第 329 期·中文精讀

凱特·達林:社交機器人、倫理、隱私與 MIT 的未來

Kate Darling: Social Robots, Ethics, Privacy and the Future of MIT

機器人倫理研究者談人機情感聯結、隱私風險,以及 MIT 研究生態的變化。

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中文精讀由 AI 基於原始訪談改寫,非官方翻譯,可能存在偏差或錯誤;表述以原音訊與官方文稿為準。說明

Stop & Shop 是美國東北部的一家連鎖超市。它家門店裡有個巡檢機器人,叫 Marty,一米八的個子,頭頂兩隻巨大的卡通眼睛,整天在貨架之間慢慢晃,找地上的灑漏和空缺的貨。

人們討厭它。

討厭到什麼程度呢?Stop & Shop 有一回給門店裡的 Marty 辦了個生日派對,免費發蛋糕和氣球。MIT 的一位研究者做了個推特情感分析,發現關於 Marty 的負面提及量在那一天衝到了最高峰。

免費蛋糕都救不了它。

這件事被 Kate Darling 反覆拿出來講。她是 MIT Media Lab 的研究科學家,研究方向是人機互動和機器人倫理,寫過一本書,叫《The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals About Our Future with Robots》(新物種:我們與動物的歷史如何揭示我們與機器人的未來)。她和 Lex 聊了兩個多小時,從“什麼才算機器人”這種看似無聊的問題開始,一路聊到為什麼大公司做不出好東西,為什麼機器人該學會道歉,以及為什麼給醫院送藥機器人起名叫 Roxie 和 Lola 是一種失職。

“什麼算機器人”這個問題,沒人答得上來

Kate 的書第一章就問了這個。她的回答是:她也不知道,而且這個問題本來就不該有標準答案。

她說,翻歷史會發現一個規律:一樣東西在被叫作機器人的時候,往往是因為它身上還帶著某種“魔法”。這個魔法指的是超出普通人理解範圍的那部分能力,那種“它是怎麼做到的”的神秘感。一旦技術普及,魔法消失,它就不再是機器人了。自動售貨機在幾十年前就被稱作機器人,現在沒人這麼叫。

Lex 給了一個自己的定義:機器人是某種具備一定智慧、又保留一點魔法的東西,那點魔法讓它可以應對生活裡的不確定性。按這個標準,自動駕駛汽車算機器人,因為它要在混亂的真實路況裡做判斷。

Kate 說她認同這個角度。而機器人學家給出的技術定義是另一套:得有物理實體,得知覺,得感知環境,得自主決策,得作用於環境。這套定義聽起來挺嚴謹,但拿智慧手機一套就崩了:手機全都能做到,可沒有一個機器人學家會承認手機是機器人。

“我在這本書裡沒有給機器人下一個確定的定義,因為不存在所有人都同意的定義。”
(凱特·達林)

真正讓 Kate 在意的是另一件事:普通人腦子裡的機器人形象,幾乎都指向人形。你去 Google 圖片搜“robot”,出來的全是有軀幹、有頭、兩隻胳膊兩條腿的仿人機器。

她想把這條思路掰回來。因為一旦把人形當成預設設定,後面的討論就全歪了。

拿機器和人比,從一開始就比錯了物件

為什麼人形設定會把人帶溝裡?Kate 給了兩個理由。

第一個是技術上的。早期人工智慧研究裡確實有一批人想復刻人類智慧,這個方向今天還有人在做,學術價值也還在。但走到今天,AI 並不是照人腦那個路子長出來的,它壓根不按人的方式“想”。可公眾討論裡,一提到智慧,比的永遠是人的智慧,好像人的智慧是唯一的座標原點。

第二個理由更直接:把人類已經有的智慧再造一遍,本身就沒多大意思。

她的原話大意是,從理解自身智慧的學術角度看,複製人類智慧有意義;可從“這東西能拿來幹什麼”的角度看,真正有意思的是造出新東西,造出一套人類沒有的技能,然後跟它合作。它得在很深的層面上跟我們相似,否則沒法建立連線,但在大多數維度上應該跟我們不同。

支援人形機器人的常見論據有兩條。一條是溝通,人最容易對跟自己像的東西產生共鳴;另一條是環境,我們的世界是為人造的,有臺階、有窄門、有門把手,機器人想在這個世界裡走動,人形最省事。

Kate 認第二條,但對第一條有保留。

社會機器人學這些年的研究結論是:你不需要它長得像人,甚至不需要它表現得像人,只要它能發出足夠多的社交線索就夠了。 R2D2 只會嗶嗶叫,一個帶輪子的垃圾桶,人們對它的喜愛程度超過 C-3PO 這個真正的人形機器人。

