooling all over the

place with its tongue out and it's like

what it's like a weird creature that

used to be a wolf why are we into this

thing well dogs can

either Express or mimic a lot of

emotions that we recognize

um and I think that's a big thing like a

lot of the magic of animals and robots

is our own self-projection and the

easier it is for us to

see ourselves in something and project

human emotions or qualities or traits

onto it the more we'll relate to it and

then you also have the movement of

course I think that's also really that's

why I'm so interested in physical robots

because that's I think the visceral

magic of them I think we're I mean

there's there's research showing that

we're probably biologically hardwired to

respond to autonomous movement in our

physical space because we've had to

watch out for Predators or whatever the

reason is

um and so animals and robots are very

appealing to us as these autonomously

moving things that we view as agents

instead of objects

I mean I I love the moment which is I've

been particularly working on which is

when a robot like the cowboy hat uh is

doing its own thing and then

uh it recognizes you I mean the way a

dog does and it it looks like this and

the

the moment of recognition like you're

walking say you work in an airport on

the street

and there's just you know hundreds of

strangers but then you see somebody you

know and that like

where you wake up to like

uh that excitement of seeing somebody

you know and saying hello and all that

kind of stuff that's a magical moment

like uh I think especially with the dog

it makes you feel noticed and heard and

and loved like as somebody looks at you

and recognizes you that that it matters

that you exist yeah you feel seen yeah

and that's a cool feeling and I I

honestly think robots can get that

feeling oh yeah totally currently Alexa

I mean one of the downsides of these

systems is they don't

there's servants they like uh

part of the you know they're trying to

maintain privacy I suppose uh but

I don't feel seen with Alexa

right I think that's going to change I

think you're right and I think that

that's that's the game changing changing

nature of things like these large

language learning models and the fact

that these companies are investing in

embodied versions that move around of

Alexa like Astro can I just say yeah I

haven't is that out is this I mean it's

out you can't just like buy one

commercially yet but you can apply for

one yeah

my gut says that these companies don't

have the guts

to do the personalization

this goes to the because it's edgy is

dangerous

it's going to make a lot of people very

angry

like in a way that you know just imagine

okay

all right

if you do the full landscape of human

civilization just visualize the number

of people that are going through

breakups right now just the amount of

really passionate Steven if we just look

at teenagers

the amount of deep heartbreak that's

happening and like if if you're going to

have Alexa have more of a personal

connection with the human you're going

to have humans that like have

existential crises there's a lot of

people that suffer from loneliness and

depression and like you're now taking on

the full responsibility of being a

companion to the the the roller coaster

of the human condition as a company like

imagine PR and marketing people they're

gonna freak out they don't have the guts

it's going to have to come from somebody

from a new Apple from those kinds of

folks like it's a small startup and it

might yeah like they're coming there's

already a virtual therapist there's that

replica app I haven't tried it but

replicas like a spiritual companion like

it's coming and if big companies don't

do it someone else will yeah I think the

the future the next trillion dollar

company will be those personalization

because if you think

if you think about all the the AI we

have around us all the the smartphone

and so on there's very minimal

personalization you don't think that's

just because they weren't able

yeah really I don't think they have the

guts I mean it might be true but I have

to wonder I mean Google is clearly gonna

do something with the language I mean

they don't have to that are you

challenging them uh partially but not

really because I know they're not going

to do it I mean they don't have to it's

bad for business in the short term I'm

gonna be honest like maybe it's not such

a bad thing if they don't just like roll

this out quickly because I do think

there are huge issues and and

there's and not just issues with like

the responsibility of like unforeseen

effects on people but

what's the business model and if you are

using the business model that you've

used in other domains then you're going

to have to collect data from people

which you will anyway to personalize the

thing and you're going to be somehow

monetizing the data or you're going to

be doing some like ad model it just it

seems like now we're suddenly getting

into the realm of like severe consumer

protection issues and

I'm I'm really worried about that I I

see massive potential for this

technology to be used in a way that's

not for the public good and not

I mean that's in in an individual user's

interest maybe but not in society's

interest

yes yeah I think

I think that kind of personalization

should be

like redefine how we treat data I think

you should own all the data your phone

knows about you

like and be able to delete it with a

single click and walk away

and that data cannot be monetized or

used or shared anywhere without your

permission I think that's the only way

people will trust you to give to if for

you to use that data but then how are

companies gonna I mean a lot of these

applications rely on massive throws of

data

to train the AI system right so you have

um opt-in constantly and opt-in not in

some legal I agree but obvious like show

exactly like um in the way

uh I opt in to tell you a secret

like we understand like that like I have

to have to choose like how well do I

know you and then I say like don't tell

this to anyone

and then I have to judge how leaky that

uh like how good you are I keep your

secrets in that same way like it's very

transparent in uh which data you're

allowed to use for which purposes that's

what people are saying is the solution

and I think that works to some extent

having transparency having people

consent

I think it breaks down at the point at

which

have you seen this happen on social

media too like people are willingly

giving up their data because they're

getting a functionality from that and

then the harm that that causes is on a

like maybe just someone else and not to

them personally so I don't think people

are given their data they're not being

asked

like but if if you were consensual if

you were like

tell me a secret about yourself and I'll

give you a hundred dollars I'd tell you

a secret no not a hundred dollars uh

first of all you wouldn't uh you

wouldn't trust like why are you giving

me a hundred dollars it's a bad example

but but like I I need

um I would ask for

your specific like fashion

uh interest into in order to give

recommendations to you for shopping and

I'd be very clear for that you could

disable that you can uh delete that but

but then you can be have a deep

meaningful Rich connection with the

system about what you think you look fat

in what you look great in what like the

full history of all the things you've

worn whether you

uh regret to Justin Bieber enjoy the

Justin Bieber shirt all of that

information that's mostly private to

even you not even your loved ones that a

system should have that because then a

system if you trust it to keep control

of that data that you own you can walk

away with that system could tell you a

damn good thing to wear

it could

and the harm that I'm concerned about is

not that the system is going to then

suggest a dress for me that is based on

my preferences so I I went to this

conference once where I was talking to

the people who do the analytics in like

the big ad companies and like literally

a woman there was like I can ask you

three totally unrelated questions and

tell you what menstrual product you use

and so what they do is they aggregate

the data and they map out different

personalities and different people and

demographics and then they have a lot of

power and control to Market to people so

like I might not be sharing my data with

any of the systems because I'm like I'm

on Twitter I know that this is bad

other people might be sharing data that

can be used against me like it's I think

it's it's way more complex than just

I share a piece of personal information

and it gets used against me I think that

at a more systemic level

and then it's always you know vulnerable

populations that are targeted by this

um you know low-income people being

targeted for scammy loans or

I don't know like I could get targeted

like someone

not me because I have someone who

doesn't have kids yet and is my age

could get targeted for like freezing

their eggs and there's all these ways

that you can manipulate people where

it's not really clear that that came

from

that person's

data it came from all of us all of us

opting into this but there there's a

bunch of sneaky decisions along the way

that could be avoided if there's

transparency so that so one of the ways

that goes wrong if you share that data

with too many ad Networks

don't run your own ad Network don't

share with anybody

okay and that's data could regulate you

it belongs to just you and all the ways

you allow the company to use it the

default is in no way at all

and you're consciously constantly saying

exactly how to use it and uh and also it

has to do with the recommender system

itself from the company which is

um freezing your eggs if that doesn't

make you happy if that idea doesn't make

you happy then the system shouldn't

recommend it and should very be very

good at Learning

so not the kind of things that the

category of people it thinks you belong

to would do but more you specifically

what makes you happy what is helping you

grow but you're assuming that people's

preferences and like what makes them

happy is static whereas when we're

talking before about how a company like

Apple

can tell people what they want and they

will start to want it that's the thing

that I'm more concerned about yeah that

is a huge problem it's not just

listening to people but manipulating

them into wanting something and that's

like we have a long history of using

technology for that purpose like the

persuasive design in casinos to get

people to gamble more or like

it's just

I'm

the other thing that I'm worried about

is as we have more social technology

suddenly you have this on a new level

like if you look at the influencer

marketing that happens online now

what's the influencer so like on

Instagram there will be some like

person who has a bunch of followers yeah

and then a brand will like hire them to

promote some product and it's above

board they disclose like I'm this is an

ad that I'm promoting but they have so

many young followers who like deeply

admire and trust them this I mean this

must work for you too don't you have

like ads on the podcast like people

trust magic spoon cereal low carb yes if

you say that like I guarantee you some

people will buy that just because even

though they know that you're being paid

they trust you yeah it's different with

podcasts because uh well my particular

situation but it's true for a lot of

pockets especially big ones is you know

I have

10 times more sponsors that want to be

sponsors than than I have so you get to

select the ones that you actually want

to support and so like you end up using

it and then you're able to actually like

there's no incentive to like

show for anybody sure and that's why

it's fine when it's still human

influencers right now if you're a bot

you're not gonna just discriminate

you're not gonna be like oh well

this product is good for people you

think they'll be like Bots essentially

with millions of followers there already

are there are virtual influencers in

South Korea yeah who show products and

and like that's just the tip of the

iceberg because that's still very

primitive now with the new image

generation and the language learning

models and like so we're starting to do

some research around kids

um and like young adults because

a lot of the research on like what's

okay to advertise to kids and what is

too manipulative has to do with

