I think that animals are a really great thought experiment
when we're thinking about AI and robotics,
because, again, 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 domesticated them not because they do what we do,
but because what they do is different and that's useful.
And 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 Lex Friedman podcast.
The supported, 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's shirt for the podcast.
So now, looking back, you're a respected researcher,
all the amazing accomplishments in robotics.
You're an author.
Was this one of the proudest moments of your life,
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 gonna 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 were like, oh, well, I'm interviewing some art.
Didn't you say you were interviewing
some military general afterwards to make me feel better?
CTO of Lockheed Martin, I think.
Oh, that's what it was.
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 used for painting?
I think I bought it for my husband as a joke.
And yeah, we were gut renovating a house at the time,
and I had worn it to the site.
Got his joke, and now you wear it.
Okay.
Have you worn it since?
Is this the one time?
No, like how could I touch it again?
It was on your podcast, and that's frames.
It's like a wedding dress or something like that.
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 opened 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,
that allows you to navigate the uncertainty
of life.
So that means like autonomous vehicles to me
in that sense are robots
because they navigate 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 definition
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
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.
They'll say it has to be able to sense its 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 roboticists would not call it a robot.
So there's really 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 a 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 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, et cetera.
But that's not where we've ended up.
AI doesn't think like people.
We wind up in this fallacy
where we're comparing these two and where,
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 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 practical,
what could 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 in 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 of the 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 all you need is something that's enough
like a person for it to give off cues
that someone relates to,
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 R2D2 more than C3PO, who's a humanoid.
So 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.
Just a voice, 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 robot, the right people to design those as animators,
like Disney type of people versus like roboticists.
Roboticists, quote unquote, are mostly clueless.
It seems like-
Well, no, they just have their own discipline
that they're very good at and they don't have-
Yeah, but that 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.
Like if you call yourself a roboticist,
there'll be something very different.
Cause I think more and more you'd be like a,
maybe like a control engineer or something, controls engineer.
Like 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 perception interpreting the world aspect,
in the brain part, not the basic control level part.
You call it basic, it's actually really complex.
It's very, very complicated.
And that's why, but like, I think you're so right
and what a time to be alive.
Yeah.
And 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 we're seeing all these mistakes
that companies are making
because they focused 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.
Or 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.
But the magic is in the self-deprecating humor
and the self-awareness about where our flaws are
or all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, and there's a whole body of research
in human-robot interaction showing ways to do this.
But a lot of these companies haven't,
they don't do HRI.
They, 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 Marty the same way again.
Thank you for that.
You're welcome.
But like, 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 people mostly hate Marty?
Cause I like, I like Marty, I feel like less.
You like flippy.
Yeah, I do.
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.
But our theory, so this was with a, a student at MIT,
Daniela de Paola.
She noticed that everyone on Facebook
in her circles was complaining about Marty.
They were like, what is this creepy robot?
It's 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 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 it's not.
It looks for spills on the floor.
It doesn't actually like look at any people.
It's watching as creepy as getting in the way.
Those were 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 Marty is like, oh, there he goes again
doing this stupid surveillance thing,
but you grow to love the, 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 busting each other's chops,
like making fun of each other.
And then if I think people would really love it
if Marty talked back.
And like, 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'm watching you
because you're so important with your shopping patterns.
I'm collecting all this data 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 be that it might be combined with love
or like whatever it is, it's a more extreme response
because they view these things as social agents
and not objects.
And that was, so Clifford Nass was a big
human computer interaction person.
And 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 different,
like 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 find
deep meaningful relationship with robots.
And well, maybe with Marty.
I mean, I just would,
I would have designed Marty a little differently.
Like how?
Isn't there a charm to the clumsiness, the slowness?
There is if you're not trying to get through
with a 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 two big googly eyes on Marty.
Oh yeah.
And I wonder if that contributed maybe
to people feeling watched
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 doesn't,
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 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.
Like the more personality you give it,
the more it feels like it's not sharing data
with anybody else.
Like 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.
No, I'm kidding.
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 for some reason, I think probably with Marty,
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 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 are your actually thoughts about that?
The way the avatars, the way like Mark Zuckerberg
looks in that world, you know, the metaverse,
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?
Cause it's a kind of, it's a,
it feels like a similar problem to social robotics,
which is how you design a digital virtual world
that is compelling when you connect to 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 whatever.
Yeah, but I mean, have you seen it?
Cause there's something you can't quite put into words
that doesn't feel genuine about the way it looks.
And so the question is,
if you're an hour to meet virtually,
what should the avatars look like
for us to have similar kind of connection?
Should it be really simplified?
Should it be a little bit more realistic?
Should it be cartoonish?
Should it be more better capturing of expressions in interesting,
complex ways versus like cartoonish over simplified ways?
But having 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.
I've been like shockingly not very interested in the metaverse,
but they must have poured so much investment into this meta.
And like, why is it so, why are people, why is it so bad?
There's gotta be a reason,
there's gotta be some thinking behind it, right?
Well, I talked to Carmack about this,
John Carmack, who's a part-time Oculus CTO.
I think 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 indie
kind of artistic flame that's required to create something really compelling.
Somehow they make everything boring
because they run through this whole process,
through the PR department, through all that kind of stuff,
and it somehow becomes generic to that process.
They strip out anything interesting
because it could be controversial, is that, or?
Yeah, right, exactly.
Like, what, I mean, we're living through this now,
like, with a lot of people with cancellations,
all those kinds of stuff, people are nervous,
and nervousness results in, like usual,
the assholes are ruining everything.
But, you know, the magic of human connection is taking risks,
of making a risky joke 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.
In the sexual tension or in, like,
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 obviously very high, but they're,
so you should be paranoid to some degree, but not too much
because then you remove completely the personality
of the whole thing.
Then everybody's just like a vanilla bot,
but, like, you have to have ability 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, but in general, if you get all that,
just the ability to come up with really cool,
beautiful ideas.
If you look at, I think Grimes tweeted about this,
which is very critical about the metaverse,
is that, you know, independent game designers
have solved this problem of how to create something
beautiful and interesting and compelling.
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 get this kind of,
you get a clippy type of situation, right,
which is like a very generic looking thing.
But even clippy has some, like, that's kind of wild,
that you would take a paperclip and put eyes on it.
And suddenly people are like, oh, you're annoying,
but you're definitely a social age.
And I just feel like that wouldn't even,
that clippy thing wouldn't even survive Microsoft
or Facebook of today, meta of today.
Because it would be like, well,
there would be these meetings about why is it a paperclip.
Like, why don't we, it's not sufficiently friendly,
let's make it, you know, and then all of a sudden,
the artist with whom it originated is killed.
And it's all PR, marketing people,
and all of 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 what I know from social robotics
is like, obviously, if you create agents that,
okay, so take for an example,
you 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?
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 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,
cause 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
is 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.
Obviously great humor, great personality
doesn't have to like clippy.
But yeah, I mean, 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 gonna 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 type of characters.
Unfortunately, you do need to have, I think, from a designer,
well, maybe like a Johnny Ive that is almost like a dictator.
Yeah, you want a benevolent dictator.
