The following is a conversation with Kate Darling, a researcher at MIT interested in

social robotics, robot ethics, and generally how technology intersects with society.

She explores the emotional connection between human beings and lifelike machines,

which for me is one of the most exciting topics in all of artificial intelligence.

As she writes in her bio, she is a caretaker of several domestic robots,

including her plio dinosaur robots named Yochai, Peter, and Mr. Spaghetti.

She is one of the funniest and brightest minds I've ever had the fortune to talk to.

This conversation was recorded recently, but before the outbreak of the pandemic.

For everyone feeling the burden of this crisis, I'm sending love your way.

This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube,

review it with five stars on Apple Podcasts, support on Patreon,

or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman spelled F R I D M A N.

As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and never any ads in the middle that can break the

flow of the conversation. I hope that works for you and doesn't hurt the listening experience.

Quick summary of the ads, two sponsors, Masterclass and ExpressVPN. Please consider supporting

the podcast by signing up to masterclass at masterclass.com slash lex and getting expressvpn

at expressvpn.com slash lex pod. This show is sponsored by Masterclass.

Sign up at masterclass.com slash lex to get a discount and to support this podcast.

When I first heard about Masterclass, I thought it was too good to be true.

For $180 a year, you get an all access pass to watch courses from to list some of my favorites,

Chris Hatfield on space exploration, Neil deGrasse Tyson on scientific thinking and

communication, Will Wright, creator of SimCity and Sims, love those games on game design,

Carlos Santana on guitar, Gary Kasparov on chess, Daniel Negrano on poker and many more.

Chris Hatfield explaining how Rockets work and the experience of being launched into space alone

is worth the money. By the way, you can watch it on basically any device. Once again,

sign up on masterclass.com slash lex to get a discount and to support this podcast.

This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Get it at expressvpn.com slash lex pod

to get a discount and to support this podcast. I've been using ExpressVPN for many years.

I love it. It's easy to use. Press the big power on button and your privacy is protected.

And if you like, you can make it look like your location is anywhere else in the world.

I might be in Boston now, but it can make it look like I'm in New York, London, Paris or anywhere

else. This has a large number of obvious benefits. Certainly, it allows you to access international

versions of streaming websites like the Japanese Netflix or the UK Hulu. ExpressVPN works on any

device you can imagine. I use it on Linux. Shout out to Ubuntu 2004, Windows, Android,

but it's available everywhere else too. Once again, get it at expressvpn.com slash lex pod

to get a discount and to support this podcast. And now here's my conversation with Kate Darling.

You co taught robot ethics at Harvard. What are some ethical issues that arise

in the world with robots? Yeah, that was a reading group that I did when I,

like at the very beginning, first became interested in this topic. So I think if I

taught that class today, it would look very, very different. Robot ethics, it sounds very

science fictiony, especially did back then. But I think that some of the issues that people in

robot ethics are concerned with are just around the ethical use of robotic technology in general.

So for example, responsibility for harm, automated weapon systems, things like privacy and data

security, things like automation and labor markets. And then personally, I'm really interested in some

of the social issues that come out of our social relationships with robots. One on one relationship

with robots. Yeah. I think most of the stuff we have to talk about is like one on one social

stuff. That's what I love. I think that's what you're, you love as well and they're expert in.

But as a societal level, there's like, there's a presidential candidate now, Andrew Yang, running,

concerned about automation and robots and AI in general, taking away jobs. He has a proposal of

UBI, universal basic income of everybody gets a thousand bucks. Yeah. As a way to sort of

save you if you lose your job from automation to allow you time to discover what it is that you

would like to or even love to do. Yes. So I lived in Switzerland for 20 years and universal basic

income has been more of a topic there separate from the whole robots and jobs issue. So

it's so interesting to me to see kind of these Silicon Valley people latch on to this concept

that came from a very kind of left wing socialist, you know, kind of a different place in Europe.

But on the automation and labor markets topic, I think that it's very, so sometimes in those

conversations, I think people overestimate where robotic technology is right now. And we also have

this fallacy of constantly comparing robots to humans and thinking of this as a one to one

replacement of jobs. So even like Bill Gates a few years ago said something about, you know,

maybe we should have a system that taxes robots for taking people's jobs. And it just, I mean,

I'm sure that was taken out of context, you know, he's a really smart guy, but that sounds to me

like kind of viewing it as a one to one replacement versus viewing this technology as kind of a

supplemental tool that of course is going to shake up a lot of stuff. It's going to change the job

landscape, but I don't see, you know, robots taking all the jobs in the next 20 years. That's just

not how it's going to work. Right. So maybe drifting into the land of more personal relationships

with robots and interaction and so on. I got to warn you, I go, I may ask some silly philosophical

questions. I apologize. Oh, please do. Okay. Do you think humans will abuse robots in their

interaction? So you've had a lot of, and we'll talk about it sort of anthropomorphization and

work, you know, this intricate dance, emotional dance between human and robot, but this seems to

be also a darker side where people, when they treat the other as servants, especially, they

can be a little bit abusive or a lot abusive. Do you think about that? Do you worry about that?

Yeah, I do think about that. So I mean, one of my, one of my main interests is the fact that

people subconsciously treat robots like living things. And even though they know that they're

interacting with a machine and what it means in that context to behave violently, I don't know

if you could say abuse because you're not actually abusing the inner mind of the robot that robot

is in doesn't have any feelings. As far as you know. Well, yeah, it also depends on how we

define feelings and consciousness, but I think that's another area where people kind of overestimate

where we currently are with the technology, like the robots are not even as smart as insects right

now. And so I'm not worried about abuse in that sense, but it is interesting to think about what

does people's behavior towards these things mean for our own behavior? Is it desensitizing the

people to be verbally abusive to a robot or even physically abusive? And we don't know.

Right. It's a similar connection from like, if you play violent video games,

what connection does that have to desensitization to violence? I haven't read literature on that.