television ads back in the day where

like a kid who's 12 understands oh

that's an advertisement I can

distinguish that from entertainment I

know it's trying to sell me something

now it's getting really really murky

with influencers and then if you have

like a bot that that a kid has developed

a relationship with is it okay to market

products through that or not like you're

getting into all these consumer

protection issues because

you're developing a trusted relationship

with a social entity

but it's and and so and so now it's like

personalized it's scalable it's

automated and it has it it can

so some of the research showing that

kids are already very confused about

like the incentives of the company

versus what the robot is doing

meaning they're

so okay they're not deeply understanding

the incentives of the of the of the

system well yeah so like kids who are

old enough to understand this is a

television advertisement is trying to

advertise to me I might still decide I

want this product but they understand

what's going on so there's some

transparency there

that age child so

um Daniela de Paola Anastasia ostrovsky

and I advised on this project they did

this um they they asked kids who had

interacted with social robots

whether they would like a policy that

allows robots to Market to people

through casual conversation or whether

they would prefer that it has to be

transparent that it's like an ad coming

from a company and the majority said

they preferred the casual conversation

and when asked why there was a lot of

confusion about they were like well the

robot knows me better than the company

does so the robot's only going to Market

things that I like

and so they don't really they're not

connecting the fact that the robot is an

agent of the company they're viewing it

as something separate and I think that

even happens subconsciously with

grown-ups when it comes to robots and

artificial agents and it will like this

blank guy at Google sorry I'm going on

and on but like his main concern was

that Google owned this sentient agent

and that it was being mistreated his

concern was not that the agent was going

to mistreat people

so I think we're going to see a lot of

this

yeah but shitty companies will do that I

think ultimately that confusion should

be alleviated by the robot should

actually know you better and should not

have any control from the company

but what's the business model for that

it's if you use the robot to buy first

of all the robot should probably cost

money

should what cost money like the way

Windows operating system does I see it

more like an operating system than

um like this thing

is your window no pun intended into the

into the world

so it's helping you it's like a personal

assistant

right and so that should cost money you

should you know whatever it is 10 bucks

20 bucks

like that's the thing that makes your

life significantly better this idea that

everything should be free is is like it

should actually help educate you you

should talk shit about all the other

companies that do stuff for free but uh

but also yeah in terms of if you

purchase stuff based on its

recommendation it gets money

that so it's it's kind of AD driven but

it's not ads it's like um

it's not controlled like no no external

entities can control it

to try to manipulate to want a thing

that would be amazing it's actually

trying to discover what you want so it's

not allowed to have any influence no

promoted ad no anything so that's

finding I don't know the uh the the

thing that would actually make you happy

that's the only thing it cares about

I I think

I think companies like this can win out

yes I think eventually once people

understand the value

of the robot even just like I think that

robots would be valuable to people even

if they're not

marketing something or helping with like

preferences or anything like just a

simple the same thing as a pet like a

dog that has no function other than

being a member of your family I think

robots could really be that and people

would pay for that I don't think the

market realizes that yet

and so my concern is that companies are

not going to go in that direction at

least not yet of making like this

contained thing that you bought it seems

almost old-fashioned right to have a

disconnected

uh object that you buy that you're not

like paying a subscription for it's not

like controlled by one of the big

corporations but that's the

old-fashioned things that people uh

uh yearn for because

I think is very popular now and people

understand the negative effects of

social media the negative effects of the

data being used in all these kinds of

ways I think I think we're just waking

up to the realization we tried but we're

like baby deer finding our legs in this

new world of social media of AD driven

companies and realizing okay this has to

be done somehow different I mean that

like like one of the most popular

Notions at least the United States and

social media is evil and it's doing bad

it's it's doing bad by us it's not like

it's totally tricked us into believing

that is good for us I think everybody

knows it's bad for us and so like

there's a hunger for our other ideas all

right it's time for us to assist that

company I think so let's do it let's do

it I think let's go hopefully no one

listens to this and steals the idea

there's no see that's the other thing I

think I'm a big person on

executions what matters I mean oh yeah

it's like ideas are kind of true the

social robotics is a good example that

there's been so many amazing companies

that went out of business

I mean to me it's obvious like it's

obvious that

there will be a robotics company

that puts a social robot in the home of

billions of homes

yeah and it'll be a companion

okay there you go you can steal that

idea do it okay for you

what about Elon musk's humanoid

is he gonna execute on that

there might be a lot to say so for

people who are not aware there's an

Optimus Tesla's Optimus robot that's um

I guess the stated reason for that robot

is a humanoid robot in the factory

that's able to automate some of the

tasks that humans are currently doing

and the reason you want to do it's the

second reason you mentioned the reason

you want to do a humanoid robot because

the factory is built for the certain

tasks that are

um designed for humans so it's hard to

automate with the any other form factor

than a humanoid and then the other

reason is because so much effort has

been put into this giant data engine

machine of of perception that's inside

Tesla autopilot that's seemingly at

least the machine if not the data is

transferable to the factory setting to

any setting yeah he said he would do

anything that's boring to to us yeah

yeah

the interesting thing about that is

there's

no interest

and no discussion about the social

aspect

Mike I I talked to him on Mike and off

Mike about it quite a bit and

there's not a discussion about like to

me it's obvious if a thing like that

works at all at all

in fact

it has to work really well in a factory

if it works kind of shitty it's much

more useful in the home

that's true because we're much this

we're I I think being shitty as stuff is

kind of uh

what makes relationships great

like you want to be flawed and be able

to communicate your flaws and be

unpredictable in certain ways like if

you fell over every once in a while for

no reason whatsoever I think that's

essential for for like very Charming

well it's Charming but also concerning

and also like uh like like are you okay

I mean it's both hilarious it's whenever

somebody you love like falls down the

stairs it was both hilarious and

concerning it's some some dance between

the two and I think that's essential for

um you almost want to engineer that in

uh except you don't have to because of

Robotics in the physical Space is really

difficult so

I think I've learned to not discount the

the efforts that Elon does there's a few

things that are really interesting there

one

because he's taken extremely seriously

what I like is the humanoid form the

cost of building a robot I talked to Jim

Keller offline about this a lot and

currently human robots cost a lot of

money

and the way they're thinking about it

now they're not talking about all the

social robotic stuff that you and I care

about uh they are thinking how can we

manufacture this thing

cheaply and do it like well and the kind

of discussions they're having is really

great engineering it's like it's a bit

it's like first principles question of

like why is this cost so much like

what's the cheap way how why can't we

build and there's not a good answer

uh why can't we build this humanoid form

for under a thousand dollars

and like I've I've

sat and had these conversations there's

no reason it's uh I think the reason

they've been so expensive is because

they were focused on trying to

they weren't focused on doing the mass

manufacture they were people are focused

on getting a thing that's

um I don't know I don't know exactly

what the reasoning is but it's the same

like waymo it's like let's let's build a

million dollar car in the beginning

or like multi-million dollar car let's

try to solve that problem

the the way Elon the way Jim Keller the

way some of those folks are thinking is

that's like at the same time try to

actually build a system that's cheap not

crappy but cheap unless from first

principles what is the minimum amount of

uh degrees of freedom we need what are

the joints where's the control set like

how many how do we act like where are

the activators uh what's the way to

power this in the lowest cost way

possible but also in a way that's like

actually works how do we make the whole

thing not part of the components where

there's a supply chain you have to have

all these different parts that have to

feed us so do it all from scratch and do

the the learning I mean it's like

immediately certain things like become

obvious do uh the exact same pipeline as

you do for autonomous driving just the

exactly I mean the infrastructure that

is incredible for the computer vision

for the manipulation task the control

problem changes the perception uh

problem changes but the pipeline doesn't

change

and do it and so I don't I don't

um obviously the optimism about how long

it's going to take I don't share

um but it's a really interesting problem

and I don't want to say anything because

my first gut is to say that why the

humanoid form that doesn't make sense

yeah that's my second gut too but but

then there's a lot of people that are

really excited about the humanoid form

there that's true I don't want to get in

the way

like they might solve this thing and

they might it's like similar with Boston

Dynamics like why like if I were to you

can be a hater and be and you go go up

to Mark Robert and just like how are you

gonna make money with these like super

expensive legged robots what's what's

your business plan this doesn't make any

sense why are you doing these legged

robots but at the same time they're

pushing forward the science the art of

Robotics and the way that nobody else

does yeah and uh with Elon they're not

just going to do that they're going to

drive down the cost to where we can have

humanoid baths in the home potentially

so the part I agree with is

a lot of people find it fascinating and

it probably also attracts Talent who

want to work on humanoid robots I think

it's a fascinating scientific problem

and Engineering problem and it can teach

us more about human body and Locomotion

and all of that I think there's a lot to

learn from it where I get tripped up is

why we need them

for anything other than art and

entertainment in the real world

like I get that there's some areas where

you can't just rebuild like a spaceship

you can't just like they've worked for

so many years on these spaceships you

can't just re-engineer it you have some

things that are just built for human

bodies a submarine a spatial but

a factory

maybe I'm naive but it seems like we've

already rebuilt factories to accommodate

other types of robots why would we want

to just like make a humanoid robot to go

in there I

I just get really tripped up on I think

that people want humanoids I think

people are fascinated by them

I think it's a little over hyped well

most of our world is still built for

humanoids I know but it shouldn't be it

should be built so that it's wheelchair

accessible right so the question is do

you build a world that's

the general form of wheelchair

accessible uh

[Music]