Yeah, who rolls in and says,
like cuts through the lawyers, the PR,
but has a benevolent aspect.
Like, yeah, there's 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 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 joy.
That's, you could say that about social robotics,
you could say that about the metaverse.
It shouldn't be done by the PR people.
It should be done by the designers.
I agree, PR people ruin everything.
Yeah, all the fun.
In the book, you have a picture.
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, you got rushed through.
The caption reads, two hospital delivery robots
whose sexy nurse names, Roxy and Lola,
made me roll my eyes so hard they almost fell out.
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, it facilitates technology adoption.
People will be like, oh, Betsy made a mistake.
Let's help her out instead of the stupid robot doesn't work.
But why Lola and Roxy?
Those are to you 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 robots that are helpful in assistance
and are like nurses are usually female gendered.
Robots that are powerful, all wise computers like Watson
usually have like a booming male coded voice and name.
So 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 can of worms.
Yeah, just give it a different name.
Like why Roxy is because people aren't even thinking.
So to some extent, 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 if you're not careful when you do the research
of like 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 names they
it would enjoy most.
Like that could come up 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.
Well, what do you think about that?
Like what, if I were to say,
I think the role of a great designer,
again, to go back to Johnny Y.
Is to throw out the marketing research.
Like take it in, do it, learn from it.
But like, 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 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, you know, 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 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 gonna be.
But do you think it's still useful to gender
and to name the robots?
Yes, I mean, gender is a minefield,
but people, 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 an ambiguous voice,
people will just choose something.
And maybe that's better than just entrenching something
that you've decided is best.
But I do think it can be helpful
on the anthropomorphism engagement level
to give it attributes that people identify with.
Yeah, I think a lot of roboticists, I know,
they don't gender the robot,
they don't, they even try to avoid naming the robot
or naming it something that is,
can be used as a name in conversation kind of thing.
And I think that's actually, that's irresponsible
because people are going to anthropomorphize the thing anyway.
So you're just removing from yourself
the responsibility of how 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 with quadrupeds now
with robot dogs.
You know, that arm, people think it's a 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-
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.
Any of the others that are doing similar thing
because their main source of money
is in the industrial application.
So like surveillance of factories
and doing dangerous jobs.
So to them, it's almost good PR
for people to be scared of these things.
Because 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 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 have fun with it.
If you watch Boston Dynamics videos,
they're aware of it.
Oh yeah.
They're, I mean-
The video is for sure that they put out.
It's almost like an unspoken tongue-in-cheek thing.
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 just like excited
about the control problem of it,
like 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 detail oriented.
Like there can't be like some sort of incline
that would give the robot an advantage.
They're very, like he was very,
hell of an integrity about the authenticity of them.
But then when they started to go viral,
I think that's when they started to realize,
oh, there's something interesting here
that I don't know how much they took it seriously
in the beginning other than realizing
that they could play within the videos.
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 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.
It's like testing the robustness of the system.
I mean, they're having a lot of fun there with the robots.
Totally.
Have you been to visit?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's one of the most,
I mean, because I have eight robot dogs now.
Wait, you have eight robot dogs?
What?
Is it just walking around your place?
Yeah, I'm working on them.
That's actually one of my goals is to have at any one time,
always a robot moving.
Oh, that's an ambitious goal.
Well, I have more rumors than I know what to do,
but they're a program, so the programmable rumors.
Nice.
And I have a bunch of little,
like I built the, well, I'm not finished with it yet,
but a robot from Rick and Morty,
I still have a bunch of robots everywhere,
but the thing is, what happens is
you're working on one robot at a time
and 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 dream for me,
because I'd love to create that kind of a little world.
So the impressive thing about Boston Dynamics to me
was to see hundreds of spots.
And the most impressive thing that still sticks with me
is there was a spot robot walking down the hall,
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 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, is anyone,
like what's happening here?
So presumably some kind of automation was doing the map.
I mean, the whole environment is probably really well mapped,
but 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 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, you know, like with a semi-autonomous
or autonomous vehicle, like directly doing a task.
This was just chilling.
Just 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 robots?
And they were all like broken or like not demoing.
So, yeah.
And what really excites me is that we're about to have,
that we're about to have so many moving robot about too.
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.
We're seeing delivery robots in some cities on the sidewalks.
And I just love seeing like the TikToks of people reacting to that.
Because, yeah, you see a robot walking down the hall
with a cowboy hat.
You're like, what the fuck?
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.
Love-legged robots.
If they're not loud.
My son hates the rumo because ours is loud.
Oh, that, yeah.
No, the legs, the legs.
Oh, yeah.
Because I don't, your son,
do they understand rumo to be a robot?
Oh, yeah, my kids, that's one of the first words they learned.
They know how to say beep boop.
And yes, they think the rumo's a robot.
Does, do they project intelligence out of the thing?
Well, we don't really use it around them anymore
for the reason that my son is scared of it.
Yeah, that's really cool.
I think they would.
Like, even a Roomba,
because it's moving around on its own,
I think kids and animals view it as 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.
Wow.
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 of
where we are in terms of robotics,
what's difficult to robotics, what's easy in robotics.
Yeah, we're way behind where people think we are.
So, what's impressive to me,
so, let's see.
Oh, 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, I think,
envision that our warehouses are already fully automated
and that there's 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.
And so, having, I think,
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
co-botics 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 task 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 mad of its own and wants to destroy all humans.
Now, it's actually very difficult
to know where the human is
and to respond to the human
dynamically and collaborate with them on a task,
especially if you're something like an industrial robotic arm,
which is extremely powerful.
See, some of those arms are pretty impressive now
that you can grab it, you can move it.
So, the collaboration between human and robot
in the factory setting is really fascinating.
Yeah.
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 probably it would be better if a robot did that
and Amazon is clearly trying to automate that job away.
So, 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 don't know, one of the examples I have in the book is mining.
So, there 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 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 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 skillset 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.
But it's really easy to say that from a bird's-eye perspective
and ignore kind of the rubble on the ground
as we go through these transitions
because, of course, specific jobs are going to get lost.
Yeah, 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 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 the other thing is I think people think
that the automation of the physical tasks is easy.
I was just in Ukraine and the interesting thing is,
I mean, there's a lot of difficult and 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.
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 humans with animals together.
Yeah.
You can't just have a dog with a hat.
That's fair.
But yes.
But figuring out also how to 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 going to destroy the landscape.
That really does a lot of damage to the land.
You want to disable the mine.
And to do that because of all the different,
all the different edge cases of the problem
requires a huge amount of human-like experience, it seems like.
So, it's mostly done by humans.
They have no useful robots.
They don't want robots.
Yeah.
I think we overestimate what we can automate.
Especially in the physical realm.
Yeah.
It's weird.
I mean, it continues that the story of humans,
we think we're shitty at everything in the physical world,
in driving.
We think everybody makes fun of themselves
and others for being shitty drivers,
but we're actually kind of incredible.
No, we're incredible.
And that's why, like, that's why Tesla still says
that if you're in the driver seat,
you are ultimately responsible.
Because the ideal for, I mean,
you know more about this than I do, but,
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 a 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
and what's gonna really be powerful,
the only problem is figuring out
the human-robot interaction and the handoffs.