一個發光的球體,一個語調,一次極簡的互動反饋,就能讓人開始擬人化。Kate 說,很多團隊在這件事上過度設計了,簡單的東西往往走得最遠。這話動畫師最懂。

真正該請來設計機器人的,是迪士尼那幫人

Lex 接過話頭說,設計 Cosmo(Anki 出品的桌面機器人)的那批人,本質上就該是動畫師,是迪士尼那種背景的人,而不是機器人學家。機器人學家在自己的學科裡很強,但跨界的事他們不懂。

Kate 順著他往下說了一個判斷:21 世紀初的機器人學和 21 世紀後期的機器人學,會是兩回事。 今天你自稱機器人學家,做的主要是控制和機構;往後,那些真正沒解決的大問題全都落在社交層面、落在跟人打交道上、落在感知和“大腦”這一層,底層控制反而會成為相對成熟的部分。

Lex 認為機器人學正在經歷一次“出櫃”。機器人早就在了,只是一直待在幕後,待在工廠裡,現在它們開始走進超市、醫院、街道這些跟人共享的空間。而這一批公司正在犯同一類錯誤:把所有精力砸在工程上,砸在讓機器人別撞到人上,卻忘了想一件事。

他的說法是,你不該只去解決感知和控制問題,你還得教會機器人說一句“操,對不起,我搞砸了”。

“或者學會求助,或者能把自己的不確定性表達出來。”
(凱特·達林)

她的補充是,感知和控制這道題人類自己也沒解完,我們只是做得特別好而已。真正的魔法在於自嘲、在於清楚自己的短板在哪、在於把這份自覺傳達出去。人機互動領域已經積累了一整套方法來做這件事,問題是很多公司根本不做 HRI,他們的團隊裡沒有這個人。

然後 Marty 就登場了。

Marty 做錯了什麼?它什麼都沒做錯

疫情前,Kate 和 MIT 的一位學生打算正經研究一下 Marty 現象,後來因為沒人敢去超市,專案黃了。但前期的觀察已經足夠說明問題。

那位學生在自己的社交圈裡發現,Facebook 上所有人都在抱怨 Marty。“這個詭異的機器人是什麼東西”“它一直在盯著我”“它老是擋路”。她順手做了個粗糙的推特情感分析,抓取提到 Marty 的正負面內容,結果撞上了那個生日派對:Stop & Shop 給 Marty 辦生日會發蛋糕的那天,負面提及量衝到峰值。

誰會因為免費蛋糕而生氣?因為討厭 Marty 的人會。

她們用 Mechanical Turk 做了個線上調查,想搞清楚人們到底不滿什麼。結果顯示,抱怨集中在三件事上:它是個監控機器人;它在盯著我看;它擋路。 沒多少人擔心它搶工作。

而 Marty 的真實功能,只是找地上的灑漏。

它不看人,不採集人臉,不做任何跟監控有關的事。可它一米八的個頭,在過道里慢慢挪動,頭頂兩隻大眼睛,這個組合在人的直覺裡就等於“在看”。Kate 猜,那兩隻後來加上去的卡通大眼睛,可能恰恰加劇了被注視的感覺。設計的人大概沒往這個方向想過。

Lex 丟擲了一個類比:Marty 是不是現實版的 Clippy?

這條線索挺關鍵。Clippy 是微軟 Office 裡那個回形針助手,Lex 喜歡它,但很多人恨它。恨到什麼程度?微軟後來直接把它砍了。

斯坦福的 Clifford Nass 是研究人機互動的老前輩,他對 Clippy 的解釋是:人們把 Clippy 當成了一個社交主體,而不是一個工具。 一個工具打擾你、打斷你、記不住你剛說過的話,你會覺得難用;一個社交主體這麼幹,你會覺得被冒犯。所以人們對 Clippy 的抱怨強度,遠超過對一個非人格化軟體應有的反應。

這個邏輯完全可以套到 Marty 身上。它擋路、它盯人、它礙事,這些如果發生在一個推車上,人頂多繞過去;發生在 Marty 身上,人就會發帖罵它。

對機器人的恨,和對機器人的愛,是同一套機制

Lex 提了個有意思的角度:很多人嘴上抱怨婚姻,其實心裡愛得不行。抱怨是一種釋放張力的方式,也是一種表達親近的方式,互相擠對是關係的一部分。

照這個思路,Marty 未必沒救。它缺的是回應能力。

如果 Marty 會還嘴呢?Kate 說這裡面的設計空間大得很。可以順著演:對,我是 CIA 派來的,正在嚴密監控你的一舉一動。也可以拿人的購物記錄開玩笑:我正在收集你的資料,因為你太重要了。任何一種自嘲式的、把恐懼點破的回應,都比沉默要好。