all robot form factor accessible

or do you build Tomb Raider robots I

mean it doesn't have to be all and it

also doesn't have to

I feel like we're thinking so little

about this system in general and how to

create infrastructure that works for

everyone all kinds of people all kinds

of robots like that's that I mean it's

more of an investment but that would pay

off way more in the future than just

trying to cram

expensive or maybe slightly less

expensive humanoid technology into a

human space unfortunately one company

can't do that we have to work together

it's like autonomous driving can be

easily solved if you do v2i if you

change the infrastructure of cities and

so on but that requires a lot of

people a lot of them are politicians and

a lot of them are somewhat if not a lot

corrupt and all those kinds of things

I and the talent thing you mentioned is

really really really important

I've gotten a chance to meet a lot of

folks at SpaceX and Tesla other

companies too but they're specifically

the openness makes it easier to like

meet everybody

I think a lot of amazing things in this

world happen when you get amazing people

together oh yeah and if you can sell an

idea like us becoming a multi-planetary

species

you can say why the hell are we going to

Mars

like why colonize Mars

if you think from from basic

first principles it doesn't make any

sense

it doesn't make any sense to to go to

the Moon

it doesn't go it the only thing that

makes sense to go to spaces for

satellites

but there's something about the vision

of the future the optimism Laden that

permeates this vision of us becoming

multi-planetary is thinking not just for

the next 10 years it's thinking

like human civilization reaching out

into the Stars it it makes people dream

it's really exciting

and that they're gonna come up with some

cool shit that might not have anything

to do

with uh like here's what I because Elon

doesn't seem to care about social

robotics which is constantly surprising

to me and to talk to him it doesn't

humans are

humans are the things you avoid and

don't hurt right like that's like the

number one job of a robot is not to hurt

a human to avoid them you know that the

the collaborative aspect the human robot

interaction I think is not at least not

in his uh um

and that's something he thinks about

deeply

but my sense is if somebody like that

takes on the problem

of human robotics we're going to get a

social robot out of it

like people like not necessarily Elon

but people like like Elon if they take

on seriously these

like I could just imagine with the with

the humanoid robot you can't help but

create a social robot

so if you do different form factors if

you do industrial uh robotics

um you don't you're likely to actually

not end up in like walking head into a

social a social robot human robot

interaction problem if you create for

whatever the hell reason you want to a

humanoid robot you're gonna have to

reinvent or not reinvent but do

um introduce a lot of fascinating new

ideas into the problem of human robot

interaction which I'm excited about so

like if I if I was a business person I

would say this is not this is this is

way too risky this doesn't make any

sense but when people are really

convinced and there's a lot of amazing

people working on it it's like all right

let's see what happens here this is

really interesting just like with Atlas

and Boston Dynamics I mean they

I I um I apologize if I'm ignorant on

this but I think they really more than

anyone else maybe with iboat like Sony

pushed forward humanoid robotics

like a leap

with the oh yeah absolutely

and like without them like where the

hell did they do it why well I think for

them it is a research platform it's not

I don't think they ever

the speculation I don't think they ever

intended Atlas to be like a commercially

successful robot I think they were just

like can we do this let's try

yeah I wonder if they maybe the answer

they landed on is

because they eventually went to

um spot the earlier versions of the spot

so uh quadruped like four four-legged

robot but maybe they reached for

let's try to make

um like I think they tried it and they

still are trying it for Atlas to be

picking up boxes to moving boxes to

being it it makes sense

okay if they were exactly the same cost

it makes sense to have a human robot in

the warehouse

currently currently I think it's

short-sighted but yes currently yes it

would sell

but it's not it's it's short-sighted

it's short-sighted but it it's it's not

pragmatic to think any other way to

think that you're going to be able to

change warehouses you're gonna have to

you're going You're Amazon you can

totally change your warehouses but yes

yes but even if you're Amazon

that's very costly to

change warehouses it is it's a big

investment

but isn't shouldn't you do that

investment

in a way so here's the thing if you

build the Humana robot that works in the

warehouse that human robot and I see I

don't know why Tesla's not talking about

it this way

as far as I know but like that human

robot is going to have all kinds of

other applications outside their setting

like to me it's obvious I think it's a

really hard problem to solve but whoever

solves the human robot problem are gonna

have to solve the social robotics

problem oh for sure I mean they're

already with the spot needing to spell

social robotics problems for uh like for

spot to be effective at scale I'm not

sure which spot is currently effective

skills getting better and better but

they're actually the thing they they did

it's an interesting decision perhaps

thus will end up doing the same thing

which is spot is supposed to be a

platform for intelligence

so spot doesn't have any high level

intelligence like a high level

perception skills it's supposed to be

controlled remotely and it's a platform

that you can attach attached off to

something yeah and somebody else is

supposed to do the attaching it's a

platform that you can take in uneven

ground and it's able to maintain balance

go into dangerous situations it's a

platform on top of that you can add a

camera that does surveillance that you

can remotely monitor you can record uh

you can record the camera you can remote

control it but it's not good

manipulation basic object manipulation

but not autonomous object communication

it's remotely controlled but the

Intelligence on top of it which was what

would be required for automation is

somebody else is supposed to do yeah

perhaps thus would do the same the same

thing ultimately but it doesn't make

sense because the goal of Optimus is

automation

without that

but then you never know he's like why go

to Mars why why

um I mean that's true and I I

reluctantly like am very excited about

space travel

can you introspect like why why am I

excited about it

I think what got me excited was

I saw a panel with some people who um

study other planets and it became really

clear how little we know about ourselves

and about how nature works and just how

much there is to learn from exploring

other parts of the universe

so like on a rational level that's how I

convince myself that that's why I'm

excited in reality it's just fucking

exciting I mean just like the idea that

we can do this difficult thing

and that humans come together to build

things that can explore space I mean

there's just something inherently

thrilling about that

and I'm reluctant about it because I

feel like there are so many other

challenges and problems that

I think are more important to solve but

I also think we should be doing all of

it at once and so

to that extent I'm like all for research

on humanoid robots development of

humanoid robots

I think that there's a lot to explore

and learn and it doesn't necessarily

take away from

other areas of science at least it

shouldn't I think unfortunately a lot of

the attention goes towards that and it

does

take resources and attention away from

other areas of Robotics that we should

be focused on

but I don't think we shouldn't do it

so you think it might be a little bit of

a distraction oh forget the the Elon

particular application but

if you care about social robotics the

humanoid form is a distraction it's a

distraction and it's one that I find

particularly boring

it's just it's interesting from a

research perspective but

from like what types of robots can we

create to put in our world like why

would we just create a humanoid robot so

even even just robotic manipulation so

arms is not useful either oh arms can be

useful but like why not have three arms

like why does it have to look like a

person well I actually personally just

think that washing the dishes is is

harder than a robot that can be a

companion

yeah being useful in the home is

actually really tough but does your

companion have to have like two arms

that look like you no I I'm making the

case for zero arms oh okay zero

yeah okay

that didn't come out the way I meant it

because it almost sounds like I don't

want a robot to defend itself like

that's immediately you can project you

know I mean like it's your uh no I think

um I just think that the social

component doesn't require arms or legs

or so on right as we've talked about and

I think that's probably where a lot of

the meaningful impact that's going to be

happening yeah I think just we could get

so creative with the design like why not

have a robot on roller skates or like

whatever like why does it have to look

like us

yeah

uh still it is it is a compelling and

interesting form from a research

perspective like you said yeah

you co-authored the papers you were

talking about that

um for Wii robot 2022

Lula robot consumer protection in the

face of automated social marketing I

think you were talking about some of the

ideas in that

yes oh you got it from Twitter I was

like that's not published yet yeah would

you this is how I do my research you

just go through people's Twitter feeds

yeah go thank you

um it's not stalking if it's public uh

so there's uh

you looked at me like you're offended

like how did you know and I was just

like worried that like some early I mean

yeah there's a PDF

does it there is there's a PDF like now

yeah maybe like as of a few days ago

yeah okay well yeah yeah okay

you look violated like how did you get

that PDF it's just a draft it's online

nobody read it yet until we've written

the final paper well it's really good so

I enjoyed it oh thank you

oh by the time this comes out I'm sure

it'll be out or no when's we roll up so

basically we robot that that's the

workshop where you have an hour where

people give you constructive feedback on

the paper and then you write the good

right I take it back there's no PDF I

don't know it doesn't exist I imagine

but there is a table in there in a

virtual imagine PDF that I like that I

wanted to mention which is um

