StarTalk Podcast: Neil deGrasse Tyson & Anthony Daniels on C-3PO and the Rise of Robots

hey YouTube averse and the other grass Tyson here for a star talk coming up an exploration of our relationship with robots be there this is Startalk I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson your personal astrophysicist and today I got with this and there's like someone between us I know this is we're always fist bumping in somebody's face it's somebody's face yeah today we're talking about robots in fact that's not only what we're gonna do that's the title of the show talking about talking about robot talking about robots and those we have as our studio guest Kate darling Kate welcome double fist bump give it here with us you were a robot ethicist didn't even know that was a thing we'll get into that in a minute from the MIT Media Lab of course in Cambridge Massachusetts where else would an MIT lab be and what we're featuring today is my interview with Anthony Daniels Anthony you don't manuals oh she's getting all nerdy these nerd out on that one ah the actor who portrayed oh you want the gig I love me oh you want the gig um in particular we're not just talking about robots we're talking about relationships Oh robots okay between humans and robots and we don't even know what that means entirely not at the moment now the movie AI kind of covered it yeah okay yeah all right all right but of course c-3po is from the Star Wars franchise one of most successful movie franchises in his ever was and just let me get a little bit of background on you Kate so did you come to this from robotics no no well I've always loved robots but I'm a social scientist nice I have a legal background I did social sciences and now I study human robot interaction from a social legal and perspectives Wow Wow so this so so it is it's good to learn that someone such as you exists in that world yes we should have somebody like you in all of the the potentially troubled places where where technology is going everywhere yeah everywhere so you have a book that may be coming out in 2021 yeah our title ears it's the right one the new breed what our history with animals reveals about our future with machines that is it that is a awesome title it really is so is this MIT press gonna publish this no it's actually Henry Holt Henry Holt I'm just gonna get out there let me go get to my first clip with Anthony Daniels and we'll sort of react to that so he's the only actor that was an all 9 Star Wars movies Wow all 90 official not right not the the fan offer amp right exactly he's the only actor there's been all in all nine and he's also the author of I am c-3po the inside story cool you see what he did there there and what I particularly loved about him was a visiting professor Carnegie Mellon's entertainment Technology Center so he's got some academic chops that little Credle sweet little academic street cred so I'm gonna loving me that so what is it about c-3po is it his performance his the way he speaks that that people could relate to him so deeply oh gosh c-3po was amazing I think I think what it is actually is that c-3po looks like a robot but acts kind of like a human like he's very flawed and has all these human emotions and I think people just relate to him ironically because he's so human like oh so oh so it's the opposite it's not like he's the perfect robot and we're finding a way to relate to that right it's that he's he has enough human in him so that he's an imperfect robot right and that's what we're related is that what you just told me yeah yeah well you know that makes sense because that is what makes us human they're like you know the fact that we are flawed and imperfect and kind of annoying and definitely not kind of definitely annoying you know so I kind of liked it when he when he got a little excited that was just kind of fun it was like hey that's kind of cool yeah exactly so that's so it's the human side of the robot that we're relating to sometimes yeah in that case in that case for sure okay and so so then what would be harder than do you think playing or a robot as an actor or acting as a human well I guess it depends like what robot like are we talking right that'd be kind of cool though you could play a room but well you know that I think that would take some real acting jobs a little differently so what is it about him other than its costume that told you he's a robot in how he's interacting with people what is the evidence that he's a robot other than he's a shiny metal right he's right I mean a lot of it is the design I'm trying to remember anything like specifically robotic that he said see I don't think so other than I know 80 trillion Mike right is that yes right no we don't know human would so that's a robot talent right but I think of what is the visual in the way he moves yes and he does it looks like he's actually doing the dance the robot yeah of course you know what you want to do if you want to be a contemporary robot though is fall over a lot oh yeah oh you mean like actual robots I thought you guys were just talking about movie robots cuz that's what like right now movie robots what's your actual robot why would I bring here to talk what do you think I'm talking to you know I know we're talking about that on the show I just thought that's what you were referencing right now because well let's go to a clip so I sat down with Anthony Daniels and I did you know he wasn't always a fan of sci-fi I really remember he got that first check [Laughter] let's find out what was he up to before he landed where he did check it out maybe I've been traumatized did you never thought of this I had been bashed around the head by 2001 a Space Odyssey to the point where I never wanted to see another spaceship oh that was a long movie with very little dialogue there's no character development except for the how the computer well you like