I wonder about that. Because everything I've heard, people don't seem to any longer be so

worried about violent video games. Correct. We've seemed, the research on it is,

it's a difficult thing to research. So it's sort of inconclusive, but we seem to have gotten the

sense, at least as a society, that people can compartmentalize. When it's something on a screen

and you're like shooting a bunch of characters or running over people with your car that doesn't

necessarily translate to you doing that in real life, we do, however, have some concerns about

children playing violent video games. And so we do restrict it there. I'm not sure that's based on

any real evidence either, but it's just the way that we've kind of decided, we want to be a little

more cautious there. And the reason I think robots are a little bit different is because there is a

lot of research showing that we respond differently to something in our physical space than something

on a screen. We will treat it much more viscerally, much more like a physical actor. And so it's

totally possible that this is not a problem. And it's the same thing as violent video games,

you know, maybe, you know, restrict it with kids to be safe, but adults can do what they want.

But we just need to ask the question again, because we don't have any evidence at all yet.

Maybe there's an intermediate place to, I did my research on Twitter. By research, I mean

scrolling through your Twitter feed. You mentioned that you were going at some point to an animal

law conference. So I have to ask, do you think there's something that we can learn

from animal rights that guides our thinking about robots?

Oh, I think there is so much to learn from that. I'm actually writing a book on it right now,

that's why I'm going to this conference. So I'm writing a book that looks at the history of

animal domestication and how we've used animals for work, for weaponry, for companionship. And,

you know, one of the things the book tries to do is move away from this fallacy that I talked about

of comparing robots and humans, because I don't think that's the right analogy. But I do think

that on a social level, even on a social level, there's so much that we can learn from looking

at that history, because throughout history, we've treated most animals like tools, like products,

and then some of them we've treated differently. And we're starting to see people treat robots in

really similar ways. So I think it's a really helpful predictor to how we're going to interact

with the robots. Do you think we'll look back at this time, like 100 years from now, and see

what we do to animals as similar to the way we view the Holocaust in World War II?

That's a great question. I mean, I hope so. I am not convinced that we will. But I often wonder,

you know, what are my grandkids going to view as abhorrent that my generation did,

that they would never do? And I'm like, well, what's the big deal? It's a fun question to ask

yourself. It always seems that there's atrocities that we discover later. So the things that at

the time people didn't see as, you know, you look at everything from slavery,

to any kinds of abuse throughout history, to the kind of insane wars that were happening,

to the way war was carried out, and rape, and the kind of violence that was happening during

war that we now, you know, we see as atrocities, but at the time, perhaps, didn't as much. And so

now I have this intuition that I have this worry, maybe you're going to probably criticize me,

but I do anthropomorphize robots. I don't see a fundamental philosophical difference

between a robot and a human being in terms of once the capabilities are matched. So the fact

that we're really far away doesn't, in terms of capabilities in the net from, from natural

language processing, understanding a generation to just reasoning and all that stuff. I think

once you solve it, I see the, this is a very gray area. And I don't feel comfortable with the kind

of abuse that people throw at robots, subtle, but I can see it becoming, I can see basically a

civil rights movement for robots in the future. Do you think, let me put it in the form of a

question, do you think robots should have some kinds of rights? Well, it's interesting because I

came at this originally from your perspective. I was like, you know what, there's no fundamental

difference between technology and like human consciousness. Like we can probably recreate

anything. We just don't know how yet. And so there's no reason not to give machines the same rights

that we have once, like you say, they're kind of on an equivalent level. But I realized that that

is kind of a far future question. I still think we should talk about it because I think it's

really interesting. But I realized that it's actually, we might need to ask the robot rights

question even sooner than that. While the machines are still, you know, quote unquote, really, you

know, dumb and not on our level, because of the way that we perceive them. And I think one of the

lessons we learned from looking at the history of animal rights, and one of the reasons we may not

get to a place in 100 years where we view it as wrong to, you know, eat or otherwise, you know,

use animals for our own purposes, is because historically, we've always protected those

things that we relate to the most. So one example is whales. No one gave a shit about the whales.

Am I allowed to swear? Yeah, you swear as much as you want. Freedom. Yeah, no one gave a shit

about the whales until someone recorded them singing. And suddenly people were like, oh,

this is a beautiful creature. And now we need to save the whales. And that started the whole

save the whales movement in the 70s. So I'm, as much as I, and I think a lot of people want to

believe that we care about consistent biological criteria, that's not historically how we formed

our alliances. Yeah, so what, why do we, why do we believe that all humans are created equal?

Killing of a human being, no matter who the human being is, that's what I meant by equality, is bad.

And then because I'm connecting that to robots, and I'm wondering whether mortality, so the

killing act is what makes something, that's the fundamental first right. So I'm, I am currently

allowed to take a shotgun and shoot a Roomba. I think I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure it's

not considered murder, right? Or even shutting them off. So that's, that's where the line appears

to be, right? Is it mortality? A critical thing here? I think here again, like the animal analogy

is really useful because you're also allowed to shoot your dog, but people won't be happy about it.

So we give, we do give animals certain protections from like, you know, you're not allowed to torture

your dog and set it on fire, at least in most states and countries, you know. But you're still

allowed to treat it like a piece of property in a lot of other ways. And so we draw these,

you know, arbitrary lines all the time. And, you know, there's a lot of philosophical thought on

why viewing humans as something unique is not, is just speciesism and not, you know,

based on any criteria that would actually justify making a difference between us and other species.

Do you think in general, people, most people are good? Do you think, or do you think there's

evil and good in all of us? That's revealed through our circumstances and through our interactions.

I like to view myself as a person who like, believes that there's no absolute evil and

good and that everything is, you know, gray. But I do think it's an interesting question. Like,

when I see people being violent towards robotic objects, you said that bothers you because

the robots might someday, you know, be smart. And is that what? Well, it bothers me because it

reveals, so I personally believe, because I've studied way too much, so I'm Jewish, I studied

the Holocaust and World War II exceptionally well. I personally believe that most of us have evil in us

that what bothers me is the abuse of robots reveals the evil in human beings. Yeah. And

I think it doesn't just bother me. I think it's an opportunity for roboticists to

make, help people find the better sides, the angels of their nature, right? That that abuse

isn't just a fun side thing. That's you revealing a dark part that you shouldn't,

that should be hidden deep inside. Yeah, I mean, you laugh, but some of our research does indicate

that maybe people's behavior towards robots reveals something about their tendencies for

empathy generally, even using very simple robots that we have today that like clearly don't feel

anything. So, you know, Westworld is maybe, you know, not so far off and it's like, you know,

depicting the bad characters as willing to go around and shoot and rape the robots and the

good characters is not wanting to do that, even without assuming that the robots have consciousness.