So, like, in cars, that's a huge problem right now,
figuring out the handoffs.
But in other areas, it might be easier.
And that's really the future, is human-robot interaction.
Well, it's really hard to improve.
It's terrible that people die in car accidents,
I mean, it's, like, 70, 80, 100 million miles,
one death per 80 million miles.
That's, like, really hard to beat for a robot.
That's, like, incredible.
Like, think about it.
Like, the...
How many people?
Just the number of people throughout the world
that are driving every single day.
All this, you know,
Steve deprived, drunk,
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 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,
whatever the hell they're going at.
This is irresponsible.
It's unnatural, 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.
I mean, that ability to adapt is incredible.
And to mimic that in the machine is really tricky.
Now, that said, what Tesla is doing,
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, you know,
critical of Elon and those efforts,
I think don't give enough credit
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.
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,
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.
So 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 sunset, all the education you mentioned.
Yeah, the question is when?
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 agree with you.
My current intuition is that we're going to get there.
I think we're going to get there too.
But I didn't, before, I wasn't sure we're going to get there
without, like with current technology.
So, you know, I was kind of, this is like with vision alone.
My intuition was you're going to have to solve
like common sense reasoning.
You're going to have to, you're going to have to solve
some of the big problems in artificial intelligence,
not just, not just perception.
Yeah.
Like you have to have a deep understanding of the world
as well as 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.
Yeah, that's the thing.
Bold predictions.
Yeah.
Well, everyone else used to be doing that,
but they kind of like, all right.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe let's not promise we're going to solve
level four driving by 2020.
Let's, 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 like Waymo Lowkey has driverless cars
in, in Arizona.
Like you can get, you know, there's like robots.
It's weird.
Have you ever been one?
No.
It's so weird.
It's so awesome because the,
the most awesome experience is the,
is the wheel turning.
And you're sitting in the back.
It's like, I don't know.
It's a, it feels like you're a passenger with that friend
who was a little crazy of a driver.
It feels like a 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
and the excitement of trusting another being.
And in this case, it's a machine.
It's really interesting.
Just even introspecting your own feelings about the thing.
Yeah.
They're not doing anything in terms of making you feel better
about like at least Waymo.
I think they went with the approach of like,
let's not try to put eyes on the thing.
It's a wheel.
We know what that looks like.
It's just a car.
It's a car getting 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 from a bridge, you have no recourse.
Let's not discuss this.
You're just getting the back.
There's no discussion about like how shit can go wrong.
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 a Hal 9000 situation?
Like, I'm sorry.
I can't, you have a button.
You can like call customer service.
Oh God.
Then you can put on hold for two hours.
Yeah, probably.
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 a meeting or all that kind of stuff.
Or like the more dystopian.
Isn't it the fifth element where, is Will Smith in that movie?
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, we're going to see stuff like that maybe.
Well, that's...
I believe that the companies that have robots, 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 they're going to have to earn people's trust.
Yeah, but like Amazon works with law enforcement and gives them the data from the ring cameras.
So...
Really?
Yeah.
Do you have a ring camera?
No.
Okay.
No, no.
But basically any security camera, right?
I have Google's, whatever they have.
We have one that's not...
We store 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 it.
I bet Apple wouldn't.
Yeah.
Apple's the only company I trust and I don't know how much longer.
I don't know.
I...
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 going to 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?
I think they would.
Yeah.
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 inland to visit my relatives, they don't...
That's a different discourse that's happening.
I think the whole tech criticism world, it's loud in our ears because we're in those circles.
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.
It feels like nowadays you have to win over TikTok, honestly.
I don't...
TikTok, is that a website?
I need to check it out.
And that's an interesting one because China is behind that one.
Exactly.
So if it's compelling enough, maybe people would be able to give up privacy and that kind of stuff.
That's really scary.
I mean, I'm worried about it.
I'm worried about it.
And 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 going to have a big impact on privacy and data security
and 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.
And at the same time, the technology is so freaking exciting that it's going to get adopted.
It's not even just the collection of data, but the ability to manipulate at scale.
So what do you think about the AI, the engineer 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 thanks to you.
Janelle Shane?
Yeah, from Weird AI.
Oh yeah, I love her book.
She's great.
I love to 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, I think that was from her where I was looking at 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 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 GPT-3 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 you can have a conversation about any of those things and they're very convincing.
It's pretty convincing, yeah.
Yeah.
Even GPT-3, which is not state of the art.
Right.
It's convincing of being a squirrel.
It's like, you should check it out because it really is.
It's like, yeah, that probably is what a squirrel would say.
Are you excited?
Like, what's it like being a squirrel?
That's fun.
They eat nuts and run around all day.
Like, how do you think people feel like when you tell them that you're a squirrel?
You know, or like, I forget what it was.
Like, a lot of people might be scared to find out that you're a squirrel or something like this.
And then the system answers pretty well.
Like, yeah, I hope they'll, like, what do you think when they find out you're a squirrel?
Yeah, I hope they'll see how fun it is to be a squirrel.
What do you say to people who don't believe you're a squirrel?
I say, come see for yourselves.
I am a squirrel.
That's great.
Well, I think it's really great because 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.
I just, like, all of the applications, it's mind-boggling what we're going to be able to do with this.
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, the focus in the ad community has been, well, this engineer surely is hallucinating.
The thing is not sentient.
But to me, first of all, it doesn't matter if he is or not, this is coming.
Where a large number of people would believe a system is sentient, including engineers within companies.
So in that sense, you start to think about a world where, like, your kids aren't just used to having a conversation with a bot,
but used to believing, kind of, having an implied belief that the thing is sentient.
Yeah, I think that's true.
And I think that one of the things that bothered me about all of the coverage and 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 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 at it.
It's having fun. It's doing this.
Like, that happens in our lab all the time.
We are all this guy.
And it's gonna be huge.
So I think that 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 a system 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 domesticated them not because they do what we do, but because what they do is different and that's useful.
And 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.
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. You can't have a conversation with a squirrel, right?
But the point is that...
I 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.
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, they've 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 tail is a weapon against human consciousness and cognition.
It wins us over. That's what cats do too.
Cats outcompeted squirrels.
And dogs.
Dogs have love. Cats have no soul.
I'm just kidding. People get so angry when I talk shit about cats. I love cats.
Anyway, you're describing all the different kinds of animals that get domesticated.
And it's a really interesting idea that it's not just pets, there's all kinds of domestication going on.
They all have all kinds of uses.
Yes.
Like the ox that you proposed might be at least historically one of the most useful domesticated animals.
It was a game changer because it revolutionized what people could do economically, etc.
So just like robots, 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.
I think just the same ways that animals have really shifted society.
And society has adapted also to socially accepting animals as pets.
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 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 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 run electrical wire.
I think they did that for princess ties for her wedding.
There's so many weird ways that we've used animals and still use animals for things that robots can't do like the dolphins that they used in the military.
I think Russia still has dolphins and the US still has dolphins in their navies.
What?
Mind detection, looking for lost underwater equipment.
Some rumors about like using them for weaponry, 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.