that so it's a very different intersect of genre yeah it's not even science fiction it's some other it's a science portrait in a way it was almost a reporter Asafa chol treat eyes on a man and a man versus space man-machine in space and so there we are so I didn't want to go because back then the only robot that I remembered really with the Daleks on television all the Daleks yes so so every night you know doctor who would sink plungers on the merica faces I mean cute and as a kid I adored them but as an acting role not so much then there was Robby before them Robby the Robot in was it hidden planet Forbidden Planet and he was this kind of lumbering thing made a mission entires really it seemed to me because they had these horizontal segments that's right and he lumbered in kind of unprepossessing my iPhone but anyway are you judging the acting talents of a robot convincingly Lama and when you read on page 95 that I met mr. Kinoshita who designed him and I said joyfully Oh what was it like to see your design come off the Pape and you went not so good I didn't mean him to kind of Lombok and I said so also you get why Threepio kind of teachers around because it's more character for more forgiving more human anyways yeah because because the Robby the Robot was I'm saying robotic not he just didn't there was no they had the that was it whereas c-3po there were sort of body gestures that could help communicate that's what mood and it's all I had really right because there's no this is not a moving mouth here you'd be surprised how many people think it's makeup that I'm I'm wearing no it's a solid we all saw Goldfinger so just a couple years huh yeah she was prettier than the woman the woman who was painted gold and gold in Goldfinger so he was referencing his book I am c-3po and he said on page 95 right so Kate how has we talked about a few generations of robots there how has our concept of robot evolved from the beginning until now that's a good question I mean I feel like it used to be that anything that was even remotely automata and could move on its own was viewed as a robot and now we have a little bit more that we expect a robot to be able to do in behavior right because in fact now so when do when does it become an android robot an Android is a robot that looks deceptively human-like Lieutenant Commander data yes yes data my favorite Android and then there's c-3po which is more of a humanoid robot so like oh yeah yeah so androids look realistic humanoids just have a kind of human shape torso head arms legs but not r2d2 not r2d2 so which r2d2 he's just a robot damn with no ID on it right oh you're just a robot okay so but presumably all three kinds of robots are still legit in storytelling today oh yeah for sure okay but we don't have the big Robby the Robot kinds anymore those the lumbering right with with its circuits turning in the warning Will Robinson warning right that was a Robbie robot style exactly yes in lost in space lost in space warning Will Robinson danger that not warning danger real whoppers with the arms would be flailing right and then practice with you know it's before her time are you kidding me you don't have TV land I feel like I just saw it though you really did in a way you know but I did you acted all the character I did it no justice but very very quickly here it is where'd you grow up we only sing you the crime the TV show anyway there get out more they're traveling they're traveling em intergalactically right and or maybe just within our galaxy who knows but they get lost and it's a family no way to get lost to get lost in space and and then there's a doctor who were not sure if he's a doctor or not and they let him go off with their son all the time and a robot and that's where that comes from so at what point do you inform a person who might be trying to design a robot in terms of its personality or its character or how they would best be an actor doing so Duke are you in that equation at some point well you are consultant I mean I do I work with roboticists a lot in social robotics and the it you know we have more and more robots coming into shared spaces and they have to you know interact with people and not all robots it's a shared space oh you know a workplace household public ok stop and job as robots roam in the aisles now yeah you could call they are indeed a robot but it's more like an obelisk on wheels with googly eyes penis [Laughter] so it goes up and down the aisles yeah and there's no one controlling it no one's controlling there's no choice it actually moves about like a Roomba like you know except it doesn't have to touch things assume it doesn't bump into the orange it does it does the orange stack right but I think I've never engaged with them personally but I think you can ask them questions and they will direct you to places in the store right I got it the next time I see one I'm doing all experiments on it Oh Mike I I might have gone to Savage shop last weekend with Daniella who's one of the students in the personal robotics lab who is obsessed with this robot and we might have like put stuff in front of the robot to see what it did you might just mine what happened well they might have done it they didn't what might have happened what were you testing it for you didn't get kicked out yet we're gonna go back what were you testing it for but we just wanted to see what it would do because the purpose of the robot is to find hazards on the floor and alert someone to come pick them up and so we wanted to know what's the other route for clean up all four yep and so right now what I wonder what it would do if you just laid down in the floor like on the floor in front of it like what it would do if it's actually if go around you see that's a robot No so you'll recognize a spill but I just had a damn heart attack and just go around you go around me really so somebody drops a jar