So there's a opportunity, it's interesting, there's opportunity to almost practice empathy. The, on

robots is an opportunity to practice empathy. I agree with you. Some people would say,

why are we practicing empathy on robots instead of, you know, on our fellow humans or on animals

that are actually alive and experience the world? And I don't agree with them because I don't think

empathy is a zero sum game. And I do think that it's a muscle that you can train and that we

should be doing that. But some people disagree. So the interesting thing, you've heard, you know,

raising kids, sort of asking them or telling them to be nice to the smart speakers, to Alexa,

and so on, saying please and so on during the request. I don't know if I'm a huge fan of that

idea. Because yeah, that's towards the idea of practicing empathy. I feel like politeness,

I'm always polite to all the, all the systems that we build, especially anything that's speech

interaction based, like when we talk to the car, I always have a pretty good detector for please.

I feel like there should be a room for encouraging empathy in those interactions.

Yeah. Okay, so I agree with you. So I'm going to play devil's advocate. Sure.

Sure. What is the devil's advocate argument there?

The devil's advocate argument is that if you are the type of person who has abusive tendencies or

needs to get some sort of like behavior like that out, needs an outlet for it, that it's great to

have a robot that you can scream at so that you're not screaming at a person. And we just don't know

whether that's true, whether it's an outlet for people or whether it just kind of, as my friend

once said, trains their cruelty muscles and makes them more cruel in other situations.

Oh boy, yeah. And that expands to other topics, which I don't know. There's a topic of sex,

which is weird one that I tend to avoid from robotics perspective. And mostly general public

doesn't. They talk about sex robots and so on. Is that an area you've touched at all research wise?

That's what people imagine, sort of any kind of interaction between human and robot that

shows any kind of compassion. They immediately think from a product perspective in the near term

is sort of expansion of what pornography is and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. Do researchers touch this? That's kind of you to characterize it as though they're thinking

rationally about product. I feel like sex robots are just such a titillating news hook for people

that they become like the story. And it's really hard to not get fatigued by it when you're in

the space because you tell someone you do human robot interaction. Of course, the first thing

they want to talk about is sex robots. Really? Yeah, it happens a lot. And it's unfortunate

that I'm so fatigued by it because I do think that there are some interesting questions that

become salient when you talk about sex with robots. See, what I think would happen when

people get sex robots, like let's talk guys, okay, guys get female sex robots. What I think

there's an opportunity for is an actual, like they'll actually interact,

what I'm trying to say, they won't, outside of the sex would be the most fulfilling part.

Like the interaction, it's like the folks who, there's movies in this, right? Who pay a prostitute

and then end up just talking to her the whole time. So I feel like there's an opportunity,

it's like most guys and people in general joke about the sex act, but really people are just

lonely inside and looking for connection, many of them. And it'd be unfortunate if that connection

is established through the sex industry. I feel like it should go into the front door of like,

people are lonely and they want a connection. Well, I also feel like we should kind of de

stigmatize the sex industry because even prostitution, like there are prostitutes that

specialize in disabled people who don't have the same kind of opportunities to explore their

sexuality. So I feel like we should de stigmatize all of that generally. But yeah, that connection

and that loneliness is an interesting topic that you bring up because while people are

constantly worried about robots replacing humans and oh, if people get sex robots and the sex is

really good and they won't want their partner or whatever, but we rarely talk about robots

actually filling a hole where there's nothing and what benefit that can provide to people.

Yeah, I think that's an exciting, there's a giant hole that's unfillable by humans.

It's asking too much of your friends and people you're in a relationship with in your family

to fill that hole because it's exploring the full complexity and richness of who you are.

Like, who are you really? Your family doesn't have enough patients to really sit there and

listen to who are you really? And I feel like there's an opportunity to really make that connection

with robots. I just feel like we're complex as humans and we're capable of lots of different

types of relationships. So whether that's with family members, with friends, with our pets or

with robots, I feel like there's space for all of that and all of that can provide value in a

different way. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm jumping around. Currently, most of my work is in autonomous

vehicles. So the most popular topic among general public is the trolley problem. So most robots

kind of hate this question, but what do you think of this thought experiment? What do you think we

can learn from it outside of the silliness of the actual application of it to the autonomous vehicle?

I think it's still an interesting ethical question, and that in itself, just like much of the

interaction with robots has something to teach us. But from your perspective, do you think there's

anything there? Well, I think you're right that it does have something to teach us. But I think

what people are forgetting in all of these conversations is the origins of the trolley

problem and what it was meant to show us, which is that there is no right answer and that sometimes

our moral intuition that comes to us instinctively is not actually what we should follow

if we care about creating systematic rules that apply to everyone. So I think that as a

philosophical concept, it could teach us at least that, but that's not how people are using it right

now. These are friends of mine, and I love them dearly, and their project adds a lot of value,

but if we're viewing the moral machine project as what we can learn from the trolley problems,

the moral machine is, I'm sure you're familiar, it's this website that you can go to, and it gives

you different scenarios like, oh, you're in a car, you can decide to run over these two people or

this child. What do you choose? Do you choose the homeless person? Do you choose the person who's

jaywalking? And so it pits these moral choices against each other and then tries to crowdsource

the quote unquote correct answer, which is really interesting and I think valuable data,

but I don't think that's what we should base our rules in autonomous vehicles on because

it is exactly what the trolley problem is trying to show, which is your first instinct might not

be the correct one if you look at rules that then have to apply to everyone and everything.