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 analogy is they have all these physical abilities, but also sensing abilities that we just, we don't have.
And like that's just so useful.
And 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.
Yeah, it's really strong.
And it works because people are familiar with it.
What about companionship?
And when we start to think about my cats and dogs like pets that seem to serve no purpose whatsoever except the social connection.
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of a newer 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.
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 where people are going to develop strong emotional connections to certain robots that they relate to, either culturally 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 as they're interplayed between the two?
Why did dogs and cats outcompete ox and, I don't know, what else, like farm animals 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 they can evolve much more quickly than other animals.
And I, 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 on 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're also passive aggressive.
So at the same time, they're dismissive of you in some sense.
I think some people like that.
Some people like that about people.
Yeah, they want to push and pull over a relationship.
They don't want loyalty or unconditional love.
That means they haven't earned it.
Yeah.
And maybe that says a lot more about the people than it does about the animal.
Yeah, we all need therapy.
Yeah.
So I'm judging harshly the people that have cats or the people that have dogs.
Maybe the people that have dogs are desperate for attention and unconditional love.
And they're unable to sort of struggle to earn meaningful connections.
I don't know.
Maybe people are talking about you and your robot pets in the same way.
Yeah, that's...
It is kind of sad.
There's just robots everywhere.
But I mean, I'm joking about it being sad because I think it's kind of beautiful.
I think robots are beautiful in the same way that pets are, even children,
in that they capture some kind of magic of social robots.
They have the capacity to have the same kind of magic of connection.
I don't know what that is.
When they're brought to life and they move around,
the way they make me feel, I'm pretty convinced, is as you know,
they will make billions of people feel.
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 just, I can put on my normal human hat and just see this.
Oh, 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?
It's way different than us.
It is.
It's like drooling all over the place with its tongue out.
It's like a weird creature that used to be a wolf.
Why are we into this thing?
Dogs can either express or mimic a lot of emotions that we recognize.
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 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.
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 love the moment which is, I've been particularly working on,
which is when a robot like the cowboy hat is doing its own thing and then it recognizes you.
I mean, the way a dog does.
And it looks like this.
And the moment of recognition, like you're walking, say you walk 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 that excitement of seeing somebody you know
and saying hello and all that kind of stuff.
That's a magical moment.
Like, I think, especially with the dog, it makes you feel noticed and heard and loved.
Like, that somebody looks at you and recognizes you that it matters that you exist.
Yeah, you feel seen.
Yeah.
And that's a cool feeling.
And 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, their servants,
they like, part of the, you know, they're trying to maintain privacy, I suppose.
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 the game 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?
I mean, it's out.
You can't just like buy one commercially yet, but you can apply for one.
Yeah.
And 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 the 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, just even if we just look at teenagers, the amount of deep heartbreak that's happening.
And like, 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 rollercoaster of the human condition.
As a company, imagine PR and marketing people, they're going to 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 a small startup.
And it might.
Yeah.
Like they're coming.
There's already virtual therapists.
It's a replica app.
I haven't tried it, but replicas, like a virtual companion.
Like it's coming.
And if big companies don't do it, someone else will.
Yeah.
I think the future, the next trillion dollar company will be those personalization.
Because if you think, if you think about all the, the AI will have around us, all the smart phones and so on, there's very minimal personalization.
You don't think that's just because they weren't able.
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 going to do something with the length.
I mean, they don't have the guts.
Are you challenging them?
Partially, but not really.
Cause I know they're not going to do it.
They don't have to, it's bad for business in the short term.
I'm going to 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 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 really worried about that.
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 an individual user's interest, maybe, but not in society's interest.
Yeah, see, 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 for you to use that data.
But then how are companies going to, I mean, a lot of these applications rely on massive troves of data to train the AI system.
Right.
So you have to opt in constantly and opt in not in some legal, I agree.
But I'll be like show like in the way 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 us to anyone.
And then I have to judge how leaky that like, how good you are at keeping secrets in that same way.
Like it's very transparent in 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 we've 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 to someone else and not to them personally.
So I don't think people are giving their data.
They're not being asked.
Like, but if you were essential, if you were like, tell me a secret about yourself and I'll give you $100.
I'd tell you a secret.
No, not $100.
First of all, you wouldn't.
You wouldn't trust like why you gave me $100.
It's a fat example.
But like I need, I would ask for your specific like fashion interest in order to give recommendations to you for shopping.
And I'd be very clear for that.
You could disable that.
You can delete that.
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 regret the Justin Bieber or enjoy the Justin Bieber shirt,
all of that information that's mostly private to even you, not even your loved ones.
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 can 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 address for me.
That is based on my preferences.
So I went to this conference once where I was talking to the people who do the analytics and 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, you know, low income people being targeted for scammy loans or I don't know.
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 this data regulate you that 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 are consciously constantly saying exactly how to use it.
And and also it has to do with the recommender system itself from the company, which is 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 market?
So like on Instagram, there will be some like person who has a bunch of followers.
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.
I mean, this must work for you too.
Don't you have like ads on the podcast?
Like people trust you.
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 my particular situation, but it's true for a lot of podcasts, especially big ones is, you know, I have 10 times more sponsors that want to be sponsors 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 shell 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 going to discriminate.
You're not going to be like, oh, well, this product is good for people.
You think there'll be like bots essentially with millions of followers?
There already are.
There are virtual influencers in South Korea who show products.
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 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 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.
And so now it's like personalized, it's scalable, it's automated.
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 not deeply understanding the incentives 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 that they understand what's going on.
So there's some transparency there.
That age child.
So Daniela DiPaola, Anastasia Ostrovsky, and I advised on this project, they did this.
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 grownups when it comes to robots and artificial agents.
And it will like this Blake guy at Google, so I'm going on and on, but like his main concern was that Google owned the 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?
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 like this thing is your window, no pun intended, into the world.
So it's helping you as 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 like it should actually help educate you should talk shit about all the other companies that do stuff for free.
But but also, yeah, in terms of if you purchase stuff based on its recommendation, it gets money.
So it's kind of ad driven, but it's not ads.
It's like it's not controlled, like no external entities can control it to try to manipulate you 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 the thing that would actually make you happy.
That's the only thing it cares about.
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 buy.
But it seems almost old fashioned, right, to have a disconnected 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 yearn for because I think it's 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 we're just waking up to the realization we tried.
We're like baby deer finding our legs in this new world of social media of ad-driven companies and realizing, OK, this has to be done somehow different.
Like one of the most popular notions, at least in the United States, is social media is evil and is doing bad.
It's doing bad by us.
It's not like it's totally tricked us into believing that it's good for us.
I think everybody knows it's bad for us.
And so like there's a hunger for other ideas.
All right, it's time for us to start that company.
I think so.
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 execution is what matters.
I mean, 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 on the home of billions of homes.
Yep.
And it'll be a companion.
OK, there you go.
You can steal that idea.
Do it.
OK, I have a question for you.
What about Elon Musk's humanoid?
Is he going to execute on that?
There might be a lot to say, so for people who are not aware, there's an optimist Tesla's optimist robot that's 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 this is the second reason you mentioned the reason you want to do a humanoid robot is because the factory is built for the certain tasks that are designed for humans.