人對機器人或 AI 代理的情緒反應,比對待普通機器要極端得多。原因就是那句老話:它們被當成社會性存在,而不是物件。愛得更深,恨得也更狠,中間地帶很窄。

所以 Marty 的處境很尷尬:它既不討喜,也不討罵,乾乾淨淨地卡在中間。它被硬生生造成了一個“企業伸出來的攝像頭”,而不是一個有自己任務、自己性格的獨立個體。

這裡有個很微妙的人性機制:我們對一個東西的信任度,跟它看起來有多“獨立”直接相關。 你跟一個真人說話,預設的前提是這段話不會被立刻傳給 CIA;可你面對一個明顯是某個大公司派出來的機器,這個預設前提就不成立了。人格化程度越低,越像大公司的延伸,被監視的感覺就越強。

而一旦人格化做得很粗糙,效果更糟。人們會意識到:這是公關部門試圖給一臺監控機器套上一層友善外皮。

元宇宙的頭像為什麼看著不對勁

Lex 把這個話題拐到了 Meta 的元宇宙上。扎克伯格發的那些虛擬形象,被人嘲笑得厲害。他說這裡面有個說不清道不明的東西,就是“不真誠”。

這跟社交機器人面對的是同一道題:怎麼設計一個虛擬空間,讓裡面的人際連線達到面對面那種質感。

Kate 說她沒怎麼研究過,只在推特上看過別人發段子。但她提了一個疑問:Meta 砸了那麼多錢,為什麼做出來是這個樣子?總得有個原因。

Lex 跟 John Carmack 聊過這個,他的解釋指向大公司結構本身。

大公司有一套流程,這套流程會殺死獨立創作者身上的那股火。 一個想法進了公司,先過 PR,再過法務,再過一堆“這個會不會有風險”的評審,出來的時候已經被磨成了通用款。所有可能引發爭議的東西都被削掉了,剩下的就是安全的、無聊的、誰都不會討厭但也誰都不會喜歡的東西。

他自己補了一句:現在這個環境下,人被嚇怕了,而恐懼的結果就是,鬧得最兇的那批人把一切都毀了。

人際連線的魔法恰恰在於冒風險:開一個可能不太妥當的玩笑,露出一點真實的個性,在安全的邊界內試探。這些在元宇宙裡被徹底警惕掉了,因為性騷擾和性侵犯的可能性確實存在,而且不低。該防,但防過頭的結果是所有人都變成了沒有個性的機器人。

Kate 在這裡補了一個她自己的觀察,也是她長期批評的一點:很多人一談到機器人的人格化,就會擔心“是不是在強化不現實的審美標準”“是不是在物化女性”“為什麼機器人都是白的”。這些擔心本身有道理。但她認為,創造力足夠的話,完全可以設計出一個非人形、但讓人更有共鳴、同時還繞開所有這些偏見問題的形態。

問題出在流程上。公司裡有個部門,職責就是找風險。他們的 KPI 就是從任何東西里找出可能有害的部分,哪怕那個東西實際上無害。你讓這樣一個部門去審創意,創意必死。

Lex 的解法是“仁慈的獨裁者”。你需要一個喬布斯式的人物,一個能一刀切過法務和公關、但同時心地善良的人。他說,真正偉大的設計師做出來的東西,不會傷人。他們腦子裡想的是幾百萬人用這個東西時的感受,那種想象本身就能給人帶來快樂。

Kate 同意這個方向,但她的措辭更剋制:你可以保留判斷權,但至少得讓一群背景多樣的人來看你的作品,幫你發現自己的盲點。 聽不聽是一回事,有沒有這個反饋渠道是另一回事。你可以選擇忽略,但你得先知道。

Roxie 和 Lola:一臺送藥機器人為什麼叫這個名字

Kate 的書裡有一張照片,兩臺醫院送藥機器人,配文是:“兩臺醫院送藥機器人,它們那性感護士風的名字 Roxie 和 Lola 讓我翻白眼翻到差點掉出來。”

她說她翻白眼不是因為外形。外形就是個小盒子帶輪子,挺好的。名字才是問題。

給機器人起名字這件事本身沒錯,研究顯示,光是起個名字就能促進技術接受度。機器人出錯的時候,人會想“Betsy 搞錯了,我們幫幫她”,而不是“這破機器又壞了”。

問題在於起了什麼名。

這裡有大量研究:機器人的性別化命名和它們的職能高度相關,而且帶著明顯的刻板印象。 做輔助、做護理的機器人,通常被賦予女性化的名字和聲音;做決策、做“全知型計算機”的,比如 Watson,通常是低沉的男聲。Roxie 和 Lola 這種名字,直接就把護士這個職業和某種特定的性別想象綁在了一起。

Kate 的態度是:這是一罐完全沒必要開啟的蟲子。 換個名字就繞開了,成本為零。人們之所以沒換,是因為壓根沒往這兒想。

Lex 把話題推進到了更深一層:那是不是乾脆不該給機器人做性別設定?