pickles it's a huge monumental problem we you know somebody to get here right away and you can't get up another robot you're just in the way exactly instead of hitting my med alert bracelet you're just like okay so that's the thing though like when designing robots you have to think about how like what's gonna be frustrating to people when they're interacting with it and they're gonna be like why isn't helping me do X when they don't understand that building a robot is really really hard and like they only have very limited capabilities and so roboticists really need to think not just about how they're working but how people are gonna perceive them they only have limited capabilities now right yeah yes as an actor mm-hmm okay he he's best known for c-3po but he almost didn't take the gig oh yeah let's find out why okay check it out so that there we were playing thinking about playing a robot and the thing that really changed my mind was reading the words that I had written George and his team had written them pretty much George and clearly he he had invented a machine with more human characteristics than he could apply to a human being you couldn't get away with Han Solo being the character of Threepio if we'll see what I mean so Threepio was allowed to have intense humanity because he isn't a machine he isn't it he is a human that's that's that's deep no yes it is because what you're saying is with a machine who is sort of human but he's still a machine yeah you can take it to human places that would be unconvincing if written for a human carrot and slightly uncomfortable there are there is a film called Bicentennial man with I never got to see there ha it's interesting Robin Williams beautiful guy I had loved to meet him a couple of times no we didn't talk about it but that was a slightly uncomfortable film because the the storyteller was was he was transitioning from a robot that arrived in a packing case you know from Amazon or somewhere whatever the Amazon equivalent was back when that movie was made and then gradually he metamorphoses into into a human and it's slightly uncomfortable because it veers towards pushing our humanity buttons thank what what does it take to be human and where are we slightly uncomfortable through the uncanny valley and beyond well tell us about the uncanny valley because that's that's it's it's a great name but it still has to be defined for people to know what it is it is often used in in games or in visuals or in film to sit or in computer terms the the Turing test almost gets there but it's when something is almost real it looks great and it speaks nicely and has great skin for instance in a robot but there's something that's not quite right there's something that we sniff as a human being that not quite there so it's it's even unconscious within us perhaps it's innate within us innate that's a better word right right you're not you you don't even know how to verbalize it yeah and so people have coined this phrase the uncanny valley because you know there's something not quite right Kate do all humans respond to the uncanny valley the same way so people have tested this theory empirically with very mixed results but most people who work in robotics seem to think that there's something there and they're wrong let me save me a lot of money you're wrong save all the academics or other academics who are researching this forever you're right what you're talking about is the perception of normal humanity that's why you can't put your finger on it because it doesn't exist we feel the same way about human beings that may have some type of brain disorder and we talk to them and we go oh something not quite right here but you don't say they're not a human being but that's really what your that's what your perceptions are telling you so what you're talking about is the normal perception of humanity as opposed to what makes someone human and they're two different things I think you're right I think I brought a comedy thing doesn't work out why are you in the lab all right well for me the uncanny valley has always been about expectation management because you're expecting something to behave a certain way if it looks human you're expecting it to blink like a human and not twitch its face and if it doesn't that kind of unsettles you if it does something that you're not expected nobody the little things that we don't we're not even conscious of that affirm for us or are some affirm to our subconscious you're communicating with a genuine human being yeah right but see you know what's funny is that I fell for it once over the phone and it was a robot and I talked to it for about I don't know 15 seconds which is a long time any that you have issues I do clearly I can't figure out who's human or not but it was just I don't know what it was that tipped me but it was like the the cadence you know what I mean the cadence of the I started to speak and that stopped but it's the way it stopped and then I went is this person real and then it clicked off like it hung up Wow bus did well so what do you what do programmers yourself what do you all do in the Media Lab to either exploit that uncanny valley or to dodge it I don't think anyone wants to exploit it but I also don't understand why we would try to create something that looks like a human or talks like a human because we can create anything we want why create like well I try to like risk this uncanny valley creepiness factor when we can create an r2d2 that communicates and beeps do you tell this to your peeps back at MIT oh yeah I like everyone I think in the social robotics field agrees that making you know human-like robots is not as interesting as making something that had it has better Russian has yeah you can make something human animators have honed this technique for hundreds of years how you can make something like Bambi that looks like a deer but actually