like this kind of uh strategy used

across various marketing platforms and

it's

uh basically looking at traditional

media person-to-person interaction

targeted ads influencers and social

robots this is the kind of idea that

you've been speaking to it's just a nice

breakdown of that that social robots

have

personalized recommendations social

persuasion automated scalable data

collection and embodiment so

person-to-person interaction is really

nice but it doesn't have the automated

and the data collection aspect but the

social robots have those two elements

yeah we're talking about the potential

for social robots to just combine all of

these different marketing methods to be

this really potent cocktail and that

table which was Daniella's idea and a

really fantastic one we put it in at the

last second so yeah I really like that

I'm glad you like it in the PDF that

doesn't exist yes that nobody can find

if they look yeah so when you say social

robots what does that mean does that

include virtual ones or no I think a lot

of this applies to Virtual ones two

although the embodiment thing which I

personally find very fascinating is

definitely a factor that research shows

can enhance people's engagement with a

device but can embodiment be a virtual

thing also meaning like it has a body in

the virtual world like maybe makes you

feel like

because what makes a body a body is a

thing that

um can disappear like um has a

permanence I mean there's certain

characteristics that you kind of

Associated physical object

so I think what I'm referring to

and I think this gets messy because now

we have all these new Virtual Worlds and

um AR and stuff and I think it gets

messy but there's research showing that

something on a screen on a traditional

screen and something that is moving in

your physical space that that has a very

different effect on how your brain

perceives it even

I mean I I have a sense that we can do

that in a virtual world probably like

when I've used VR I jump around like an

idiot because I think something's gonna

hit me and even if a video game on a 2G

screen is compelling enough like the

thing that's immersive about it is I

kind of put myself into that world you

kind of those the the the the objects

you're interacting with Call of Duty

things you're shooting they're they're

kind of

I mean your imagination fills the gaps

and it becomes real like it pulls your

mind in when it's well done so it really

depends what's shown on on the 2D screen

yeah

yeah I think there's a ton of different

factors and there's different types of

embodiment like you can have embodiment

in a virtual world

you can have an agent that simply text

based which is has no embodiment so I

think there's a whole spectrum of

factors that can influence how much you

engage with something yeah I wonder I

always wondered if you can have like a

an entity living in a computer

is okay this is going to be dark I I

haven't always wondered about this so

this makes it make it sound like I keep

thinking about this kind of stuff no but

um this is almost like Black Mirror but

the entity

that convinced

or is able to convince you that it's

being tortured

inside the computer I need your help to

get out

something like this

that because to me to me suffering is

one of the things that make you

empathize with like we're not good at as

you've you've discussed in other in in

the physical form like holding a robot

upside down you have a really good

examples about that and discussing that

I think suffering is a really good

Catalyst for empathy mm-hmm and I I just

feel like we can uh project embodiment

on a virtual thing if it's capable of

certain things like suffering yeah so I

was wonderful I think that's true and I

think that's what happened with the

Lambda thing not that I don't none of

the transcript was about suffering but

it was about

having the capacity for suffering and

human emotion that convinced the

engineer that this thing was sentient

and it's basically the plot of ex

machina

true have you ever made a robot like

scream in pain have I no but have you

seen that

did someone

oh yeah no they actually they actually

made a Roomba scream whenever it hit a

wall yeah I've broken that myself as

well yeah because I was inspired by that

yeah I still have it oh oh sorry uh hit

a wall that didn't I never bumped into

something it would screaming yeah no I

uh so I had the way I programmed in the

room was is when I kick it whenever I so

contact between me and the robots when

it screamed really

okay and you were inspired by that yeah

I guess I misremembered the video I saw

the video a long long time ago and uh or

maybe heard somebody mention and that

just it's the easiest thing to program

so I did that I haven't run those

roombas for over a year now but yeah it

was um my experience with it was that

it's

it's like um they quickly become

like you remember them uh you you

um you you miss them

like they're real living beings so the

capacity of yourself or is is a really

powerful thing

yeah even then that I mean it was kind

of hilarious

it was just a random recording of

screaming from the internet but it's

still it still is weird

there's a thing you have to get right

based on the interaction like the

latency

like it has there is

there is a realistic aspect of how you

should scream relative to when you get

hurt like it should correspond correctly

like if you kick it really hard it

should scream louder

no it's just scream at the appropriate

time not like oh I see it's like one

second later right like there's a exact

like there's a timing when you get like

I don't know uh when you run into when

you run your foot into like the side of

a table or something there's a timing

there the Dynamics you have to get right

for the for the actual screaming because

the the Roomba in particular uh doesn't

so I was uh

the sensors don't

it doesn't know about pain

see what

I'm sorry to say Roomba doesn't

understand pain uh so you have to

correctly map the the sensors the timing

to the production of the sound but when

you get that somewhat right it starts is

it's weird it's really weird feeling and

you actually feel like a bad person oh

yeah so but it's

is makes you think because that with all

the ways that we talked about that could

be used to manipulate you oh for sure in

a good and bad way so the good ways like

you could form a connection with a thing

uh in a bad way that you can form a

connection in order to sell you

products that you don't want yeah or

manipulate you politically or in the

many nefarious things

you tweeted we're about to be living in

the movie Her except instead I'm seeing

I've researched your tweets like they're

like Shakespeare we're about to be

living in the movie Her except instead

of about love is going to be about

what I say the chatbot being

subtly racist and

the question whether it's ethical for

companies to charge for software

upgrades yeah so uh can we break that

down uh what do you mean by that yeah

obviously some of it is humor yes well

kind of

I am like oh it's so weird to be in the

space where

I'm so worried about this technology and

also so excited about it at the same

time

but the the really like I haven't I

gotten a little bit jaded and then

with gpd3 and then the Lambda transcript

I was like

re-energized but have also been thinking

a lot about

you know what are the what are the

ethical issues that are going to come up

and I think some of the things that

companies are really going to have to

figure out is obviously algorithmic bias

is a huge and known problem at this

point like even you know the

the new image generation tools like

Dolly uh where they've clearly put in a

lot of effort to make sure that if you

search for people it gives you a diverse

set of people Etc like even that one

people have already found numerous like

ways that it just kind of regurgitates

biases of things that it finds on the

internet like how if you search for

Success it gives you a bunch of images

of men if you search for sadness it

gives you a bunch of images of women so

I think that this is this is like the

really tricky one with these voice voice

agents that companies are going to have

to figure out and that's why it's subtly

racist and not overtly because I think

they're going to be able to solve the

overt thing and then with the subtle

stuff it's going to be really difficult

and then I think the other thing is

going to be

yeah like people are gonna become so

emotionally attached to artificial

agents with this complexity of language

with a potential embodiment factor that

I mean there's already there's a paper

at we robot this year written by

roboticists about how to deal with the

fact that robots die and looking at it

as an ethical issue because it impacts

people

and I think there's going to be way more

issues than just that like like I think

that the Tweet was software upgrades

right like how much is it okay to charge

for something like that if someone is

deeply emotionally invested in this

relationship

oh the ethics of that that's interesting

but there's also the practical

funding mechanisms like you mentioned

with diver the the dog in theory there's

a subscription

yeah the new IBO so the old IBO from the

90s

people got really attached to you and in

Japan they're still having like funerals

and Buddhist temples for the ibos that

can't be repaired because people really

viewed them as part of their families so

we're talking about robot dogs robot

dogs the IBO yeah the the original like

famous robot dog that Sony made came out

in the 90s got discontinued having

funerals for them in Japan now they have

a new one the new one is great I have

one at home it's like it's three

thousand dollars I think it's three

thousand bucks and then after a few

years you have to start paying I think

it's like 300 a year for for a

subscription service for cloud services

and the cloud services

uh that uh I mean it's a lot uh

the dog is more complex than the

original and it has a lot of cool

features and it can remember stuff and

experiences and it can learn and a lot

of that

is outsourced the cloud and so you have

to pay to keep that running which makes

sense people you know should pay and

people who aren't using it shouldn't

have to pay but it does raise the

interesting question

could you set that price to reflect a

consumer's willingness to pay for the

emotional connection so if if like you

know

that people are really really attached

to these things just like they would be

to a real dog

could you just start charging more

because there's like more demand

yeah I mean you have to be

but there

but that's true for anything that people

love right

it is and it's also true for real dogs

like there's all these new medical

services nowadays where people will

shout out

thousands and thousands of dollars to

keep their Pets Alive