So how do we encode these ethical choices in interaction with robots? So for example,

with autonomous vehicles, there is a serious ethical question of, do I protect myself?

Does my life have higher priority than the life of another human being?

Because that changes certain control decisions that you make. So if your life matters more than

other human beings, then you'd be more likely to swerve out of your current lane. So currently,

automated emergency braking systems that just break, they don't ever swerve.

So swerving into oncoming traffic or, or no, just in a different lane can cause significant

harm to others, but it's possible that it causes less harm to you. So that's a difficult ethical

question. Do you have a hope that like the trolley problem is not supposed to have a

right answer, right? Do you hope that when we have robots at the table, we'll be able to discover

the right answer for some of these questions? Well, what's happening right now, I think, is

this question that we're facing of what ethical rules should we be programming into the machines

is revealing to us that our ethical rules are much less programmable than we probably thought

before. And so that's a really valuable insight, I think, that these issues are very complicated,

and that in a lot of these cases, you can't really make that call, like not even as a legislator.

And so what's going to happen in reality, I think, is that car manufacturers are just going to try and

avoid the problem and avoid liability in any way possible, or like they're going to always protect

the driver, because who's going to buy a car if it's programmed to kill you instead of someone

else. So that's what's going to happen in reality. But what did you mean by like once we have robots

at the table, like do you mean when they can help us figure out what to do? No, I mean, when robots

are part of the ethical decisions. So no, no, not they help us. Well,

Oh, you mean when it's like, should I run over a robot or a person?

Right, that kind of thing. So when you it's exactly what you said, which is when you have to

encode the ethics into an algorithm, you start to try to really understand what are the fundamentals

of the decision making process, you make this make certain decisions. Should you

do like capital punishment? Should you take a person's life or not to punish them for a certain

crime? Sort of, you can use, you can develop an algorithm to make that decision, right?

And the hope is that the act of making that algorithm, however you make it, so there's a

few approaches, will help us actually get to the core of what is right and what is wrong under

our current societal standards. But isn't that what's happening right now? And we're realizing

that we don't have a consensus on what's right and wrong. You mean in politics in general?

Well, like when we're thinking about these trolley problems and autonomous vehicles and how to

program ethics into machines and how to, you know, make make AI algorithms fair and equitable,

we're realizing that this is so complicated. And it's complicated in part because there is

doesn't seem to be a one right answer in any of these cases. Do you have a hope for like,

one of the ideas of the moral machine is that crowdsourcing can help us

converge towards like democracy can help us converge towards the right answer.

Do you have a hope for crowdsourcing? Well, yes and no. So I think that in general,

you know, I have a legal background and policymaking is often about trying to suss out,

you know, what rules does this society, this particular society agree on and then trying to

codify that. So the law makes these choices all the time and then tries to adapt according to

changing culture. But in the case of the moral machine project, I don't think that people's

choices on that website necessarily necessarily reflect what laws they would want in place.

If given, I think you would have to ask them a series of different questions in order to get

at what their consensus is. I agree. But that has to do more with the artificial nature of,

I mean, they're showing some cute icons on a screen. That's almost, so if you, for example,

we would do a lot of work in virtual reality. And so if you make, if you put those same people

into virtual reality where they have to make that decision, their decision would be very different,

I think. I agree with that. That's one aspect. And the other aspect is it's a different question

to ask someone, would you run over the homeless person or the doctor in this scene? Or do you

want cars to always run over the homeless people? I think, yeah. So let's talk about anthropomorphism.

To me, anthropomorphism, if I can pronounce it correctly, is, is one of the most fascinating

phenomena from like both engineering perspective and psychology perspective, machine learning

perspective and robotics in general. Can you step back and define anthropomorphism, how you see it

in general terms in your, in your work? Sure. So anthropomorphism is this tendency that we

have to project human like traits and behaviors and qualities onto nonhumans. And we often see it

with animals, like we'll, we'll project emotions on animals that may or may not actually be there.

We, we often see that we're trying to interpret things according to our own behavior when we get

it wrong. But we do it with more than just animals, we do it with objects, you know,

teddy bears, we see, you know, faces in the headlights of cars. And we do it with robots,

very, very extremely. You think that can be engineered? Can that be used to enrich an

interaction between an AI system and the human? Oh yeah, for sure. And do you see it being used

that way often? Like, I don't, I haven't seen, whether it's Alexa or any of the smart speaker

systems often trying to optimize for the anthropomorphization. You said you haven't seen?

I haven't seen. They keep moving away from that. I think they're afraid of that.

They, they actually, so I only recently found out, but did you know that Amazon has like a whole

team of people who are just there to work on Alexa's personality?

So I've, I know that depends on what you mean by personality. I didn't know, I didn't know that

exact thing. But I do know that the, how the voice is perceived is worked on a lot, whether

that if it's a pleasant feeling about the voice, but that has to do more with the texture of the

sound and the audience on what personality is more like. It's like what's her favorite beer

when you ask her. And the personality team is different for every country too. Like there's

a different personality for German Alexa than there is for American Alexa. That said, I think

it's very difficult to, you know, use the really, really harness the anthropomorphism

with these voice assistants because the voice interface is still very primitive. And I think that

in order to get people to really suspend their disbelief and treat a robot like it's alive,

less is sometimes more. You, you want them to project onto the robot and you want the robot to

not disappoint their expectations for how it's going to answer or behave in order for them to

have this kind of illusion. And with Alexa, I don't think we're there yet or Siri that just,

they're just not good at that. But if you look at some of the more animal like robots, like the baby

seal that they use with the dementia patients, so much more simple design doesn't try to talk to you.

You can't disappoint you in that way. It just makes little movements and sounds and

people stroke it and it responds to their touch. And that is like a very effective way to harness

people's tendency to kind of treat the robot like a living thing.

Yeah. So you bring up some interesting ideas in your paper chapter, I guess,

anthropomorphic framing human robot interaction that I read the last time we scheduled this.

Oh my God, that was a long time ago.

What are some good and bad cases of anthropomorphism in your perspective?