So it's hard to automate with 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 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 it would do anything that's boring to us.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The interesting thing about that is there's no interest and no discussion about the social aspect.
Like, I talked to him on mic and off mic 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 because we're much this where I think being shitty at stuff is kind of 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 like.
Very charming.
It's charming, but also concerning and also like, are you okay?
I mean, it's both hilarious.
Whenever somebody you love falls down the stairs, it's both hilarious and concerning.
Some dance between the two and I think that's essential for like, you almost want to engineer that in, 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 efforts that Elon does.
There's a few things that are really interesting there.
One, because he's taking 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, humanoid 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.
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 first principles question of like, why is this cost so much?
Like, what's the cheap way?
Why can't we build and there's not a good answer.
Why can't we build this humanoid form for under $1,000?
And like, I've sat and had these conversations, there's no reason.
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.
People are focused on getting a thing that's...
I don't know exactly what the reasoning is, but it's the same like Waymo.
It's like, let's build a million dollar car in the beginning, or like multi-million dollar car.
Let's try to solve that problem.
The way Elon, the way Jim Keller, the way some of those folks are thinking is...
Let's like, at the same time, try to actually build a system that's cheap.
Not crappy, but cheap.
And let's...
First principles, what is the minimum amount of degrees of freedom we need?
What are the joints?
Where's the control set?
Like, how many...
Like, where are the activators?
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.
So do it all from scratch.
And do the learning.
I mean, it's like immediately certain things like become obvious.
Do the exact same pipeline as you do for autonomous driving.
Just the exact...
I mean, the infrastructure there is incredible for the computer vision, for the manipulation task.
The control problem changes.
The perception problem changes.
But the pipeline doesn't change.
Do it.
And so I don't...
Obviously the optimism about how long it's going to take.
I don't share.
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 then there's a lot of people that are really excited about the humanoid form there.
That's true.
It's like, I don't want to get in the way...
They might solve this thing.
It's similar with Boston Dynamics.
Why?
If I were to...
You can be a hater and you go up to Mark Greiber and just...
How are you going to make money with these super expensive legged robots?
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.
And with Elon, they're not just going to do that.
They're going to drive down the cost to where we can have humanoid bots 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.
I get that there are some areas where you can't just rebuild like a spaceship.
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 spaceship.
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 make a humanoid robot to go in there?
I just get really tripped up on, I think that people want humanoid.
I think people are fascinated by them.
I think it's a little overhyped.
Well, most of our world is still built for humanoids.
I know what 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?
All robot form factor accessible?
Or do you build humanoid robots?
I mean, it doesn't have to be all.
And it also doesn't have to be either or.
I just feel like we're thinking so little about the system in general and how to create infrastructure
that works for everyone, all kinds of people, all kinds of robots.
That's, 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 there's specifically the openness makes it easier to meet everybody.
I think a lot of amazing things in this world happen when you get amazing people together.
And if you can sell an idea like us becoming a multi-planetary species,
you can say why the hell would go to Mars?
Like why colonize Mars?
If you think from basic first principles, it doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't make any sense to go to the moon.
The only thing that makes sense to go to space is for satellites.
But there's something about the vision of the future, the optimism laden that permeates this vision of us becoming multi-planetary.
It's thinking not just for the next 10 years, it's thinking like human civilization reaching out into the stars.
It makes people dream. It's really exciting.
And that they're going to come up with some cool shit that might not have anything to do with like, here's what I,
because Elon doesn't seem to care about social robotics, which is constantly surprising to me.
He doesn't talk to me. Humans are the things you avoid and don't hurt, right?
The number one job of a robot is not to hurt a human, to avoid them.
The collaborative aspect, the human-robot interaction, I think is at least not 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.
Not necessarily Elon, but people like Elon.
If they take on seriously these...
I can just imagine with a human-robot, you can't help but create a social robot.
So if you do different form factors, if you do industrial robotics,
you're likely to actually not end up walking head into a social robot, human-robot interaction problem.
If you create, for whatever the hell reason you want to, a human or a robot, you're going to have to reinvent...
Well, not reinvent, but introduce a lot of fascinating new ideas into the problem of human-robot interaction,
which I'm excited about.
So if I was a business person, I would say 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 apologize if I'm ignorant on this,
but I think they really, more than anyone else, maybe with the I-Boat, like Sony,
pushed forward a human-robotics like a leap with the Atlas robot.
Oh yeah, with Atlas, absolutely.
And without them, why the hell did they do it?
Why?
Well, I think for them, it is a research platform.
I don't think they ever, the speculation, I don't think they ever intended Atlas to be 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 spot the earlier versions of spot.
So Quadruple has like four-legged robot, but maybe they reached for, let's try to make, 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 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 short-sighted, it's short-sighted, but it's not pragmatic to think any other way.
To think that you're going to be able to change warehouses.
You're going to have to, you're going to-
If you're Amazon, you can totally change your warehouses.
Yes, oh, 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 human-robot that works in the warehouse, that human-robot,
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 going to have to solve the social-robotics problem.
Oh, for sure.
I mean, they're already with the spot needing to solve social-robotics problems.
For, like, for spot to be effective at scale.
I'm not sure the spot is currently effective at scale.
It's getting better and better.
But they're actually, the thing they did is an interesting decision.
Perhaps Tesla 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 high-level perception skills.
It's supposed to be controlled remotely.
And it's a platform that you can attach to.
Attach yourself to.
And somebody else is supposed to do the attaching.
It's a platform that you can take an 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.
Then you can remotely monitor.
You can record.
You can record the camera.
You can remote control it.
Object manipulation.
Basic object manipulation, but not autonomous object manipulation.
It's remotely controlled.
But the intelligence on top of it, which is what would be required for automation,
somebody else is supposed to do.
Perhaps Tesla would do 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?
I mean, that's true.
And I reluctantly am very excited about space travel.
Why?
Can you introspect?
Why?
Am I excited about it?
I think what got me excited was I saw a panel with some people who 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 convinced 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.
You think it might be a little bit of a distraction.
I'll forget 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 interesting from a research perspective, but from what types of robots can we create
to put in our world?
Why would we just create a humanoid robot?
Don't get it.
Even just robotic manipulation.
Arms is not useful either.
Arms can be useful, but why not have three arms?
Why does it have to look like a person?
I actually personally just think that washing the dishes is harder than a robot that can
be a companion.
Being useful in the home is actually really tough.
But does your companion have to have two arms and look like you?
No, I'm making the case for zero arms.
Oh, okay.
Zero arms.
Yeah.
Okay.
Freaky.
That didn't come out the way I meant it because it almost sounds like I don't want a robot
to defend itself.
That's immediately a project.
I just think that the social component doesn't require arms or legs or so on as we've talked
about.
I think that's probably where a lot of the meaningful impact that's going to be happening.
Yeah.
I think we could get so creative with the design.
Why not have a robot on roller skates?
Whatever.
Why does it have to look like us?
Still, it is a compelling and interesting form from a research perspective, like you
said.
Yeah.
You co-authored a paper as you were talking about that for WeRobot 2022.