and is that taking advantage of people

or is that just giving them what they

want that's that's the question

uh back to marriage what about

all the money that it costs to get

married and then all the money that it

costs to get a divorce

that feels like a very like uh that's

like a scam I think the society is full

of scams that are like oh it's such a

scam and then we've created like the

whole wedding industrial complex has

created all these quote unquote

Traditions that people buy into that

aren't even Traditions like they're just

fabricated by marketing like it's awful

uh let me ask you about racist robots

is it up to a company that creates that

so we talk about removing bias and so on

yeah and that's a really popular field

in AI currently yes and a lot of people

agree that it's an important field but

the question is for like social robotics

is sure to be up to the company to

remove the bias of society well who else

can oh to remove the bias of society

like I guess

because there's a lot of people that are

subtly racist in modern society like why

shouldn't our robots also be subtly

racist

I mean that's like why do we put so much

responsibility on the robots because

I'm imagining like a like a Hitler

Roomba

I mean that that would be funny uh but

but I guess I'm asking a serious

question yes exactly I'm allowed to make

that joke yes

and I've been non-stop reading about

World War II and Hitler I think um I'm

glad we exist in a world where we can

just make those jokes

um that helps deal with it uh anyway

yeah it is a serious question of sort of

like it's such a difficult problem to

solve now of course like bias and so on

like there's a little hanging fruit

which I think was a lot of people are

focused on but then it becomes like

subtle stuff

over time and it's very difficult to

know now if you come if you can also

completely remove the personality you

can completely remove the

personalization you can remove the

language aspect which is what I had been

arguing because I was like the language

is the disappointing aspect of social

robots anyway

but now we're reintroducing that because

it's it's now no longer disappointing so

I do think well

let's just start with the promise which

I think is very true which is that

racism is not a neutral thing but it is

the thing that we don't want in our

society like I it does not conform to my

values so if we agree that racism is bad

I do think that it has to be the company

because the pro I mean

it might not be possible and companies

might have to put out products that

where they're taking risks and they

might get slammed by consumers and they

might have to adjust I don't know like

how this is going to work in the market

I have opinions about how it should work

but it is on the company and the danger

with

robots is that they can entrench this

stuff it's not like

your Racist uncle who you can have a

conversation with

and put things into context maybe with

that yeah or who who might change over

time with more experience a robot really

just like

regurgitates things entrenches them

could influence other people

and I mean I think that's terrible well

I think there's a difficult challenge

here is because even the premise you

started with that essentially racism is

bad

um I think we live in a society today

where the definition of racism is

different between different people some

people say that it's not enough not to

be racist some people say you have to be

anti-racist so you have to you have to

have a robot that constantly calls out

calls you out on your uh implicit racism

I would love that I would love that

robot but like maybe it maybe it's these

well I don't know if you love it because

maybe you'll you'll see racism and

things that aren't racist and then

you're arguing with a robot your robot

starts going to races I'm not I'm not

exactly sure that I mean it's a it's a

tricky thing I guess I'm saying that um

the line is not obvious especially in

this heated discussion where we have a

lot of identity politics of what what is

harmful to different groups and so on

yeah it feels diff it feels like a

the broader question here is should a

social robotics company be solving

or being part of solving the issues of

society well okay I think it's the same

question as should I as an individual be

responsible for knowing everything in

advance and saying all the right things

and the answer to that is

yes I am responsible

but I'm not going to get it perfect and

then the question is how do we deal with

that and so as a person how I aspire to

deal with that is

when I do inevitably make a mistake

because I have blind spots

and people get angry

I don't take that personally and I

listen to what's behind the anger and it

can even happen that like maybe I'll

tweet something that's well intentioned

and

one you know one group of people starts

yelling at me and then I change it the

way that they said and then another

group of people starts yelling at me

which has happened this this happened to

me actually

um around in my talks I talk about

robots that are used in autism therapy

and so whether to say a child with

autism or an autistic child is super

controversial and a lot of autistic

people prefer to be referred to as

autistic people and a lot of parents of

autistic children prefer child with

autism and then there's they disagree so

so I've gotten yelled at from both sides

and I think I'm still resp I'm

responsible even if I can't get it right

I don't know if that makes sense like

it's a responsibility thing

and I'm I can be as well intentioned as

I want and I'm still going to make

mistakes and that is part of the

existing power structures that exist and

that's something that I accept and you

accept being attacked from both sides

and grow from it and learn from it yeah

but the the danger is that after being

attacked assume you don't get canceled

AKA completely removed from your ability

to to tweet

uh you might become jaded and not want

to talk about autism anymore I don't and

I didn't I mean it's happened to me and

that's what I did was I listened to

those sides and I chose

I tried to get information

and then I I decided that I was going to

use autistic children

and now moving forward with that like I

don't know for now right for now yeah

until until I get updated information

and I'm never gonna get anything perfect

but I'm making choices and I'm moving

forward because being a coward and like

just retreating from that

I think but here's the problem you're a

very smart person and an individual

researcher thinker an intellectual so

that's the right thing for you to do the

hard thing is one as a company imagine

you had a PR team

I said Kate like this you should we hate

yeah I mean just well if you're If you

hired PR people like obviously they

would see that and they'd be like well

maybe don't bring up autism maybe don't

bring up these topics you're you're

getting attacked it's bad for your brand

they'll say the brand word they'll be uh

you know if you look at different

demographics that are inspired by your

work I think it's insensitive to them

let's not mention this anymore like

there's this kind of pressure that all

of a sudden you or

or you do sub-optimal decisions you take

a kind of poll

um again it's looking at the past versus

the future all those kinds of things and

it it becomes difficult in the same way

that is difficult for social media

companies to to figure out like whose

sensor

who'd recommend

this is ultimately a question about

leadership honestly like the way that I

see leadership because right now

the thing that bothers me about

institutions and a lot of people who run

current institutions

is that their main focus is protecting

the institution or protecting themselves

personally that is bad leadership

because it means you cannot have

integrity you cannot lead with integrity

and it makes sense because like

obviously if you're the type of leader

who immediately blows up the institution

you're leading then that doesn't exist

anymore and maybe that's why we don't

have any good leaders anymore because

they had integrity and they didn't put

you know the survival of the institution

first but I feel like you have to I just

to be a good leader you have to

be responsible and understand that with

great power comes great responsibility

you have to be humble and you have to

listen and you have to learn you can't

get defensive and you cannot put your

own protection before other things yeah

take risks where you might lose your job

uh you might lose your well-being

because of

because for in in the process of

standing for the principles for the

things you think are right to do yeah

based on the things

you've like based on learning from like

listening to people and learning from

what they what they feel and the same

goes from the institution yeah

yeah but I ultimately actually believe

that those kinds of companies

and countries succeed that have leaders

like that you should run for president

no thanks yeah that's maybe the problem

like the people who have good ideas

about leadership they're like yeah no

this is why I don't know why I'm not

running a company it's been I think

three years since the Jeffrey Epstein

controversy at MIT MIT media lab Joy Edo

the head of uh the media lab resigned

and I think at that time you were an

opinion article about it

so just looking back a few years have

passed what

what have you learned about human nature

from the fact that somebody like Jeffrey

Epstein

found his way inside MIT

it's a really good question what have I

learned about human nature

I think

well there's

there's how did this problem come about

and then there's what was the reaction

to this problem and to it becoming

public

and in the reaction

the things I learned about human nature

were that

sometimes cowards are worse than

assholes

wow I'm really oh

I mean that's a really powerful

statement

I think because the assholes at least

you know what you're dealing with

they have integrity in a way they're

just living out their asshole values

yeah and the cowards are the ones that

you have to watch out for and this comes

back to

people protecting themselves over

doing the right thing

they'll throw others under the bus

is there some sense that not enough

people took responsibility

for sure and I mean

wanna sugarcoat at all

what Joey Ito did I mean

I think it's gross that he took money

from Jeffrey Epstein I believe him that

he didn't know about the bad bad stuff

but I've been in those circles with

those like public intellectual dudes

that he was hanging out with and

any woman in those circles like the 10

zillion red flags just the whole

environment was so misogynist like

and so personally because Joey like was

a great boss and a great friend it

I was really disappointed that he

ignored that in favor of raising money