Like when is it good? When is it bad? Well, I should start by saying that while design can

really enhance the anthropomorphism, it doesn't take a lot to get people to treat a robot like

it's alive. Over 85% of Roombas have a name, which I don't know the numbers for your regular

type of vacuum cleaner, but they're not that high, right? So people will feel bad for the Roomba

when it gets stuck. They'll send it in for repair and want to get the same one back. And that one

is not even designed to make you do that. So I think that some of the cases where it's maybe

a little bit concerning that anthropomorphism is happening is when you have something that's

supposed to function like a tool and people are using it in the wrong way. And one of the concerns

is military robots. Early 2000s, which is a long time ago, iRobot, the Roomba company,

made this robot called the PacBot that was deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan with the

bomb disposal units that were there. And the soldiers became very emotionally attached to

the robots. And that's fine until a soldier risks his life to save a robot, which you

really don't want. But they were treating them like pets, like they would name them,

they would give them funerals with gun salutes, they would get really upset and traumatized

when the robot got broken. So in situations where you want a robot to be a tool, in particular,

when it's supposed to do a dangerous job that you don't want a person doing,

it can be hard when people get emotionally attached to it. That's maybe something that

you would want to discourage. Another case for concern is maybe when companies try to

leverage the emotional attachment to exploit people. So if it's something that's not in the

consumer's interest, trying to sell them products or services or exploit an emotional connection

to keep them paying for a cloud service for a social robot or something like that,

might be, I think that's a little bit concerning as well.

Yeah, the emotional manipulation, which probably happens behind the scenes now

with some social networks and so on, but making it more explicit. What's your favorite robot?

Fictional or real?

No, real. Real robot, which you have felt a connection with, or not anthropomorphic

connection, but I mean, you sit back and say, damn, this is an impressive system.

Wow, so two different robots. So the Pleo baby dinosaur robot that is no longer sold that came

out in 2007, that one I was very impressed with. But from an anthropomorphic perspective,

I was impressed with how much I bonded with it, how much I wanted to believe that it had this

inner life. Can you describe Pleo? Can you describe what it is? How big is it? What can it actually

do? Yeah, Pleo is about the size of a small cat. It had a lot of motors that gave it this kind of

lifelike movement. It had things like touch sensors and an infrared camera. So it had all

these cool little technical features, even though it was a toy. And the thing that really

struck me about it was that it could mimic pain and distress really well. So if you held it up

by the tail, it had a tilt sensor that told it what direction it was facing and it would start to

squirm and cry out. If you hit it too hard, it would start to cry. So it was very impressive

in design. And what's the second robot that you said there might have been two that you liked?

Yeah, so the Boston Dynamics robots are just impressive feats of engineering.

Have you met them in person? Yeah, I recently got a chance to go visit. And I was always one of

those people who watched the videos and was like, this is super cool, but also it's a product video.

Like, I don't know how many times that they had to shoot this to get it right. But visiting them,

you know, I'm pretty sure that I was very impressed. Let's put it that way.

Yeah. And in terms of the control, I think that was a transformational moment for me

when I met Spotmini in person. Because, okay, maybe this is a psychology experiment,

but I anthropomorphized the crap out of it. So I immediately, it was like my best friend.

Right? I think it's really hard for anyone to watch Spotmove and not feel like it has agency.

Yeah, this movement, especially the arm on Spotmini, really obviously looks like a head.

Yeah. And they say, no, wouldn't mean it that way. But it obviously, it looks exactly like that.

And so it's almost impossible to not think of it as almost like the baby dinosaur, but slightly

larger. And this movement of the, of course, the intelligence is their whole idea is that

it's not supposed to be intelligent. It's a platform on which you build

higher intelligence. It's actually really, really dumb. It's just a basic movement platform.

Yeah. But even dumb robots can, like we can immediately respond to them in this visceral way.

What are your thoughts about Sophia, the robot, this kind of mix of some basic natural English

processing and basically an art experiment? Yeah. An art experiment is a good way to characterize it.

I'm much less impressed with Sophia than I am with Boston Dynamics.

She said she likes you. She said she admires you.

Yeah, she followed me on Twitter at some point. Yeah.

Yeah. And she tweets about how much she likes you. So.

So what does that mean? I have to be nice or?

No, I don't know. See, I was emotionally manipulating you.

And no, how do you think of the whole thing that happened with Sophia is quite a large

number of people kind of immediately had a connection and thought that maybe we're far

more advanced with robotics than we are or actually didn't even think much. I was surprised

how little people cared that they kind of assumed that, well, of course, AI can do this.

Yeah. And then if they assumed that, I felt they should be more impressed.

Well, you know what I mean? People really overestimate where we are. And so when something,

I don't even think Sophia was very impressive or is very impressive. I think she's kind of a puppet,

to be honest. But yeah, I think people have a little bit influenced by science fiction and

pop culture to think that we should be further along than we are.

So what's your favorite robots in movies and fiction?

Wally. Wally. What what do you like about Wally? The humor, the cuteness,

the perception control systems operating on Wally that makes it all work out.

Just in general. The design of Wally the robot, I think that animators figured out,

you know, starting in like the 1940s how to create characters that don't look real but look

like something that's even better than real that we really respond to and think is really cute.

They figured out how to make them move and look in the right way.

And Wally is just such a great example of that.

You think eyes, big eyes or big something that's kind of eyish. So it's always playing on some

aspect of the human face, right? Often, yeah. So big eyes. Well, I think one of the

one of the first like animations to really play with this was Bambi. And they weren't originally

going to do that. They were originally trying to make the deer look as lifelike as possible.

Like they brought deer into the studio and had a little zoo there so that the animators could

work with them. And then at some point they're like, hmm, if we make really big eyes and like a

small nose and like big cheeks, kind of more like a baby face, then people like it even

better than if it looks real. Do you think the future of things like Alexa in the home

has possibly to take advantage of that, to build on that, to create these systems that are better

than real that create a close human connection? I can pretty much guarantee you without having any

knowledge that those companies are working on that, on that design behind the scenes.

Like, I'm pretty sure. I totally disagree with you. Really? So that's what I'm interested in.