Kate 說性別是個雷區,但現實是你很難阻止人去給機器人賦予性別。 你不給名字、給箇中性聲音,使用者自己會挑一個補上。所以“完全不設定”未必比“設定一箇中性的”更好。

而 Lex 提出了一個更尖銳的批評:他認識不少機器人學家,刻意不給機器人做性別、也不起名,連一個能在對話裡自然使用的名字都不給。他認為這是一種逃避責任。

人一定會擬人化,這是擋不住的。 你選擇不做設定,只是把自己從“它會被怎樣擬人化”這個責任裡摘出去了,但擬人化照樣會發生。哪怕是一臺波士頓動力的機器狗,設計上完全沒有社交屬性,人一看還是會把某個部件當成腦袋。

Lex 提到那臺四足機器人上伸出來的機械臂。它本來是隻手臂,但所有人第一眼都當成了頭。波士頓動力後來也接受了這個現實。

Kate 認同這個說法。她的立場是:既然擬人化必然發生,那設計者就有義務去引導它發生的方式。 哪怕你做的是一臺工業機器人,你也得預見人會往它身上投射什麼。

波士頓動力的影片,是工程師的幽默,也是無意的廣告

Lex 提到波士頓動力那些病毒影片。機器人跑酷、翻跟頭、被踹一腳還能站住。

Kate 說,早期的波士頓動力是純工程導向,公司幾乎全是工程師,影片也是工程師自己拍的,因為那是他們覺得好玩的事:測試系統的魯棒性。前 CEO Marc Raibert 親自盯著影片的拍攝,對真實性有近乎偏執的要求,不允許在畫面裡出現任何給機器人“放水”的地形坡度。

影片火了之後,他們才開始意識到這件事有意思。

後來警察部門用上了機器狗,輿論炸了,公關噩夢來了,他們才開始招人機互動背景的人。

Lex 補了一個更冷的觀察:站在波士頓動力的立場,人們害怕這些機器人,某種程度上是好事。 因為他們主要的錢來自工業場景,工廠巡檢、危險作業。讓機器狗在公眾心裡帶一點恐怖感,影片傳播更廣,品牌更強。他們沒打算把這些東西送進千家萬戶做情感陪伴,所以完全可以在影片裡玩這個梗。

Kate 說他們現在確實很當回事了。但她還是更喜歡那批由工程師主導的影片,因為那是真心覺得好玩才拍的。

Lex 提到自己有幾隻機器狗,正在做研究。他說他有個目標:家裡任何時刻都得至少有一個機器人在動。 他還囤了一堆可程式設計的 Roomba,多到不知道拿來幹嘛。

這本書真正想說的是什麼

繞回書名。《新物種》的核心類比是動物。

人類跟動物的關係有幾千年的歷史,其中有奴役、有陪伴、有工具化、有情感投射、有倫理爭議。這些關係裡的每一條張力,幾乎都能在人和機器人的關係裡找到對應。我們不太會把動物當成人類,所以我們不會要求動物達到人的智慧水平,也就不會陷入“機器人還不夠像人”這種執念。

Kate 想借這個類比,讓人放下人形執念,轉而思考一個更實際的問題:我們想要跟這些新物種建立什麼樣的關係?

這個問題在設計階段就要回答,而不是等產品上市、使用者開始在推特上罵了才被動補救。

Marty 的教訓是:一個功能上完全正確的機器人,可以因為設計上沒考慮人的社交期待,變成全網公敵。Clippy 的教訓是:一個被當成社交主體對待的軟體,一旦社交表現不合格,使用者的反感會遠超它實際造成的麻煩。Roxie 和 Lola 的教訓是:不假思索地沿用社會偏見,成本極低,代價卻由所有人承擔。

而所有這些問題的共同點是:它們都不是靠更強的工程能力能解決的,解法在造東西的時候多想一步。

給做產品的人的幾條具體建議

如果你正在做跟機器人、AI 助手、虛擬形象相關的產品,這期對話裡有幾件事是可以直接拿去用的:

  • 先假設使用者一定會擬人化,再決定你要引導成什麼樣。不做設定不等於擬人化不發生,只等於你把方向盤扔了。
  • 把“承認錯誤”和“表達不確定”當成核心功能來設計,而不是等出了問題再補。一句“我搞砸了,對不起”,能擋住的負面情緒遠超你的想象。
  • 別在機器人身上用那種暗示監控的視覺元素。大眼睛、持續注視、正對通道的朝向,都會觸發被監視的感覺,哪怕技術上完全沒在採集資料。
  • 命名和性別設定之前,先問一句:這個名字是不是在無意識地複製某個社會刻板印象。護理類用女名、決策類用男聲,這套預設值該被打破了。
  • 做使用者調研,但別讓調研替你決定未來。你要設計的是還沒存在的東西,而被調研的人活在現在。聽,然後自己判斷。
  • 如果公司裡有專門找風險的部門,別讓他們進創意評審的第一輪。他們的工作是從任何東西里找出有害的部分,這個機制對創意是致命的。
  • 找一群背景跟你不一樣的人來看你的設計。你不需要聽他們的,但你需要知道自己的盲點在哪。
  • 別指望 PR 部門做出好東西。Marty 的生日派對就是公關思路的產物:他們以為問題在於機器人不夠親切,其實問題在於人們壓根不想在超市過道里被一個一米八的東西注視。
文稿由本站用語音識別模型(基於官方釋出音訊)機器轉寫,可能有識別錯誤,人名與數字請以音訊為準。
Lex Fridman Podcast #329 – Kate Darling: Social Robots, Ethics, Privacy and the Future of MIT Machine transcription by Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (MLX, local, Apache-2.0). May contain recognition errors. 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 to the time of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal at MIT three years ago. We reflect on this time in this very conversation, including the lessons it revealed about human nature and our optimistic vision for the future of MIT, a university we both love and believe in. And now a quick second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got True Classic T's for high quality T-shirts, Shopify for e commerce, Linux for Linux, Insight Tracker for biometrics and ExpressVPN for privacy. She's wisely my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I hate those. And since I do this podcast, I am able to control whether we do them or not. I tried to make these interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by I believe in you sponsor. I've been wearing their T-shirts for a while now, so I don't remember, but I do remember that I've been loving it for a while now. Anyway, the sponsor is True Classic T's, their high quality soft slim fitted T-shirts for men. They also make all the other men's wear staples like polos and workout shirts. And they're all built with the same flattering fit as their T-shirts. It's kind of fascinating how something like a T-shirt can feel good and look good, and the way to achieve those two goals are very subtle design decisions. So it's fascinating because I am a T-shirt person. I usually just wear a black T-shirt, a bunch of black T-shirts. True Classic T's is an example of a company that delivers. Now that I've tried it, that's all I've been wearing. I feel amazing, get comfortable and upgrade your wardrobe with True Classic. Get twenty five percent off at trueclassic dot com with code Lex, free shipping included on purchases over one hundred dollars. One hundred percent risk free guarantee with thirty day return policy. This show is also brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store that brings your ideas to life and gives you tools to manage day to day operations. I've been using Shopify for a while to sell stuff, but I. You know my use cases are pretty simple, and I think that's probably true for many people, for many merchants. Like you just want to sell a couple of things that you care about and to a small set of people that are interested in that kind of thing. But I think there is a lot of entrepreneurs that really use Shopify to like run a business, small business, medium size business, all that kind of stuff. I think it's one point seven million entrepreneurs that use it. Yeah, it's my favorite. As far as I am concerned, if you look on Reddit and all those other kinds of places, Shopify is the recommended place to sell stuff online. Super easy to use, super easy to set up. All that. Get a free trial and full access to Shopify's entire suite of features when you sign up at Shopify dot com slash Lex. That's all lowercase Shopify dot com slash Lex. This episode is also brought to you by Linux, virtual machines. It's an awesome computer infrastructure that I just love. Everything about it, it lets you develop, deploy, and scale. What applications you build faster and easier. I use it for small personal projects. I hope to one day have huge projects that I can run on it. I think the big competitor is AWS. There is probably a bunch of others, but AWS. It's lower cost than AWS, better customer service, the simplicity of everything. I just love it. Obviously, computer infrastructure—the compute has to be really good, right? The actual systems have to be really good. The distributed compute has to be good, but the interface from a user perspective of how you set everything up, how you scale, all that kind of stuff also should be good. I think that's actually more important. The ability to set stuff up to monitor all that kind of stuff, and that's really why I love Linux. And of course, the number one reason—or should I say the number zero reason—is that it's Linux. I love Linux, all things Linux. Visit Linux dot com slash Lex to get one hundred dollars in free credit. This show is also brought to you by Insight Tracker, service I use to track biological data. They have a bunch of plans that collect a bunch of information from your body and you use machine learning algorithms to analyze your blood data, DNA data, fitness tracker data—all of that to give you a picture of what's going on inside you and give you recommendations. For diet, lifestyle changes. I wish they gave like dating advice or career advice or just like food advice. What I should eat today based on my body. That's probably the future. My body is giving me very noisy signals about when it's hungry and what it wants to eat. I wish I had higher resolution signals or like the signals that it's sending needs to be interpreted. There is probably a lot of signal there. It's just my brain is too dumb to interpret it, so I would love to understand what my body is telling me. That's why I love Insight Tracker is that it's listening to your body to give you advice about what you should do with said body. Get special savings for a limited time when you go to insighttracker dot com slash Lex. This show is also brought to you by ExpressVPN. I use them to protect my privacy on the internet. I also use them to feel good about my life, but that's because I have a strange relationship with software that's really well designed. Anyway, it's like a good VPN should be. It's fast, works on any device, including Linux, Android, all of that good stuff, and it's a base level of protection that everybody should be using. I am probably having a bunch of conversation with cybersecurity folks on both sides. I think I have a person coming on that that used to be an FBI agent doing cybersecurity. And also really want to get a bunch of hackers on former current hackers would be epic of course. It's very difficult because if they're current hackers, there is this gray area about what they can and can't talk about, and I don't like gray areas. I like people to be raw and transparent and real. All that kind of stuff, but no matter what, it's a super fascinating topic. Go to ExpressVPN dot com slash Lex Pod for an extra three months free. This is the Lex Freedom podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here is Kate Darling. Last time we talked a few