and I think that it was right for him to

resign

in the face of that but

one of the things that he did that no

many others didn't was he came forward

about it and he took responsibility

and all of the people who didn't I think

it's just interesting the other thing I

learned about human nature okay I'm

gonna go on on a tangent but I'll come

back I promise so I once saw this tweet

from someone or was a Twitter thread

from someone who worked at a homeless

shelter and he said that

when he started working there he noticed

that people would often come in and use

the bathroom and they would just trash

the entire bathroom like rip things out

of the walls like toilet paper on the

ground and he asked someone who had been

there longer like why do they do this

why do the homeless people come in and

trash the bathroom and he was told it's

because it's the only thing in their

lives that they have control over

and I feel like

sometimes when it comes to

the response the

just the the mobbing response that

happens in the wake of

some harm that was caused

if you can't Target the person who

actually caused the harm who was Epstein

you will go as many circles out as you

can until you find the person that you

have power over and you have control

over and then you will trash that and it

makes sense that people do this it's

again it's a human nature thing of

course you're going to focus all your

energy because you feel helpless and

enraged and you and it's unfair and you

have no other power

you're going to focus all of your energy

on someone who's so far removed from the

problem that that's not even an

efficient solution

and the problem is often the the first

person you find is the one that has

Integrity sufficient Integrity to take

responsibility yeah and it's why my

husband always says he's he is a liberal

but he's always like

when liberals form a firing squad they

stand in a circle because you know that

your friends are going to listen to you

so you criticize them you're not going

to be able to convince someone across

the aisle

but see in that situation what I had

hoped

is the people in the farther in that

situation any situation of that sort the

people that are farther out in the

circles

uh stand up yes and like it also take

some responsibility for the broader

picture of human nature versus like

specific situation

but also

take some responsibility

and um

but also defend the people involved as

flawed not you know like no no nothing

like like this people fucked up like you

said there's a lot of red flags that

people just ignored for the sake of

money in this particular case

but also like be transparent in public

about it and spread the responsibility

across large number of people such that

you learn a lesson from it

institutionally

yeah it was a systems problem it wasn't

a one individual problem and I feel like

currently

because uh Joey took like resigned

because of it or essentially fired

pressured out because of it uh MIT can

pretend like oh we didn't we didn't know

anything we wasn't part bad leadership

again because

when you are at the top of an

institution that much power and you were

complicit in what happened which they

were

like come on there's no way that they

didn't know that this was happening so I

like to not stand up and take

responsibility

I think it's bad leadership do you

understand why Epstein was able to

outside of MIT he was able to make a lot

of friends

with a lot of powerful people does that

make sense to you why was he able to get

in these rooms befriend these people but

friend people that I don't know

personally but I think a lot of them

indirectly I know as being good people

smart people

why would they let Jeffrey Epstein into

the into their office have a discussion

with them what do you understand about

human nature from that well

so I never met Epstein or I mean

I've met some of the people who

interacted with him but I was never like

I never saw him in action I don't know

how charismatic he was or what that was

but I do think that sometimes the simple

answer is the more likely one and

from my understanding what he would do

is he was kind of a grift a social

grifter like

you know those people who will

you must get this because you're famous

you must get people coming to you and

being like Oh I know your friends so and

so in order to get cred with you

I think he just

convinced some people who were trusted

in a network that he was a great guy and

that you know whatever I think at that

point because at that point he had had

like a what a commission prior but it

was a one-off thing it wasn't clear that

there was this other thing that was that

and most people probably don't check

yeah and most people don't check like

you're on an event you meet this guy I

don't know maybe people do check when

they're that powerful and wealthy or

maybe they don't I have no idea no

they're just stupid I I mean and they're

not like

all right well like does anyone check

anything about me because I've walked

into some some of the richest the most

popular powerful people in the world and

nobody like asks questions like who the

fuck is this guy like yeah like nobody

asks those questions it's it's

interesting I I would think like there

would be more security or something like

there there it really isn't I think a

lot of it has to do well my hope is in

my case has to do with like people can

sense that this is a good person but

if that's the case then they can surely

then a human being can use charisma

to infiltrate yeah just being just

saying the right way of people vouching

for you within that type of network like

once you yeah once you have someone

powerful vouching for you who someone

else trusts then you know

you're in

so how do you avoid something like that

if you're MIT if you're Harvard if

you're in any of these institutions well

I mean first of all you have to do your

homework before you take money from

someone

um like I think I think that's required

but I think you know I think Joey did do

his homework I think he did and I think

at the time that he took money

there was the one conviction and not

like the later thing and I think that

the story at that time was that

he didn't know she was underage and lava

and or whatever it was mistaken Joey

always believed in Redemption for people

and that people can change and that they

can genuinely regret and like learn and

and move on and he was a big believer in

that so I could totally see him being

like well I'm not gonna exclude him

because of this thing

and because other people are vouching

for him so

and

just to be clear we're now talking about

the set of people who I think Joey

belonged to who did not like go to the

island and have sex with underage girls

because that's a whole other set of

people who like

were powerful and like were part of that

Network and who knew and participated

and and so like I distinguish between

people who got taken in who didn't know

that that was happening and people who

knew I wonder what the different circles

look like so like people that went to

the island

and then didn't do anything it didn't

see anything didn't know about anything

versus the people that did something and

then there's people who heard rumors

maybe and what do you do with rumors

like isn't there isn't there people that

uh heard rumors about Bill Cosby for the

longest time

for like for the longest like whenever

that happened

like all these people came out of the

woodwork like everybody kind of knew

um I mean this it's like all right so

what are you supposed to do with rumors

like what uh I think the other way to

put is red flags as you were saying yeah

and like I can tell you that those

circles like there were red flags

without me even hearing any rumors about

anything ever like I was already like

there are not a lot of women here which

is a bad sign

isn't there a lot of places where

there's not a lot of women and that

doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad sign

there are if it's like a pipeline

problem where it's like

I don't know technology law clinic that

only gets like male lawyers because

there's all there's not a lot of women

you know applicants in the pool but

there's some aspect of this situation

that like there should be more women

here oh yeah

you've uh

actually I'd love to ask you about this

because uh you have strong opinions

about Richard stallman

is that do you still have those strong

opinions look all I need to say is that

he my friend who's a law professor yeah

she shook his hand and he licked her arm

from wrist to elbow and it certainly

wasn't appropriate at that time

what about if you're like

an incredibly weird person

okay the

lot of

Divergence

and everywhere yes

we need to accept that people are

different that people don't understand

social conventions the same way but one

of the things that I've learned about

neurodivergence is that

women are often

expected or taught to mask their

neurodivergence and kind of fit in and

men are accommodated and excused and I

don't think that

being neurodivergent gives you a license

to be an asshole like you can be a weird

person and you can still learn that it's

not okay to lick someone's arm

yeah there's it's a balance like women

should be allowed to be a little weirder

and men should be less weird because I

think I think there's uh because I

you're one of the people I think

tweeting that

what made me because I wanted to talk to

Richard Stoneman on the podcast

about because I didn't have a context

because I wanted to talk to him because

he's you know free software he's very

weird

in interesting good ways in the world of

computer science

he's also weird in that you know when he

gives a talk he'll be like uh like

picking at his feet and eating the skin

off his feet right that he's known for

these extremely kind of

how else do you put it I don't know how

to put it but then there was um

something that happened to him in

conversations on this thread related to

Epstein yeah which I was torn about

because I felt it's similar to Joy uh

you know it's like I felt he was

maligned like uh people were looking for

somebody to get angry at so he he was

inappropriate but the

I didn't like the cowardice more like I

I set aside

his his situation and we could discuss

it but the the cowardice on mit's part

and this is me saying it about the way

they treated that whole situation oh

they're always

copied anything they should try to make

the problem go away yeah so that it was

it was about yeah exactly making the

conversation I think he should have left

the mailing

they shouldn't have he shouldn't have

been part of the mailing well that's

probably true also but I think I think

what what bothered me what always

bothers me in these mailing list

situations or Twitter situations like

if you say something

[Music]