Lula Robot Consumer Protection in the Face of Automated Social Marketing.
I think you were talking about some of the ideas on that.
Yes.
Oh, you got it from Twitter.
I was like, that's not published yet.
Yeah.
This is how I do my research.
You just go through people's Twitter feeds.
Yeah.
Go.
Thank you.
It's not stalking if it's public.
So there's a, you looked at me like you're offended.
Like how did you know?
No, it's just like worried that like some early, I mean.
Yeah.
There's a PDF.
There is.
There's a PDF.
Like now?
Yeah.
Maybe like as of a few days ago.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I look at it, 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, or no, when's we robot?
So basically WeRobot, that's the workshop where you have an hour where people give you constructive
feedback on the paper and then you write the good version.
Right.
I take it back.
There's no PDF.
It doesn't exist.
There is a table in there in a virtual imagined PDF that I like, that I wanted to mention,
which is like this kind of strategy is used across various marketing platforms and it's
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 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 Danielle's idea and a really fantastic one, we put it in at
the last second.
So.
Yeah, I really liked it.
I'm glad you like it.
And 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 too, 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 can disappear, like has a permanence.
I mean, there's certain characteristics that you kind of associate to a 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 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.
So I mean, 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 going
to hit me.
And even if a video game on a 2D 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 objects you're interacting with, call of duty, things you're shooting,
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 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's simply text based, which has no embodiment.
So I think there's a whole spectrum of factors that can influence how much you engage with
something.
And I wonder, I always wondered if you can have like an entity living in a computer.
Okay.
This is going to be dark.
I haven't always wondered about this.
So it's going to make it sound like I keep thinking about this kind of stuff.
No, but like, this is almost like black mirror, but the entity that's convinced or is able
to convince you that it's being tortured inside the computer and needs your help to get out.
Something like this.
To me, suffering is one of the things that make you empathize with, like we're not good
at.
As you've discussed 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.
And I just feel like we can project embodiment on a virtual thing if it's capable of certain
things like suffering.
Yeah.
So I was wondering.
I think that's true.
And I think that's what happened with the Lambda thing.
Not that, 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 programmed that myself as well.
Yeah.
Because I was inspired by that.
Yeah.
It's cool.
Do you still have it?
Oh, sorry.
Hit a wall.
I didn't.
Whenever I bumped into something, it would scream and pain.
Yeah.
And I had, the way I programmed the Roombas is when I kick it, whenever, so contact between
me and the robot is when it screams.
Really?
Yeah.
Okay.
And you were inspired by that?
Yeah.
I guess I misremembered the video.
I saw the video a long, long time ago and, or maybe you heard somebody mention it and
that just, it's the easiest thing to program.
Uh-huh.
So I did that.
I haven't run those Roombas for over a year now, but yeah, it was, my experience with
it was that it's like, they quickly become, like you remember them, you, you miss them.
Like they're real living beings.
So the capacity to suffer or 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's still
is weird.
There's a thing you have to get right, because based on the interaction, like the latency,
like there is a, 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 screaming at the appropriate time, not 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.
Cause the Roomba in particular, uh, doesn't, so I was, uh, the sensors don't, it doesn't
know about pain.
See, 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, it's, it's, it's a weird, it's a really weird
feeling and you actually feel like a bad person.
Aw.
Yeah.
So, but it's, it's, it makes you think because that with all the ways that we talked about,
that could be used to manipulate you in a good and bad way.
So the good way is like, you can 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 many nefarious things.
You tweeted, we're about to be living in the movie, her, except instead of, 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, it's 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 this space where I'm so worried about the technology
and also so excited about it at the same time.
But the, the really like, I haven't, I'd gotten a little bit jaded and then with GPT-3 and
then the Lambda transcript, I was like re, re-energized, but have also been thinking
a lot about how, 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, et cetera, 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 going to 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 WeRobot 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, 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 is interesting.
But there's also the practical funding mechanisms, like you mentioned with Ivo, that the dog
in theory, there's a subscription.
Yeah, the new Ibo, so the old Ibo from the 90s, people got really attached to 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 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 $3,000?
How much is it?
I think it's $3,000.
And then after a few years, you have to start paying, I think it's like 300 a year for a
subscription service for cloud services.
And the cloud services, I mean, it's a lot of...
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 to the cloud and so you have to pay to keep that running,
which makes sense.
People 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 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 more demand?
Yeah.
I mean, you have to be...
But that's true for anything that people love, right?
It is.
And it's also true for real dogs.
There's all these new medical services nowadays where people will shell 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 the question.
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...
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...
The whole wedding industrial complex has created all these quote-unquote traditions that people
buy into that aren't even traditions.
They're just fabricated by marketing.
It's awful.
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.
And that's a really popular field in AI currently.
And a lot of people agree that it's an important field.
But the question is for social robotics, is it sure to be up to the company to remove
the bias of society?
Well, who else can...
Oh, to remove the bias of society.
I guess because there's a lot of people that are subtly racist in modern society, why shouldn't
our robots also be subtly racist?
That's...
Why do we put so much responsibility on the robots?
Because the robots...
I'm imagining like a Hitler rumba.
I mean, that would be funny.
But I guess I'm asking a serious question.
You're right, you're allowed to make that joke.
Yes, exactly.
I'm allowed to make that joke, yes.
And I've been nonstop reading about World War II and Hitler.
I think I'm glad we exist in the world where we can just make those jokes that helps deal
with it.
Anyway, 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 low hanging fruit, which I think was
what 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 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 a disappointing aspect of social robots anyway.
And now we're reintroducing that because it's now no longer disappointing.
So let's just start with the premise, 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.
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
product, 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 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 might change over time with more experience.
A robot really just like regurgitates things, entrenched them, could influence other people.
And I mean, I think that's terrible.
Well, I think there's a difficult challenge here because even the premise you started
with that essentially racism is bad.
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 have a robot that constantly calls you out on your implicit racism.
I would love that.
I would love that robot.
But maybe it sees, well, I don't know if you'd love it because maybe you'll see racism
in things that aren't racist and then you're arguing with a robot.
Your robot starts calling you racist.
I'm not exactly sure that.
I mean, it's a tricky thing, I guess I'm saying that the line is not obvious, especially
in this heated discussion where we have a lot of identity politics of what is harmful
to different groups and so on.
Yeah.
It feels like 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 maybe I'll tweet something that's well-intentioned and 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 happened to me actually 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 they disagree.
So I've gotten yelled at from both sides and I think 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 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.
But the danger is that after being attacked, assuming you don't get canceled, aka completely
removed from your ability to tweet, you might become jaded and not want to talk about autism
anymore.
No, I don't and I didn't.
I mean, it's happened to me and what I did was I listened to those sides and I chose,
I tried to get information and then I decided that I was going to use autistic children
and now I'm moving forward with that.
Like I don't know.
For now.
Right.
For now.
Yeah.
Until I get updated information and I'm never going to 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 see, here's the problem.
You're a very smart person and an individual, a researcher, a thinker, an intellectual.
So that's the right thing for you to do.
The hard thing is, as a company, imagine you had a PR team and said, Kate, like this,
you should.
We hate.