I'd like to build such a company. I know a lot of those folks and they're afraid of that

because you don't, well, how do you make money off of it? Well, but even just like

making Alexa look a little bit more interesting than just like a cylinder would do so much.

It's an interesting thought, but I don't think people from Amazon perspective are looking for

that kind of connection. They want you to be addicted to the services provided by Alexa,

not to the device. So the device itself, it's felt that you can lose a lot because if you create a

connection and then it creates more opportunity for frustration for negative stuff than it does

for positive stuff is I think the way they think about it. That's interesting. Like,

I agree that it's very difficult to get right and you have to get it exactly right. Otherwise,

you wind up with Microsoft's Clippy. Okay, easy now. What's your problem with Clippy?

You like Clippy? Is Clippy your friend? Yeah, I was just, I just, I just talked to,

we just had this argument. They said Microsoft CTO and they said, he said he's not bringing

Clippy back. They're not bringing Clippy back and that's very disappointing. I think it was,

Clippy was the greatest assistance we've ever built. It was a horrible attempt, of course,

but it's the best we've ever done because it was a real attempt to have an actual personality.

I mean, it was obviously technology was way not there at the time of being able to be a

recommender system for assisting you in anything and typing in Word or any kind of other application,

but still was an attempt of personality that was legitimate. That's true. I thought was brave.

Yes. Okay. You know, you've convinced me I'll be slightly less hard on Clippy.

And I know I have like an army of people behind me who also miss Clippy, so.

Really? I want to meet these people. Who are these people?

It's the people who like to hate stuff when it's there and miss it when it's gone.

So everyone. Exactly. All right. So Anki and Gibo, the two companies,

two amazing companies, social robotics companies that have recently been closed down.

Why do you think it's so hard to create a personal robotics company? So making a business

out of essentially something that people would anthropomorphize, have a deep connection with,

why is it so hard to make it work? Is the business case not there or what is it?

I think it's a number of different things. I don't think it's going to be this way forever.

I think at this current point in time, it takes so much work to build something that only barely

meets people's minimal expectations because of science fiction and pop culture giving people

this idea that we should be further than we already are. When people think about a robot

assistant in the home, they think about Rosie from the Jetsons or something like that. And

Anki and Gibo did such a beautiful job with the design and getting that interaction just right.

But I think people just wanted more. They wanted more functionality. I think you're also right

that the business case isn't really there because there hasn't been a killer application

that's useful enough to get people to adopt the technology in great numbers. I think what we did

see from the people who did get Gibo is a lot of them became very emotionally attached to it.

But that's not... I mean, it's kind of like the palm pilot back in the day. Most people are like,

why do I need this? Why would I? They don't see how they would benefit from it until

they have it or some other company comes in and makes it a little better.

Yeah. How far away are we? Do you think? How hard is this problem?

It's a good question. And I think it has a lot to do with people's expectations.

And those keep shifting depending on what science fiction that is popular.

But also, it's two things. It's people's expectation and people's need for an emotional

connection. And I believe the need is pretty high. Yes. But I don't think we're aware of it.

That's right. I really think this is like the life as we know it. So we've just kind of gotten used

to it. I hate to be dark because I have close friends. But we've gotten used to really never

weren't being close to anyone. And we're deeply, I believe, okay, this is hypothesis,

I think we're deeply lonely, all of us, even those in deep fulfilling relationships.

In fact, what makes those relationships fulfilling, I think, is that they at least

tap into that deep loneliness a little bit. But I feel like there's more opportunity

to explore that, that doesn't interfere with the human relationships you have.

It expands more on the, yeah, the rich, deep, unexplored complexity that's all of us,

weird apes. Okay. I think you're right. Do you think it's possible to fall in love with a robot?

Oh, yeah, totally. Do you think it's possible to have a long term committed

monogamous relationship with a robot? Well, yeah, there are lots of different types of

long term committed monogamous relationships. I think monogamous implies, like,

you're not going to see other humans sexually or like you basically on Facebook have to say,

I'm in a relationship with this person, this robot. I just don't, like, again, I think this

is comparing robots to humans. When I would rather compare them to pets, like you get a robot,

but it fulfills, you know, this loneliness that you have in a, maybe not the same way as a pet,

maybe in a different way that is even, you know, supplemental in a different way. But,

you know, I'm not saying that people won't like do this, be like, Oh, I want to marry my robot,

or I want to have like a, you know, sexual relation monogamous relationship with my robot.

But I don't think that that's the main use case for them.

But you think that there's still a gap between human and pet.

So between husband and pet, there's a different relationship. It's an engineering,

so that that's a gap that can be closed through. I think it could be closed someday. But why would

we close that? Like, I think it's so boring to think about recreating things that we already

have when we could, when we could create something that's different. I know you're thinking about

the people who like don't have a husband and like, what could we give them?

Yeah, but, but let's, I guess what I'm getting at is maybe not. So like the movie, Her.

Yeah. Right. So a better husband.

Well, maybe better in some ways. Like it's, I do think that robots are going to continue to be

a different type of relationship, even if we get them like very human looking, or when, you know,

the voice interactions we have with them feel very like natural and human like, I think

there's still going to be differences. And there were in that movie too, like towards the end,

it kind of goes off the rails. But it's just a movie. So your intuition is that that,

because, because you kind of said two things, right? So one is, why would you want

to basically replicate the husband? Yeah. Right. And the other is kind of implying that

it's kind of hard to do. So like anytime you try, you might build something very impressive,

but it'll be different. I guess my question is about human nature. It's like,

how hard is it to satisfy that role of the husband? So removing any of the sexual stuff

aside is the, it's more like the mystery, the tension, the dance of relationships.

Do you think with robots that's difficult to build? What's your intuition about it?

I think that, well, it also depends on how we talk about robots now in 50 years,

in like indefinite amount of time. I'm thinking like five or 10 years.