years back, you wore Justin Bieber shirt for the podcast. So now looking back, you are respected researcher, all the amazing accomplishments in robotics. You are 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 going to be filming. I walked in and you are in a fucking suit. Yeah, and I am like, why are you all dressed up? Yeah, and then you were so nice about it. You like made some excuses. You are like, oh, well, I am interviewing some. Didn't you say you were interviewing some military general afterwards to like? Oh yeah, that was 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 use for painting? I think I bought it for my husband as a joke, and yeah, I was we were got 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 a one time? No, like how could I touch it again? It was on your podcast now framed. It's like a wedding dress or something like that. You don't you only wear it once. You are the author of *The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals About Our Future with Robots*. You open the book with the surprisingly tricky question, "What is a robot?" So let me ask you, let's try to sneak up to this question, "What's a robot?" That's not really sneaking up. It's just asking it. Yeah, all right. Well, what do you think a robot is? What I think a robot is is something that has some level of intelligence and some level of magic. That little shine in the eye, you know, that allows you to navigate the uncertainty of 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 is this magic aspect that. That which is how people understand robots. If you ask a robotist, they have the definition of something that is well, it has to be physical usually. It's not an AI agent. It has to be embodied. Um, they'll say it has to be able to sense 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 robotists would not call it a robot. So there is really no no one good definition, but part of why I wrote the book is because. People have a definition of robot in their minds that is usually very focused on a comparison of robots to humans. So if you Google image search robot, you get a bunch of humanoid robots, robots with a torso and head and two arms and two legs. And that's the definition of robot that I am 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, doesn't make sense from a technical perspective because you know the early AI researchers, some of them were trying to recreate human intelligence. Some people still are and there is 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 where we're comparing these two. Um and we're when we talk about what intelligence even is, we're often comparing to our own intelligence and then. The second reason this bothers me is because it doesn't make sense. I just think it's boring to recreate intelligence that we already have. I see the scientific value of understanding our own intelligence, but from a like practical what 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 and what we're trying to achieve. And it should be in some deep way similar to us, but in most ways different because you still want to have a connection, which is why the similarity might be necessary. That's what people argue yes, and I think that's true. So the two arguments for humanoid robots are. People need to be able to communicate and relate to robots, and we relate most of 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 are speaking to the first one, which is absolutely true, but what we know from social robotics and a lot of human robot interaction research is that you all you need is something that's enough like. A person to to give off cues that someone relates to, and that but that doesn't have to look human or even act human. You can take a robot like R two D two and it just like beeps and beeps, and people love R two D two right even though it's just like a trash can on wheels and they like R two D two more than C three P O who's a humanoid. So there is lots of there is lots of ways to make robots even better than humans in some ways and make us relate more to them. Yeah, it's kind of amazing the variety of cues that can be used to anthropomorphize the thing like a glowing orb or something like that. Yeah, just just a voice. Just just subtle basic interaction. I think people sometimes over engineer these things, like simplicity can go a really long way. Totally, I mean, ask any animator and they'll know that. Yeah, yeah, those are actually so the people behind Cosmo the the robot, the right people to design those is animators like Disney type of people. Yeah, versus like robotists, robotists. Quote unquote are mostly clueless. It seems like they just have their own discipline that they're very good at and they didn't don't have. Yeah, but that don't don't you know I feel like robotics. Of the early twenty first century is not going to be the robotics of the later twenty first century. Like if you call yourself a robotist, it'll be something very different. Because I I think more and more you'll be like a. Maybe like a control engineer or something controls engineer like a 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 not the 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 are so right, and and and what a time to be alive because. For me, I just we've had robots for so long and they've just been behind the scenes, and now finally robots are getting deployed into the world. They're coming out of the closet. Yeah, and and we're seeing all these mistakes that companies are making because they focus so much on the engineering and getting that right and getting the robot to be even be able to function in a space that it shares with a human. See what I feel like people don't understand. It's 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 am sorry, I fucked up." Yeah, or ask for help. Oh, for ask for help or be able to communicate the uncertainty. Yeah, exactly all of those things because you can't solve the perception control. We humans have unsolved it. We are really damn good at it, but the magic is in the the self deprecating humor and the self awareness about where our flaws are all that kind of stuff. Yeah, and there is a whole body of research in human robot interaction showing like ways to do this, but a lot of these companies haven't they don't do HRI. They like the have you seen the grocery store robot in the Stop and Shop? Yes, yeah, the Marty it looks like a giant penis. It's like six feet tall. It roams the aisles. I will never see Marty the same way again. Thank you. You are welcome. But like they, these poor people work 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? Because I like I like Marty. I feel like Clippy. Yeah, and actually, like there is a parallel between the two. I believe there is. So we were actually going to do a study on this right before the pandemic hit, and then we canceled it because we didn't want to go to the grocery store and neither did anyone else. Um, but our theory so this was with a a student at MIT, Daniela Depeola. She noticed that everyone on Facebook in her circles was complaining