Yeah.
I mean, just, well, if you were, 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 getting attacked, it's bad for your brand, they'll say the brand word, they'll
be, 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 you do suboptimal decisions.
You take a kind of poll, again, it's looking at the past versus the future, all those kinds
of things.
It becomes difficult in the same way that it's difficult for social media companies to
figure out, like, who's censor, who'd recommend.
I think 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 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 the survival of the institution first.
But I feel like you have to, 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.
You have to take risks where you might lose your job, you might lose your well-being because
in the process of standing for the principles, for the things you think are right to do.
Based on the things you, like, based on learning from, like listening to people and learning
from what they feel.
And the same goes for 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 thank you.
Yeah.
That's maybe the problem.
Like the people who have good ideas about leadership, they're like, yeah, this is why
I don't want to.
That's why I'm not running a company.
It's been, I think, three years since the Jeffrey Epstein controversy at MIT, MIT Media
Lab.
Joe Aito, the head of the Media Lab, resigned.
And I think at that time you wrote an opinion article about it.
So just looking back a few years have passed, what have you learned about human nature?
From the fact that somebody like Jeffrey Epstein found his way inside MIT?
That's a really good question.
What have I learned about human nature?
I think, well, 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, ugh.
Yeah, 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.
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, I don't want to sugarcoat at all what Joe Aito 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 public intellectual dudes that he was hanging out with.
And any woman in those circles saw 10 zillion red flags.
The whole environment was so misogynist.
And so personally, because Joey was a great boss and a great friend, 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 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 going to go on a tangent, but I'll
come back, I promise.
So I once saw this tweet from someone or it 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, just 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 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 first person you find is the one that has sufficient integrity
to take responsibility.
Yeah.
And it's why my husband always says he's 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 stand up and
like also take some responsibility for the broader picture of human nature versus like
specific situation, but also take some responsibility and, but also defend the people involved as
flawed, not in a like, no, 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 and public about it and spread
the responsibility across a 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 Joey took like a resign because of it or essentially
fired, pressured out because of it, MIT can pretend like, oh, we didn't, we didn't know
anything.
Yeah.
It wasn't part.
Bad leadership, again, because when you are at the top of an institution with 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 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 because that makes sense to you.
Why was he able to get in these rooms, befriend these people, befriend 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 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.
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 social grifter.
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 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.
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 mean, and they're not like, all right, does anyone check anything about me?
Because I've walked into some of the richest, the most powerful people in the world and
nobody like asked questions like, who the fuck is this guy?
Like, nobody asked those questions.
It's interesting.
I would think like there would be more security or something like there, there really isn't.
I think a lot of it has to do with 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 thing.
Once you have 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're in.
So how do you avoid something like that?
If you're MIT, if you're Harvard, if you're any of these institutions?
Well, I mean, first of all, you have to do your homework before you take money from someone.
Like 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 blah,
blah, blah, or whatever it was a mistake.
And Joey always believed in redemption for people and that people can change and that
they can genuinely regret and like learn and move on and he was a big believer in that.
So I could totally see him being like, well, I'm not going to exclude him because of this
thing and because other people are vouching for him.
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 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 didn't do anything, 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 heard rumors about Bill Cosby for the longest
time?
Like for the longest, like whenever that happened, like all these people came out of the woodwork,
like everybody kind of knew.
I mean, it's like, all right, so what are you supposed to do with rumors?
Like what, I think the other way to put it 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 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.
Yeah.
You've, actually, I'd love to ask you about this because 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 met my friend who's a law professor.
Yeah.
And 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.
That's a good question because obviously there's a lot of neurodivergence at MIT and everywhere.
And obviously, like we, 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.
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 was a, because I, you're one of the people, I think tweeting
that made me, because I wanted to talk to Richard Stallman 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.
Richard Stallman.
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 would be like, like picking
at his feet and eating the skin off his feet, right?
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 something that happened to him in conversations on this thread related
to Epstein, which I was torn about because I felt it's similar to Joy, you know, it's
like, I felt he was maligned, like 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 set aside
his situation and we could discuss it, but the, the cowardice and MIT's part, and this
is me saying it about the way they treated that whole situation.
Oh, they're always cowards about how they treat anything.
They just try to make the problem go away.
Yeah.
So that it was, it was about exactly making the conversation.
I think he should have left the mailing list.
He shouldn't have, he shouldn't have been part of the mailing list.
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 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 they'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 am wrong.
It doesn't mean that I am bad.
It doesn't mean that I am 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 Stalman do not respond that way.
They just like go into battle.
Right.
Like where it's obvious you didn't listen.
Yeah.
It's interesting 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.
Right.
So like if both are 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 like 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.
He definitely was just Thomas, not somebody who was capable of that kind of thing or hasn't
given evidence of that kind of thing.
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.
And so things I find as a man, non-threatening and hilarious are not necessarily, doesn't
mean that there aren't like deeply hurtful to others.
And I don't mean that in a social justice warrior way, but in a real way, like people
really have different experiences.
So I thought like really put things into context, have to kind of listen to what people are
saying, put aside the emotion of what their emotion would do, what you're saying it and
try to keep 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 metaphorically licked 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 and an opportunity for you to become a better person.
Ask you a question.
Haven't you been doing that for two hours?
Three hours now.
Let me ask you about Ghislaine Maxwell.
She's been saying that she's an innocent victim.
Is she an innocent victim or is she 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, 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?
Well, PR, but it's not just her, it's her whole family believes this.
There's a whole effort that says like, how should I put it?
I believe they believe it.
So in that sense, it's not PR.
I believe the family, 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 people usually think they're doing good.
Yeah.
I mean, aside from, I don't know, maybe sociopaths are specifically trying to harm people, but
I think most people are trying to do their best.
And if they're not doing their best, it's because there's some impediment or something
in their past.
So I genuinely don't believe in good and evil people, but I do believe in harmful and not
harmful actions.
And so I don't know.
I don't care.
Yeah, she's a good person, but if she contributed to harm, then she needs to be accountable for
that.
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 us, what each of us are hiding
in the closet.
That's a really tough thing to 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, which
there's a lot of people that interacted with Epstein that now have to, I mean, if they're
not destroyed by it, then their whole, like the ground on which they stand ethically has
crumbled, at least in part.
And I'm sure you and I have interacted with people without knowing it who are bad people.
As I always tell my four-year-old, people who have done bad things.
People who have done bad things.
He's always talking about bad guys, and I'm trying to move him towards, they're just
people who make bad choices.
Yeah.
That's really powerful, actually.
That's really important to remember, because that means you have compassion towards all
human beings.
You have hope for the future of MIT, the future of Media Lab in this context.
So David Newman is now at the helm, I talked to a producer, I'll talk to her again.
She's great.
I 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 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 a research scientist at MIT, you are too, right?
And I always have had various supervisors 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 a 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, and said, literally, the words, don't worry,
I'll take care of your career.
And that experience was really interesting, because I was very indignant.
I was like, you can't do that to me, doesn't you 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, 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 what did you learn from that?
I mean, where's the source, if you have hope for this institution that I think you love,
at least in part.
I love the idea of MIT.