looks better than a deer to us okay so I I agree with you but from a different direction so I I think the future of AI and robots is not to try to mimic a person okay a person is not even an ideal form no right right there if four tasks that you want to conduct the human body is like what you why would you design that it's not the case even with the the the people who don't have legs but they run track on the blades on blades yeah we're not trying to duplicate the bones of a foot and I put flesh on and say now you're you know it's like we got something better something better something better here's something that is spring is a propel you forward yes yes sir so in your in your lab are are people thinking of the task they need not trying to duplicate a human because we just people make babies all the time what do you need to make a robot human we have heat real humans I think people like this fascination with recreating ourselves but like I really don't see the point I think we're all in agreement oh yeah I mean I've never thought of it that way but you're right I think you know when you look at the time five movies like a alien comes to mind and the the so-called android robot is so human that it's indistinguishable indistinguishable but the problem is it doesn't have a soul so it can't make any more it it's a sociopath let's get to that next okay okay she's a robot system guys like right oh that's the sweet spot okay this is your uncanny valley right okay gotta take a break when stark talk returns more about the evolving relationship between robots we're back start talking Neil deGrasse Tyson your host Chuck nice that's right Kate darling duh duh okay Darley in from Boston thanks for your Cambridge specifically the MIT Media Lab good stuff happens every time something amazing is happening it's traceable back to the MIT labs funny how that works just-just-just not only like art science and robotics science and computing and just in in and culture yeah so this is congratulations to all y'all oh yeah it's just me I mean you the one all right I just I just wanna pick up on where we left off this idea that you talked about in the alien series there was a huge that there was a human who was not human right so not even humanoid Android Android Android yeah and you're cool until you realize they would make a different ethical choice than you would yeah yeah so so so do you have to program this in is this something they can learn there's a whole field called machine ethics that looks at can you program ethics into machines and it turns out that's really really hard because we don't even fully program so I mean you ain't got yourself so I would prefer maybe not to create robots that have to make those kinds of ethical decisions but there are people who are who are trying to solve that problem okay and so but it would also be a way if some oh so let's get back to the concept of soul but a religious person would say the soul gives you a sense of right and wrong and purpose yeah and these sorts of things and then I was the idea with Bishop Bishop didn't have a soul so if it meant that bringing back this life-form to earth that could potentially wipe out all humans it doesn't make a difference because it's in the experiment right it's in the interest of experimentation and exploration so who cares I think this is people's greatest fear about scientists going astray yes yeah so will that be the hardest thing to program into robot a soul [Laughter] three lines of code actually believe certain things have sold yeah so like there's this Japanese roboticist who creates these very very lifelike Androids like he's made one of himself Hiroshi Ishiguro is his name and mm-hm she grew and like it seems that in you know Eastern cultures that have a history of Shintoism and and believe that you know even objects can have a soul like they have funerals for sewing needles for example it seems that their little art yeah yeah that must've been a badass sewing needle some good stuff we burned a lot of socks for Needy we do well so tell me I I was unfamiliar with this so keep going yeah and and we don't have that concept in in more judeo-christian society we have Oh things are alive and have a soul things are not alive don't have a soul and so there's this are they're only human right yeah depending on you know yeah but that's why some people say that the Japanese are much more accepting of robots and this idea of having humanoid and Android robots around because okay that's cool they're also more accepting of robots in the uncanny valley uh they might be again like I said the empirical testing on the uncanny valley has kind of been mixed so there's not a good scientific basis for it but anecdotally yes but see and part of their conveyed is it part of the fact that in their culture they have a greater need for robots I mean it is clear that they have like in Japanese healthcare they don't have enough people and you have a great advancement of robotics in that particular arena are using robots with automation no I'm talking about actual robot care I mean and different like for instance in a hospital like for the delivery of certain things a robot will do that rather than rather than orderly right you know so for instance or just just even go outside of healthcare hotels that you go to where they have robot check-in and it'll be like a Tyrannosaurus Rex we'll check you into the hotel yeah you know a robotic a robotic trim because because it's a novelty that's how much into robots they are that we are not you know so it's so it's and what about Shintoism enables that or empowers it drives it some people would say that that makes them more willing to accept robots as this thing that's alive but not really alive so the simple element of inanimate objects having souls that alone that's sufficient so that is one reason people think the Japanese are more