Five or 10 years. I think that robots at best will be like,

it's more similar to the relationship we have with our pets than relationship that we have with

other people. I got it. So what do you think it takes to build a system that exhibits greater

and greater levels of intelligence? Like it impresses us with this intelligence. You know,

a Roomba, so you talked about anthropomorphization that doesn't, I think intelligence is not

required. In fact, intelligence probably gets in the way sometimes, like you mentioned.

But what do you think it takes to create a system where we sense that it has a human level

intelligence? So something that, probably something conversational, human level intelligence.

How hard do you think that problem is? It'd be interesting to hear your perspective, not just

purely, I talked to a lot of people, how hard is the conversational agents? How hard is it

to pass a touring test? But my sense is it's easier than just solving, it's easier than solving the

pure natural language processing problem, because I feel like you can cheat.

Yeah. So how hard is it to pass a touring test in your view?

Well, I think, again, it's all about expectation management. If you set up people's expectations

to think that they're communicating with, what was it, a 13 year old boy from the Ukraine?

Yeah, that's right. Then they're not going to expect perfect English. They're not going to

expect perfect understanding of concepts or even like being on the same wavelength in terms of

like conversation flow. So it's much easier to pass in that case.

Do you think, you kind of alluded this to with audio, do you think it needs to have a body?

I think that we definitely have, so we treat physical things with more social agency,

because we're very physical creatures. I think a body can be useful.

Does it get in the way? Is there a negative aspects like?

Yeah, there can be. So if you're trying to create a body that's too similar to something that people

are familiar with, like I have this robot cat at home that Hasbro makes. And it's very disturbing

to watch because I'm constantly assuming that it's going to move like a real cat and it doesn't,

because it's like a $100 piece of technology. So it's very disappointing and it's very hard to

treat it like it's alive. So you can get a lot wrong with the body too, but you can also use

tricks same as the expectation management of the 13 year old boy from the Ukraine. If you

pick an animal that people aren't intimately familiar with, like the baby dinosaur, like the

baby seal that people have never actually held in their arms, you can get away with much more

because they don't have these preformed expectations. Yeah, I remember you were thinking at Ted Talk

or something that clicked for me that nobody actually knows what a dinosaur looks like.

So you can actually get away with a lot more. That was great. So what do you think about

consciousness and mortality being displayed in a robot? So not actually having consciousness,

but having these kind of human elements that are much more than just the interaction, much more

than just, like you mentioned, with a dinosaur moving kind of interesting ways, but really

being worried about its own death and really acting as if it's aware and self aware and identity.

Have you seen that done in robotics? What do you think about doing that? Is that a powerful good

thing? Well, I think it can be a design tool that you can use for different purposes. So I

can't say whether it's inherently good or bad, but I do think it can be a powerful tool. The fact

that the pleo mimics distress when you, quote unquote, hurt it is a really powerful tool to

get people to engage with it in a certain way. I had a research partner that I did some of the

empathy work with named Palashnandi and he had built a robot for himself that had a lifespan

and that would stop working after a certain amount of time just because he was interested in whether

he himself would treat it differently. And we know from Tamagotchi's those little games that

we used to have that were extremely primitive, that people respond to this idea of mortality

and you can get people to do a lot with little design tricks like that. Now, whether it's a

good thing depends on what you're trying to get them to do. Have a deeper relationship. Have a

deeper connection, have a relationship. If it's for their own benefit, that sounds great. Okay.

You can do that for a lot of other reasons. I see. So what kind of stuff are you worried about?

So is it mostly about manipulation of your emotions for like advertisements and so on,

things like that? Yeah, or data collection or, I mean, you could think of governments misusing

this to extract information from people. It's, you know, just like any other technological tool,

just raises a lot of questions. What's, if you look at Facebook, if you look at Twitter and

social networks, there's a lot of concern of data collection now. What's from legal perspective or

in general, how do we prevent the violation of sort of these companies crossing a line? It's

a great area, but crossing a line, they shouldn't in terms of manipulating, like we're talking about

manipulating our emotion, manipulating our behavior using tactics that are not so savory.

Yeah, it's really difficult because we are starting to create technology that relies on data

collection to provide functionality. And there's not a lot of incentive, even on the consumer side

to curb that because the other problem is that the harms aren't tangible. They're not really

apparent to a lot of people because they kind of trickle down on a societal level and then

suddenly we're living in 1984, which sounds extreme, but that book was very prescient. And

I'm not worried about these systems. I have Amazon's Echo at home and tell Alexa all sorts of stuff

and it helps me because Alexa knows what brand of diaper we use and so I can just easily order it

again. So I don't have any incentive to ask a lawmaker to curb that. But when I think about

that data then being used against low income people to target them for scammy loans or education

programs, that's then a societal effect that I think is very severe and legislators should be

thinking about. But yeah, the gray area is the removing ourselves from consideration of explicitly

defining objectives and more saying, well, we want to maximize engagement in our social network.

Yeah. And then just because you're not actually doing a bad thing, it makes sense. You want

people to keep a conversation going, to have more conversations, to keep coming back again and again

to have conversations. And whatever happens after that, you're kind of not exactly directly responsible.

You're only indirectly responsible. So I think it's a really hard problem. Do you

optimistic about us ever being able to solve it? You mean the problem of capitalism? Because the

problem is that the companies are acting in the company's interests and not in people's interest

and when those interests are aligned, that's great. But the completely free market doesn't seem to work

because of this information asymmetry. But it's hard to know how to... So say you were trying to do

the right thing. I guess what I'm trying to say is it's not obvious for these companies what the

good thing for society is to do. I don't think they sit there with a glass of wine and a cat,

like petting a cat, evil cat. And there's two decisions and one of them is good for society,

one is good for the profit and they choose the profit. I think actually there's a lot of money

to be made by doing the right thing for society. Because Google, Facebook have so much cash that

they actually, especially Facebook, would significantly benefit from making decisions

that are good for society. It's good for their brand. But I don't know if they know what's good

for society. I don't think we know what's good for society in terms of how we manage the

conversation on Twitter or how we design... We're talking about robots. Should we emotionally

manipulate you into having a deep connection with Alexa or not? Yeah. Do you have optimism

that we'll be able to solve some of these questions? Well, I'm going to say something

that's controversial in my circles, which is that I don't think that companies who are reaching out

to ethicists and trying to create interdisciplinary ethics boards, I don't think that that's

totally just trying to whitewash the problem and so that they look like they've done something.