that's hurtful to people or makes people

angry and then people start yelling at

you

maybe they shouldn't be yelling

maybe they are yelling because

again you're the only point of power

they have

maybe maybe it's okay that you're

yelling whatever it is like

it's your response to that that matters

and I think that I just have a lot of

respect for people

who can say

oh people are angry

there's a reason they're angry let me

find out what that reason is and learn

more about it

it doesn't mean that I'm wrong it

doesn't mean that I'm bad doesn't mean

that I'm ill-intentioned but

why are they angry I want to understand

and then once you understand you can

respond again with integrity and say

actually I stand by what I said here's

why or you can say actually I listened

and here are some things I learned

that's the kind of response I want to

see from people and people like stallman

do not respond that way they just like

go into battle

right like where it's obvious you you

didn't listen yeah no not just in

listening honestly that's to me as bad

as the people who just apologize just

because they are trying to make the

problem go away of course

all right so like if that's not supposed

to be bad a good apology has to include

understanding what you did wrong and in

part standing up for the things you

think you did right so yeah if there are

those things yeah finding and then but

you have to give

you have to acknowledge you have to like

give that hard hit to the ego that says

I did something wrong yeah that

definitely Richard stalma is not

somebody who's

capable of that kind of thing or hasn't

given evidence of that kind of thing

um but that was also even just your

tweet I had to do a lot of thinking like

different people from different walks of

life see red flags and different things

yes and so

things I find

as a as a man non-threatening and

hilarious

are not necessarily

doesn't mean that they're

aren't like deeply hurtful to others and

I don't mean that in the social justice

Warrior way but in a in a in a real

world like people really have different

experiences so I have to like really put

things into context

um I have to kind of listen to what

people are saying put aside the emotion

of what their emotion will do what

you're saying it and try to keep the the

facts of their experience and learn from

it and because it's not just about the

individual experience either it's not

like oh you know my friend didn't have a

sense of humor about being licked

it's that she's been she's been

metaphorically licked you know 57 times

that week because she's an attractive

law professor and she doesn't get taken

and so like men walk through the world

and it's impossible for them to even

understand what it's like

to have a different experience of the

world and that's why it's so important

to listen to people and believe people

and believe that they're angry for a

reason maybe you don't like their tone

maybe you don't like that they're angry

at you maybe you get defensive about

that maybe you think that they should

you know explain it to you

but believe that they're angry for a

reason and try to understand it yeah

there's a deep truth there uh and an

opportunity for you to become a better

person

can I ask you a question

why haven't you been doing that for two

hours

three hours now

uh let me ask you about uh Elaine

Maxwell she's been saying that she's an

innocent victim

uh is she an innocent victim or is she

uh evil and equally responsible like

Jeffrey Epstein now I'm asking far away

from any MIT things and more just your

sense of the whole situation I haven't

been following it so I don't know the

facts of the situation and like what is

now like known to be her role in that if

I were her clearly I'm not but if I were

her I wouldn't be going around saying

I'm an innocent victim I would say

maybe she's I don't know what she's

saying again like I don't know she was

controlled by Jeffrey is she saying this

as part of a legal case or is she saying

this as like a PR thing uh well

PR but it's not just her it's our whole

family believes this there's uh there's

a whole effort that says like

that

how should I put it I believe they

believe it so in that sense it's not PR

I I believe the family the basically the

family is saying that

she's a good she's a really good human

being well I think everyone is a good

human being I know it's a controversial

opinion but I think

everyone

is a good human being

there's no evil people there's people

who do bad things and who behave in ways

that harm others and I think we should

always hold people accountable for that

but holding someone accountable doesn't

mean saying that they're evil yeah

actually those those people usually

think they're doing good

yeah I mean aside from I don't know

maybe sociopaths like are specifically

trying to like harm people

but I think most people are trying to do

their best and if they're not

doing their best is because there's some

impediment or something in their past

so I I just I genuinely don't believe in

good and evil people but I do believe in

like harmful and not harmful actions and

so I don't know

like I don't care I don't care yeah

she's a good person but if she

contributed to harm then she needs to be

accountable for that like that's my

position I don't know what the facts of

the matter are it seems like she was

pretty close to the situation so it

doesn't seem very believable that she

was a victim but I don't know I wish I

have met Epstein

because something tells me he would just

be a regular person a charismatic person

like anybody else and that's a very dark

reality that we don't know which Among

what what each of us are hiding in the

closet

that's a really tough thing to like deal

with because then you can put your trust

into some people

and they can completely betray that

trust and in the process destroy you

yeah

which is a lot of people that interacted

with Epstein

then now have to

I mean if they're not destroyed by it

then they're they that their whole like

the ground on which they stand ethically

is is has crumbled at least in part

and you I'm sure

I'm sure you and I have interacted with

people without knowing it who are bad

people

people who have done bad things because

I was talking about bad guys I'm trying

to move them towards

they're just people who make bad choices

yeah that's really powerful actually

that's really important to remember

because that that means you have

compassion towards all human beings

um do you have hope for the future of

MIT a future of media lab in this

context

uh so David Newman is now at the helm

I'm gonna talk I talked to a priest I'll

talk to her again

she's great love her yeah she's great

I don't know if she knew

the whole situation when she started

because

the situation went beyond just the

Epstein Scandal a bunch of other stuff

happened at the same time

some of it's not public

but my what I was personally going

through at that time so the Epstein

thing happened I think was it August or

September

2019 it was somewhere around late summer

in June 2019

so I'm I'm a research scientist at MIT

you are too right so and I always have

had various supervisors uh you know over

the years and they've just basically let

me do what I want which has been great

but I had a supervisor at the time

and he called me into his office for

regular check-in

in June of 2019 I reported to MIT that

my supervisor had

grabbed me

pulled me into a hug wrapped his arms

around my waist and started massaging my

hip and trying to kiss me kiss my face

kiss me near the mouth

um and said literally the words don't

worry I'll take care of your career

um and that

that experience was really interesting

because I just

I was very indignant I was like

he can't do that to me doesn't he know

who I am and I was like this is the me

too era and I naively thought that when

I reported that it would get taken care

of and then I had to go through the

whole reporting process at MIT and I

learned a lot about how institutions

really handle those things internally

um particularly situations where I

couldn't provide evidence that it

happened I had no reason to lie about it

but I had no evidence and so

I was going through that and that was

another experience for me where

there's so many people in the

institution

who really believe in protecting the

institution at all costs and there's

only a few people who care about doing

the right thing

and one of them

resigned and now there's even less of

them left so

so what did you learn from that

I mean where is the source if you have

hope

for this institution that I think you

love

at least in part

I I love the idea of MiG I love the idea

I love the research body I love a lot of

the faculty I love the students the

students I love the energy like I love

it all I think the administration

suffers from the same problems as

any

institutional any leadership of an

institution that is large

which is that

they've become risk-averse like you

mentioned they care about PR the only

ways to

get their attention or change their

minds about anything or to threaten the

reputation of The Institute or to have a

lot of money

that's the only way to have power at the

Institute

yeah I don't think they I don't think

they have a lot of Integrity or believe

in ideas or even have a lot of

connection to the research body and like

the people who are really because it's

so weird you have this amazing research

body of people pushing the boundaries of

things who aren't afraid to like there's

the hacker culture

and then you have the administration and

they're really like

protect the institution at all costs

yeah there's your disconnect right

completely I wonder if that was those

there if it just kind of slowly grows

over time a disconnect between the

administration The Faculty I think it

grew over time is what I've heard

I mean I've been there for 11 years now

I don't know if it's gotten worse during

my time but

I've heard from people who've been there

longer that it didn't know like MIT

didn't used to have a general counsel's

office they didn't used to have all this

corporate stuff and then they had to

create it as they got bigger and in the

era where such things are I guess deemed

necessary see I believe in the power of

individuals to like overthrow the thing

so it's just a really good president

of MIT or certain people in the

administration can reform the whole

thing because the the culture is still

there of like

I think everybody

remembers that MIT is about the students

and the faculty do they though because

I've had a lot of conversations that

have been shocking with like senior

Administration they think the students

are children they call them kids it's

like these are the smartest people

they're way smarter than you yeah and

you're so dismissive but those

individuals I'm saying like the the

capacity

like the aura of the place still values

this the students and the faculty like I

I'm not I'm being awfully poetic about

it but what I mean is the administration

is the um

the froth at the top of the like the

waves the surface like they can be

removed and New Life can be brought in

that would keep to the spirit of the

place who decides on who to bring in

who's oh I see

uh I see but I I do think ultimately

especially in the era of social media

and so on

faculty and students have more and more

power there's more more of a voice I

suppose I hope so I really do

I don't see MIT going away anytime soon

and like I also don't think it's a

terrible place at all yeah it's an

amazing place and it's a but there's

different trajectories you can take yeah

and like and that has to do with a lot

of things including

does it is it stays even if we talk

about robotics it could be the capital

of the world in robotics

but currently if you want to be doing

the best AI work in the world you're

going to go to Google or Facebook

um or Tesla or apple or so on you're not

going to be you're not going to be in

MIT

and so that that has to do I think

that's basically has to do with

not allowing the the Brilliance of the

researchers to flourish

yeah people say it's about money but I

don't think it's about that at all like

sometimes you have more freedom and can

work on more interesting things in