accepting of robots another reason is like you said the need is robots come more into these shared spaces and people interact with them more people just get used to them and then there's also the fact that their science fiction and pop culture tends to be less dystopia and when it comes to robots like they have Astro Boy and these positives I grew up with Astro Boy Astro Boy bombs away on his mission today rocket high to the sky I don't remember that cuz I just made it up no that was the that was yeah all that and it was those had speed racers there was a lot of sort of early and I was that early Japanese adamant that there made it to American television and yeah it was all very very happy story yeah and we have a lot of terminator and stories of the robots taking over we are so messed up here I never CC that's what happens when somebody drops a nuclear bomb on you you know yeah right you have a whole other la your dystopian future involves like nuclear holocaust everything else is just like happy-go-lucky okay Japan did come up with Godzilla alright and although Godzilla was formed out of genetic mutations from nuclear holocaust the nukes are all in yeah that story told that's it yeah it makes sense yeah so so our our that is the Japanese culture a good bellwether for the global acceptance and trajectory of robots that's a good question um not necessarily not necessarily I think that maybe the ways that they will want to use robots are different okay like the fact that they like Androids and I don't really think that we do in Western society yeah but it'd be interesting to see if all countries have equal access to this technology what they'll come up with to their own cultural needs sure cuz we had on Startalk on the TV show and I forget her name but she is an AI representation of FGM still making around she was on evening Sophia yes Sophia was a little was for me in that in that zone she was going out on she was in the uncanny zone for me yeah yes exactly it's a little it's a little disconcerting it's there's something jarring about it it's called the uncanny so Anthony Daniels we're featuring my clips with him he has an interesting perspective on what makes c-3po more human than a robot who does his perspective cuz he he was he is c-3po so let's check it out and George came came up with this idea of this kind of figure this art deco figure then he employed Ralph McQuarrie who made this life-changing paintings that I saw of the character and then there's more the sculptor turn that into 3d and made this beautiful face that people recognize and interesting that I only just realized the other day because I was trying to cheat in Photoshop because some some some robot faces are just scary and this is actually very it's it's got its got curiosity in it and it's but it's you want to know what he's thinking because he clearly is thinking and partly is that sort of wide-eyed almost babyish there with with with big eyes he um and what was interesting Liz had actually and I never realized it until recently created something that wasn't machine perfect who wasn't symmetrical about a center point it is actually as in a human face I tried to flip it in Photoshop to double it up to make it perfect and it doesn't work because he is a symmetric and that is one of the clues I think to his humanity that's an interesting philosophical point because there's been research on symmetry and there's a whole off-ramp from that research that says let me it's not an off-ramp maybe it's an on-ramp that a little bit of asymmetry brings interest to a character to an image to a painting yeah to art perfection there's nothing more to say it's like somebody did it already right now just between you me you do have a very symmetric face let me just just stay with you here I personally don't if you come off if you cut me here we go yeah you are so symmetric yes would I like you were perfect I probably too late now I think we have to go with what we've got booked had a picture of his the robot and so I put the other half of him next to his head but what a genius design tactic to actually purposely put in a symmetry tell me about perfection I mean I hadn't heard about this asymmetry thing before that's really interesting but one of the tricks that a lot of robot designers use in social robotics is to you know if you're gonna give it a face don't make it as human-like as possible and don't give it too many features like don't necessarily give it AI brows or nose just eyes is enough things that we automatically respond to like he was saying like the big eyes the babyish face things that we kind of evolutionarily respond to or the best the best design tricks right because babies there head grows only by a factor of three and the body grows by a factor of five or six so babies have a disproportionately large head right through their body I push one out of me tell me about okay you have the power you don't have to do it you don't have to biologically recreate the rest of us we do that and we could yeah so I think that the argument from evolutionary biology stamp or at least what I'd learned from my colleagues here at the American Museum of Natural History here's a commercial is that in order to prevent mammals from killing their children the children have to look cute yeah and so the not not that everyone would kill their children but I'm just saying I would yeah no they're it's not that you would want to kill them all the time there are occasions right in the arc of raising children where you if they weren't cute that would we got we go extinct a long time ago have you done research into what the what our relationship with robots says about us emotionally a little bit I could talk about this all day but it's kind of like you know how when you're going to date with someone and they're really mean to the waiter and you're like that's a red flag some of our research