I love the idea.
I love the research body.
I love a lot of the faculty.
I love the students.
The students, yeah.
I love the energy.
I love it all.
I think the administration suffers from the same problems as 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 are 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 have a lot of integrity or believe in ideas or even have a lot of
connection to the research body and 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 a disconnect, right?
Complete disconnect.
I wonder if that was always there if it just kind of slowly grows over time, a disconnect
between the administration and 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, 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 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 I just said a really good president of MIT or certain people in the administration
can reform the whole thing because the culture is still there.
I think everybody remembers that MIT is about the students and the faculty.
Do they know?
Because I don't know, I've had a lot of conversations that have been shocking with senior administration.
They think the students are children.
They call them kids.
Yeah.
It's like these are the smartest people.
They're way smarter than you.
Yeah.
And you're so dismissive of that.
But those individuals, I'm saying like the capacity, like the aura of the place.
The place still values the students and the faculty.
I'm being awfully poetic about it, but what I mean is the administration is the froth
at the top of the waves, the surface.
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 hired?
It's bottom up.
Oh, I see.
I see.
But I do think ultimately, especially in the era of social media and so on, faculty and
students have more and more power, more of a voice, I suppose.
I hope so.
I really do.
I don't see MIT going away anytime soon.
And I also don't think it's a terrible place at all.
Yeah.
It's an amazing place.
But there's different trajectories it can take.
Yeah.
And that has to do with a lot of things, including, is it stays, even if you 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 or Tesla or Apple
or so on.
You're not going to be at MIT.
So that has to do, I think that's basically has to do with not allowing 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.
Sometimes you have more freedom and can work on more interesting things in companies.
That's really where they lose people.
Yeah.
And some of the freedom in all ways, which is why it's heartbreaking to get people like
Richard Stallman, there's such an interesting line because like Richard Stallman is a gigantic
weirdo that cross lines you shouldn't cross, 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 yes, your opinion, you have strong lines you hold to.
But then if administration listens to every line, there's also power in drawing a line.
And 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 owning it, learning from it, growing from it from
a perspective of Stallman or people like that.
Back when it happened, understanding, seeing the right, being empathetic, seeing the fact
that this was totally inappropriate.
Not when that particular act, but everything that led up to it too.
No.
I think there are different kinds of lines.
So Stallman crossed lines that essentially excluded a bunch of people and created an environment
where there are 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 to, like, I don't
think he was intentionally trying to cross a line or maybe he didn't care.
There are lines that you can cross intentionally to move something forward or to do the right
thing.
When MIT was like, you can't put an all-gender restroom in the media lab because something
permits whatever, and Joey did it anyway, that's a line you can cross to make things
actually better for people.
The line you're crossing is some arbitrary stupid rule that people who don't want to
take the risk are like, you know what I mean?
Ultimately, I think the thing you said is cross lines in a way that doesn't alienate
others.
So, for example, me wearing, I started for a while wearing a suit often at MIT, which
sounds counterintuitive, but that's actually, people always looked at me weird for that.
MIT created this culture specifically to people I was working with, like nobody wears suits.
Maybe the business school does.
Yeah, we don't trust the suits.
I was like, fuck you, I'm wearing a suit, but that's not really hurting anybody.
Exactly.
It's challenging people's perceptions.
It's doing something that you want to do, but it's not hurting people.
And that particular thing was, yeah, it was hurting people.
It's a good line.
It's hurting, ultimately, the people that you want to flourish.
You tweeted a picture of Pumpkin Spice Greek yogurt and asked, grounds for divorce, yes
no.
So, let me ask you, what's the key to a successful relationship?
Oh my God, a good couple therapist?
What went wrong with a Pumpkin Spice Greek yogurt?
What's exactly wrong?
Is it the pumpkin?
Is it the Greek yogurt?
I didn't understand.
I stared at 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.
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 actually tasted pretty good, so I think part of the success
of a good marriage is 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 not true.
But yeah, I get it.
No, but relationships are hard, relationships with anyone are hard, especially because people
evolve and change, and you have to make sure there's space for both people to evolve and
change together.
I think one of the things that I really liked about our marriage vows was, I remember before
we got married, Greg at some point got kind of nervous, and he was like, it's such a big
commitment to commit to something for life, and I was like, we're not committing to this
for life.
And he was like, we're not.
I'm like, no, we're committing to being part of a team and doing what's best for the team.
If what's best for the team is to break up, we'll break up.
I don't believe in this, we have to do this for our whole lives.
And that really resonated with him, too, so yeah.
You put in the vows.
Yeah, that was our vows, that we're just, we're going to be a team.
You're a team and do what's right for the team?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's very like Michael Jordan of you.
Do you guys get married 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 eight times, are you trying to hint something on the podcast?
I don't, yeah, I have an announcement to make, no, what, I don't know.
It just seems like a good metaphor for, why would, it felt like a good metaphor for in
a bunch of cases for the marriage industrial complex, I remember that.
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 listened to like friends of mine that complain, not all, 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 that 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 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 like the wife, whatever, it's part of the sort of the culture to kind
of comment in that way.
I think women do the same thing about the husband.
He doesn't, he never does this or he's a goof, he's incompetent at this or that, whatever
they, there's the kind of-
Yeah, there's those tropes like, oh, husbands never do X and like wives or, I think those
do a disservice to everyone, it's just disrespectful to everyone involved.
Yeah, but it happens.
So 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.
And so that's what with Clippy or whatever, right?
So like you complain about, but you actually love it.
It's just a good metaphor that, you know, what was I going to ask you?
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 at the one?
What we don't have a lot of robot, have you loved the most in your life?
My first pet was a goldfish named Bob, and he died immediately and that was really sad.
And I think, I think it was really attached to Bob and Nancy, my goldfish.
We got new Bob's and then Bob kept dying and we got new Bob's Nancy just kept living.
So it was very replaceable.
Yeah.
I was young.
It was easy to.
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 going to happen at scale.
I think, 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 it's all the relationships
at once that have to work.
But we're like normally with other people, we have like one type of relationship or we
even have, we have a different relationship to our dog than we do to our neighbor than
we do to the person, someone, a coworker.
I think that some people are going to find romantic relationships with robots interesting.
It might even be a widespread thing, but I don't think it's going to replace like human
romantic relationships.
I think it's just going to be a separate type of thing.
It's going to 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 would, well, I mean, the things that people feel threatened by in relationships
are very manifold.
So yeah, that's just an interesting one because maybe they'll be good, a little jealousy for
the relationship.
Maybe that's part of the couples therapy, you know, kind of thing or whatever.
I don't 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 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 is, he's a great listener and he is the best person I know at the type
of cognitive empathy that's 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.
I'll tell you how to be curious about the world and how to be open-minded.
Last question, what role does love play in the human condition?
So this will be talking about love and robots 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, the Eskimos have all these different words for snow.
We need more words to describe different types and kinds of love that we experienced, but
I think love is so important and I also think it's not zero sum.
That's the really interesting thing about love is that I had one kid and I 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 going to love it as much as the first, but I love them both equally.
It 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.
Kate, 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 Dolling.
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now let me leave you with some words from 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.