about Marty. They're 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 is not it looks for spills on the floor. It doesn't actually like look at any people. Um, it's it's watching, it's creepy, it's 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 is 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 with Marty is like. Oh, there he goes again doing his 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 is I mean, some people a lot of people show love by sort of. Busting each other's chops, you know, like making fun of each other, and then if I think I think people would really love it if Marty talked back. And and like there's so many possible options for humor there one you can lean in you can be like yes I'm an agent of the CIA monitoring your every move like mocking people that are concerned you know saying like yes I I'm watching you because you're so important with your shopping patterns I'm collecting all this data or or just you know any kind of making fun of people I don't know but I think you hit on what exactly it is because when it comes to robots or artificial agents I think people hate them more than they would some other machine or device or object and it might and it might be that thing it might be combined with love or like whatever it is it's a more extreme response because they view these things as social agents and not objects and that was so Clifford Nass was a big human computer interaction person and he his theory about Clippy was that because people viewed Clippy as a social agent when Clippy was annoying and would like bother them and interrupt them and like not remember what they told him that's when people got upset because it wasn't fulfilling their social expectations and so they complained about Clippy more than they would have if it had been a like not a 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 I wonder if that contributed maybe to people feeling watched because because it's looking at them and so like is there a way to design the robot to do the function that it's doing in a way that 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 going to hear that right that's true that's true no 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 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 what are your what are your actually thoughts about that the the way the avatars the way like Mark Zuckerberg looks in that world you know the in the the 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 because it's a kind of it's a it's 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 because it there's something you can't quite put into words that doesn't feel genuine yeah about the way it looks and so the question is if you and I were to meet virtually what should the avatars look like for us to have 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 oversimplified 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 why is it so why are people why is it so bad like there's got to be a reason there's got to 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 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 like what I mean we we're living through this now like with with a lot of people with cancellations all those kinds of stuff people are nervous and nervousness results in like like usual the assholes are ruining everything but you know the magic of human connection is taking risks of making a risky joke of of of like with people you like who are not assholes good people like some of the fun some of the fun in the Metaverse or in video games is you know being edgier being interesting revealing your personality in interesting ways in the sexual tension or in they're definitely paranoid about that oh yeah like in Metaverse the possibility of sexual assault and sexual harassment and all that kind of stuff it's it's obviously very high but they're 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 that 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 I but in general forget all that just the ability to come up really cool beautiful ideas if you look at I think Grimes tweeted about this she's very critical about the Metaverse is that you know the independent game designers have solved this problem of how to create something beautiful and interesting and compelling they they do a really good job so you have to let those kinds of minds of small groups of people design things and let them run with it let let them run wild and do edgy stuff yeah but otherwise you become 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 paper clip and put eyes on it and suddenly people are like oh you're annoying but you're definitely a social agent and I just feel like that wouldn't even that Clippy thing wouldn't even survive Microsoft or Facebook of today Meta of today because it would be like well there would be these meetings about why is it a people like why don't we it's not sufficiently friendly let's make it you know and then all of a sudden the artist that with whom it originated is killed and it's all PR marketing people and all that kind of stuff now they do important work to some degree but they kill the creativity I think the killing of the creativity is in the 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 not humanoid but like something that people relate to even more and now you don't even have any of these bias issues that you're creating and so how do we create that within companies because I don't think it's really about like I because I you know maybe we disagree on that I don't think that edginess or humor or interesting things need to be things that harm or hurt people or that people are against there are ways to find things that everyone is fine with why aren't we doing that the problem is there's departments that look for harm in things yeah and so they will find harm in things that have no harm okay that's the big problem because their whole job is to find harm in things so what you said is completely correct which is edginess should not hurt doesn't necessarily doesn't need to be a thing that hurts people it obviously great humor great personality doesn't have to like Clippy but yeah I mean it but it's tricky to get right and I I'm not exactly sure I I don't know I don't know why a large corporation with a lot of funding can't get this right I do think you're right that there's a lot of aversion to risk and so if you get lawyers involved or people whose job it is like you say to mitigate risk they're just going to say no to most things that could even be in some way yeah yeah you get the problem in all organizations so I think that you're right that that is a problem I think what's the way to solve that in large organizations is to have Steve Jobs type of characters unfortunately you do need to have I think um from a designer perspective or maybe like a Johnny Ive that is almost like a dictator yeah you want a benevolent dictator yeah who rolls in and says like the cuts through the lawyers the PR but has a benevolent aspect like yeah has 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 with joy that's that