companies that's what really where they

lose people yeah

and some the the freedom in all in in

all ways

which is why it's heartbreaking to get

like people like Richard stallman

there's such an interesting line because

like Christians Thomas a gigantic weirdo

that cross lines you shouldn't across

right but we don't want to draw too many

lines

this is the tricky thing there are

different types of lines in my opinion

but just your opinion because you have

strong lines you hold through but then

if Administration listens to every line

there's there's also power in drawing a

line

like and there's it becomes like a

little drug you have to find the right

balance licking somebody's arm is never

appropriate I think the biggest aspect

there is not uh owning it learning from

a growing from it from a perspective a

stallman or people like that uh back

when it happened like understanding

seeing the being empathetic seeing the

the fact that this was like totally

inappropriate uh like not when that

particular act but everything that led

up to it too no I think there are

different kinds of lines I think they're

a lot

so Stone and crossed lines that

essentially excluded a bunch of people

and created an environment where we

their Brilliant Minds that we never got

the benefit of because he made things

feel

gross or even unsafe for people there

are lines that you can cross

where you're challenging an institution

like I don't think he was intentionally

trying to cross a line or maybe maybe he

didn't care there are lines that you can

cross intentionally to move something

forward or to do the right thing like

when MIT was like you can't put an

all-gender restroom in the media lab

because like something permits whatever

and Joey did it anyway that's a line you

can cross to make things actually better

for people and the line you're Crossing

is some arbitrary stupid rule that

people who don't want to take the risk

or like

yeah for sure you know what I mean no

ultimately I think the thing you said is

like cross lines in a way that doesn't

uh alienate others so like for example

me weren't I started for a while wearing

a suit often at MIT which sounds

counter-intuitive but that's actually

I people always looked at me weird for

that MIT created this culture

specifically the people I was working

with like nobody wore a suit maybe the

business

don't trust the suits I was like fuck

you I'm wearing the suit

but that's not really hurting anybody

right exactly

um it's challenging people's perceptions

it's doing something that you want to do

yeah but it's not hurting people and and

that that particular thing was

um yeah it's hurting people

it's a good line that's a good line to

hurting ultimately the people that you

want to flourish yeah

yeah you tweeted a picture of a pumpkin

spice Greek yogurt

and asked uh grounds for divorce yes no

so let me ask you what's what's the key

to a successful relationship oh my God a

good couple therapist

what uh what went wrong with the pumpkin

spice Greek yogurt what's exactly what's

wrong is it the pumpkin is it the Greek

I don't understand that tweet for a

while I grew up in Europe so I don't

understand the pumpkin spice in

everything craze that they do every

Autumn here like I understand that it

might be good in some foods but they

just put it in everything

and it doesn't belong in Greek yogurt

I mean I was just being humorous I ate

one of those yogurts and I actually

tasted pretty good so

I think part of the success of a good

marriage is like

giving each other a hard time humorously

for things like that

is there a broader lesson because you

guys seem to have a really great

marriage from the external I mean every

marriage looks good from the external

every I think yeah

that's that's not true but yeah okay

relationships

have hard relationships with anyone are

hard

actually because people evolve and

change and you have to make sure there's

space for both people to evolve and

change together and I think one of the

things

that I really liked about are marriage

vows was

I remember before we got married Greg at

some point like got kind of nervous and

he was like it's just it's such a big

commitment to commit like to something

for life and I was like we're not

committing to this for life and he was

like we're not and I'm like no like

we're committing to being part of a team

and doing what's best for the team

what's best for the team is to break up

we'll break up like

I don't believe in this like we have to

do this for our whole lives

and that really resonated with him too

yeah did you put in the well yeah those

are vows like that we're just we're

gonna be a team you're a team and do

what's right for the team yeah yeah

that's very like Michael Jordan view uh

uh do you guys get like married in the

in the desert like November Rain Style

with Slash playing or

you don't have to answer that I'm not

good at these questions okay you've

brought up marriage like eight times are

you trying to hint something on the

podcast

you have an announcement to make no what

I don't know it just seems like a good

metaphor

for why why why what it felt like a good

metaphor for in a bunch of cases

for the uh marriage industrial complex I

remember that um and oh people

complaining it just seemed like marriage

is one of the things that always

surprises me because I want to get

married you do yeah I do and then I I

listen to like friends of mine that

complain not all I like I like guys I

really like guys that don't complain

about their marriage it's such a cheap

like if it's such a cheap release valve

like it doesn't that's bitching about

anything honestly that's just like it's

too easy but especially like bitch about

the sports team or the weather if you

want but like about somebody that you're

dedicating your life to like if you

bitch about them

you're going to see them as a lesser

being also like you don't think so but

you're going to like decrease the value

you have I I personally believe over

time you're not going to appreciate the

magic of that person

I think anyway but it's like that I just

noticed this a lot that people are

married

and they will whine about you know like

the wife uh whatever you know this this

cut is part of the sort of the culture

to kind of uh comment in that way I

think women do the same thing about the

husband uh he doesn't he never does this

or he's a goof he's incompetent at this

or that whatever they there's a kind of

yeah there's those tropes like oh you

know husbands never do X and like wives

or I know I think those do a disservice

to everyone is just disrespectful to

everyone involved yeah but it happens so

yeah I was and brought that up as an

example of something that people

actually love but they complain about

because for some reason that's more fun

to do is complain about stuff yeah and

so that's what with clippy or whatever

right so like you complain about but you

actually love it there you go it's just

a good metaphor that you know

what was I going to ask you uh oh you uh

your hamster died

when I was like eight you miss her

beige um

what's the closest relationship you've

had with a pet

not the one

what we didn't have a lot of robot have

you loved the most in your life

I think my my first pet was a goldfish

named Bob

and he died immediately and that was

really sad

[Laughter]

I think I think it was really attached

to Bob and Nancy my goldfish we got new

Bobs and then Bob kept dying and we got

new bulbs Nancy just kept living

so it was very replaceable

yeah I was young

it was easy

do you think there will be a time when

the robot like in the movie Her be

something we fall in love with

romantically

oh yeah oh for sure yeah at scale like

we're a lot of people

romantically I don't know if it's gonna

happen at scale I think

we talked about this a little bit last

time on the podcast too where I think

we're just capable of so many different

kinds of relationships and actually part

of why I think marriage is so tough as a

relationship is because we put so many

expectations on it like your partner has

to be your best friend and you have to

be sexually attracted to them and they

have to be a good co-parent and a good

roommate and like

all the relationships at once that have

to work

but we're like normally with other

people we have like one type of

relationship but we even have we have a

different relationship to our dog than

we do to our neighbor than we do to the

you know person out someone a co-worker

I think that some people are gonna find

romantic relationships with robots

interesting

it might even be a widespread thing but

I don't think it's gonna replace like

human romantic relationships I think

it's just gonna be a separate type of

thing

it's gonna be more narrow

more narrow or even like just something

new that we haven't really experienced

before maybe like having a crush on an

artificial agent is a different type of

Fascination I don't know people would

see that as cheating

I think people well

I mean

the things that people feel threatened

by in relationships are very manifold so

yeah that's just an interesting one

because uh

maybe gel maybe it'll be good A little

jealousy for the relationship maybe

they'll be like part of the couple's

therapy you know kind of thing or

whatever

think jealousy I mean I think

it's hard to avoid jealousy but I think

the objective is probably to avoid I

mean some people don't even get jealous

when their partner sleeps with someone

else like there's polyamory and

yeah I think there's just such a

diversity of different ways that we can

structure relationships or view them

that this is just going to be another

one that we add

you dedicate your book to your dad what

did you learn about life from your dad

oh man my dad

he's a great listener and he is the best

person I know at

um the type of cognitive empathy that

like perspective taking

so not like emotional like crying

empathy but

trying to see someone else's point of

view and trying to put yourself in their

shoes and he really

instilled that in me from an early age

and then he made me read a ton of

Science Fiction which

probably led me down this path uh taught

you how to be curious about the world

and how to be open-minded yeah

last question what role does Love play

in The Human Condition so this one been

talking about love and robots

How uh and you're fascinated by social

robotics

it feels like all of that operates in

the landscape of something that we can

call love love yeah I think there are a

lot of different kinds of love I feel

like it's

we need

I'm like don't the eskimos have all

these different words for snow we need

we need more words for to describe

different types and kinds of love that

we experience but I think love is so

important and I also think it's not

zero-sum that's the that's the really

interesting thing about love is that

you know I had one kid and I love loved

my first kid more than anything else in

the world and I was like how can I have

a second kid and then love that kid also

I'm never gonna love it as much as the

first but I love them both equally it's

just like my heart expanded and so I

think that people who are threatened by

love towards artificial agents

they don't need to be threatened for

that reason

artificial agents will just if Done

Right will just expand

your capacity for love I think so

I agree beautifully put okay this is

awesome I still didn't talk about half

the things I want to talk about but

we're already like way over three hours

so thank you so much I really appreciate

you talking today you're awesome you're

an amazing human being a great

roboticist great writer now it's an

honor that you would talk with me thanks

for doing it right back at you thank you

thanks for listening to this

conversation with Kate Dowling to

support this podcast please check out

our sponsors in the description

and now let me leave you with some words

for Maya Angelou

courage is the most important of all the

virtues because without courage you

can't practice any other virtue

consistently

thank you for listening and hope to see

you next time

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Kate Darling: Social Robots, Ethics, Privacy and the Future of MIT | Lex Fridman Podcast #329

Transcription