I think that a lot of companies actually do, like you say, care about what the right answer is.

They don't know what that is and they're trying to find people to help them find them.

Not in every case, but I think it's much too easy to just vilify the companies

as, like you said, sitting there with their cat going, one million dollars. That's not what happens.

A lot of people are well meaning even within companies. I think that what we do absolutely need

is more interdisciplinarity both within companies, but also within the policymaking space because

we've hurtled into the world where technological progress is much faster. It seems much faster

than it was and things are getting very complex. You need people who understand the technology,

but also people who understand what the societal implications are and people who are thinking

about this in a more systematic way to be talking to each other. There's no other solution, I think.

We've also done work on intellectual property. If you look at the algorithms that these companies

are using, like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, so on, those are mostly secretive.

The recommender systems behind these algorithms. Do you think about IP and the transparency

about algorithms like this? Is the responsibility of these companies to open source the algorithms

or at least reveal to the public how these algorithms work?

I personally don't work on that. There are a lot of people who do though, and there are a lot of

people calling for transparency. In fact, Europe's even trying to legislate transparency. Maybe they

even have at this point where if an algorithmic system makes some sort of decision that affects

someone's life, that you need to be able to see how that decision was made, it's a tricky balance

because, obviously, companies need to have some sort of competitive advantage and you can't take

all of that away or you stifle innovation. For some of the ways that these systems are already

being used, I think it is pretty important that people understand how they work.

What are your thoughts in general on intellectual property in this weird age of software, AI,

robotics? That it's broken. I mean, the system is just broken.

Can you describe? Actually, I don't even know what intellectual property is in the space of

software. I believe I have a patent on a piece of software from my PhD.

You believe? You don't know? No, we went through a whole process. Yeah, I do.

You get the spam emails like, we'll frame your patent for you.

Yeah, it's much like a thesis. That's useless, right? Or not? Where does IP stand in this age?

What's the right way to do it? What's the right way to protect and own ideas when it's just code

and this mishmash of something that feels much softer than a piece of machinery or any idea?

I mean, it's hard because there are different types of intellectual property and they're

kind of these blunt instruments. It's like patent law is like a wrench. It works really well for an

industry like the pharmaceutical industry, but when you try and apply it to something else,

it's like, I don't know, I'll just hit this thing with a wrench and hope it works.

So software, software, you have a couple of different options.

Software like any code that's written down in some tangible form is automatically copyrighted.

So you have that protection, but that doesn't do much because if someone takes the basic idea that

the code is executing and just does it in a slightly different way, they can get around

the copyright. So that's not a lot of protection. Then you can patent software, but that's kind of,

I mean, getting a patent costs, I don't know if you remember what yours cost or was it through

an institution? Yeah, it was through a university. It was insane. There were so many lawyers, so many

meetings. It made me feel like it must have been hundreds of thousands of dollars. It must have

been something crazy. It's insane the cost of getting a patent. And so this idea of protecting

the inventor in their own garage came up with a great idea. That's the thing of the past.

It's all just companies trying to protect things and it costs a lot of money. And then with code,

it's oftentimes, by the time the patent is issued, which can take like five years,

probably your code is obsolete at that point. So it's a very, again, a very blunt instrument

that doesn't work well for that industry. And so at this point, we should really

have something better, but we don't. Do you like open source? Yeah, it's open source good for

society. You think all of us should open source code? Well, so at the Media Lab at MIT,

we have an open source default because what we've noticed is that people will come in, they'll write

some code and they'll be like, how do I protect this? And we're like, that's not your problem

right now. Your problem isn't that someone's going to steal your project. Your problem is

getting people to use it at all. There's so much stuff out there. We don't even know if

you're going to get traction for your work. And so open sourcing can sometimes help get

people's work out there, but ensure that they get attribution for it for the work that they've done.

So I'm a fan of it in a lot of contexts. Obviously, it's not like a one size fits all solution.

So what I gleaned from your Twitter is your mom. I saw a quote, a reference to Babybot.

What have you learned about robotics and AI from raising a human baby bot?

Well, I think that my child has just made it more apparent to me that the systems we're currently

creating aren't like human intelligence. There's not a lot to compare there. He has learned and

developed in such a different way than a lot of the AI systems we're creating that that's not really

interesting to me to compare. But what is interesting to me is how these systems are going to shape

the world that he grows up in. And so I'm even more concerned about the societal effects of

developing systems that rely on massive amounts of data collection, for example.

So is he going to be allowed to use like Facebook? Facebook is over. Kids don't use that anymore.

Snapchat? What do they use Instagram? I don't know. I just heard that TikTok is over,

which I've never even seen. So I don't know. We're old. We don't know.

I'm going to start gaming and streaming my gameplay. So what do you see as the future of

personal robotics, social robotics, interaction with our robots? Like, what are you excited about

if you were to sort of philosophize about what might happen the next five, 10 years?

That would be cool to see. Oh, I really hope that we get kind of a home robot that makes it.

That's a social robot and not just Alexa. Like, it's, you know, I really love the Anki products.

I thought Jibo has had some really great aspects. So I'm hoping that a company cracks that.

Me too. So, Kate, it was a wonderful talking to you today. Likewise. Thank you so much. It was fun.

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Kate Darling. And thank you to our sponsors,

ExpressVPN and Masterclass. Please consider supporting the podcast by signing up to Masterclass

and Masterclass.com slash Lex and getting ExpressVPN at expressvpn.com slash Lex pod.

If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple podcast,

support on Patreon or simply connect with me on Twitter and Lex Friedman.

And now let me leave you with some tweets from Kate Darling. First tweet is the pandemic has

fundamentally changed who I am. I now drink the leftover milk in the bottom of the cereal bowl.

Second tweet is I came on here to complain that I had a really bad day and saw that a

bunch of you are hurting too. Love to everyone. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.