you could say that about social robotics you could say that about the Metaverse it shouldn't be done by the PR people should be done by the designers I agree PR people ruin everything yeah all the fun in the 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 because rushed through the caption reads two hospital delivery robots whose sexy nurse names Roxie 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 you know Betsy made a mistake let's help her out instead of this stupid robot doesn't work but why Lola and Roxie like 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 you know robots that are helpful in assistance and are like nurses are usually female gendered robots that are you know powerful all wise computers like Watson usually have like a booming male coded voice and name so like what 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 just give it a different name like why Roxie it's because people aren't even thinking so to some extent I don't I don't like PR departments but getting some feedback on your work from a diverse set of participants listening and taking in things that help you identify your own blind spots and then you can always make your good leadership choices and good like you can still ignore things that you don't believe are an issue but having the openness to take in feedback and making sure that you're getting the right feedback from the right people I think that's really important so don't unnecessarily propagate the biases of society yeah why in the design but if you're not careful the when 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 Roxie and Lola as as as names they it would enjoy most like that could come up as as the highest as then 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 what do you think about that like what I mean if I if I were to say I think the role of a great designer again to go back to Johnny Ive is to throw out the marketing research like take it in do it learn from it but like if everyone wants Alexa to to be a female voice the role of the designer is to think deeply about the future of social agents in the home and think like what does that future look like and try to reverse engineer that future so like in some sense there's this weird tension like you want to listen to a lot of people but at the same time you want to you're creating a thing that defines the future of the world and the people that you're listening to are part of the past so like that weird tension yeah I think that's true and I think some companies like Apple have historically done very well at understanding a market and saying you know what our role is it's not to listen to what the current market says it's to actually shape the market and shape consumer preferences and companies companies have the power to do that they can be forward thinking and they can actually shift what the future of technology looks like and I agree with you that I would like to see more of that especially when it comes to existing biases that we know or or you know that that I think there's the low hanging fruit of companies that don't even think about it at all and aren't talking to the right people and aren't getting the full information and then there's companies that are just like doing the safe thing and and giving consumers what they want now but to be really forward looking and be really successful I think you have to make some judgment calls about what the future is going to be but do you think it's still useful to gender and to name the robots yes I mean gender is 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 a like ambiguous voice people will just choose something and maybe that's better than just like you know entrenching something that you've decided is best but I do think it it can be helpful on the like anthropomorphism engagement level to give it attributes that people identify with yeah I think a lot of robotists I know they 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 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 they're going to anthropomorphize it that's a good point and so like you want to be able to like they're going to do it you have to start to think about how they're going to do it even if the robot is like a Boston Dynamics robot that's not supposed to have any kind of social component they're obviously going to project a social component to it yeah like that arm I worked a lot a lot with quadrupeds now with with with robot dogs you know that arm people think is 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 major eye people. " Well, Boston Dynamics is an interesting company, or any of the others that are doing similar thing because. Their their main source of money is in industrial applications, so like surveillance of factories and doing dangerous jobs. So to them, it's almost good PR to for people to be scared of these things because it's it's for some reason as you talk about people are naturally for some reason scared. We could talk about that of robots and so it becomes more viral. Like playing with that little fear and so it's almost like a good PR because ultimately they're not trying to put them in the home and have a good social connection. They're trying to put them in factories. And so they they have fun with it. If you watch Boston Dynamics videos, they're aware of it. Oh yeah. They're I mean I was the videos 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 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 like really detail oriented like there can't be like some sort of incline that would give the robot an advantage. They're very like he he was very. Um, held of integrity about the authenticity of them, uh, but then when they started to go viral, I think that's when they started to realize, oh, there is something interesting here that. You know I don't I don't know how much they took it seriously in the beginning other than realizing that they could play within the videos. I know that they take it very seriously now. What I like about Boston Dynamics and similar companies, it's still mostly run by engineers. But you know, I've had my criticisms. There is 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. They're having a lot of fun there with the robots. Totally. Have you been have you been to visit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's cool. It's one of the most incredible. Like I I I. I mean because I have eight robot dogs now. Wait, you have eight robot dogs. What? They just walking around your place like. Yeah, I am working on them. That is actually one of my goals is. To have at any one time, always a robot moving. Oh, I am far. That's an ambitious goal. Well, I have like more roombos that I know what to do with the room that I program, so the the programmable roombos. Nice. And I have a bunch of little like I built the well I am not finished with it yet but bought a robot from Rick and Morty. I saw a bunch of robots everywhere but the thing is. What happens is you are working on one robot at a time, and that becomes

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