indicates that if you know you're mean or violent to a lifelike robot that might say something about you as a person oh wow you know that makes sense it's so the Boston Dynamics has these videos online of robots being abused and I know clearly that's a thing that's not a person and I gotta tell you it is so hard to watch because they're hitting it with bats and they're kicking it and they're knocking it over it's a robot that's trying to walk basically you see those yeah and and and it's really disturbing it's like people get really upset yeah the first time that they put one out there looked kind of like a dog and they named it spot and then they're like kickin it and it's like struggling to stay on its feet people got so upset that PETA the animal rights organization was getting a bunch of phone calls and had to issue a press statement and they didn't even take it seriously they were like yeah we're not gonna lose any sleep over this it's not a real dog but there actually might be something there okay okay so would you preemptively I mean just like it's just like what's that movie Tom Cruise yeah yeah the Minority Report is this how you would pre diagnose someone's propensity to well you sort of already said so because in a date someone behaves in a way that is uh right to someone who they have power over right I mean it's afraid now robots are still really primitive and we're still able to like mentally compartmentalize but as the design gets more and more lifelike I mean we do definitely draw connections between animal abuse and child abuse in the same household legally if you have a case of one you look for a case of the other and it's possible that long correlations are established okay all right and if you have a robot that can like mimic pain and suffering and you enjoy inflicting that on it like that might be an indicator that you might also enjoy torturing an animal but we don't know we don't have the evidence this this requires more research all right it's certainly evidence that you're a dick so interesting so in the dating scene these are like secondary cues to they can be really nice to you but the waiter not so much we kick the Roomba it's over see what you do is you got what you have you got a do you the research on your day if you know your dates into robots but you better be on your best behavior with all the robots in dramatically right right right that's gonna be the case given the examples of the Boston Dynamics and people kicking in and you feel the emotion for something that is not alive right where do laws ultimately have to land with regard to rights for robots well it depends I believe in evidence-based policy so really yes later checked out have you I know like really like it would be nice to have some evidence right and if if for example we found out that it was actually desensitizing to people to behave really violently towards life like robots then you know there's some question of whether we should regulate and say you're not allowed to do certain things to certain types of robot because the fostering behavior that would be yeah there happens to the interest of civilization so the only actually has an impact on that behavior actually I have to say that makes a lot of those evidence-based makes a lot of sense very very hopeful there's but it's tough to research yeah okay so you you can imagine a future where that's the case oh yeah have you watched Westworld that TV show yeah yeah I mean Rachel yeah it's it's pretty good but like you could imagine if we had a theme park like that people would get upset right right however well I'm not gonna so actually my clip of this segment uh-huh I talked to Anthony Daniels about robots today just just to get a sense of what is because you know that character dates from the 70s great so just what were his thinking about the interaction of humans and robots today agenda I'm one of the frustrations we have now with with machines that pretend to be human and and certainly in Japan there are companies working on human are leading the way on that every time I see a new robot is a Japanese robot well they like that kind of thing they've slightly taken it to their own in the sense of social interactions with machines human to machine human-cyborg relations indeed George was there first yes some of them were in early stages of real robotics and we have to think what we want from that but when you have something that pretends to be human and then sort of suddenly malfunctions it's like well we're talking about Stepford Wives suddenly I'm alerting to all these that the thing about if you've given us a full review of 20th century robots here this is great and 20th century of film writers script writers who now very I think urgently have adopted this slightly outer world netherworld where we are going not in my lifetime I hope because I need the work how come I shall come back to that and of course in in Japan it it's widely known that they are looking for really human relatable probably you know bed bed sized machines that people can relate to but then you have to look at how you what kind of figure physically do you supply because if it's too humanoid and it starts clicking and then you it's a little scary isn't right if it's too mechanical then you're relating to I don't know kind of fizzy drink it's like where's the balance between who I want to believe I'm relating to because if I get too fond of you and you're a machine it's not going to end happily there all kinds of off ramps there for where that would go so what is there any thinking in your lab about human robot relationships bond bonding yes and where does that land well for me and a lot of my colleagues I feel like we're as humans capable of a lot of different types of relationships and to me the relationship with a robot isn't necessarily the replacement of a human relationship it's more like how we would treat a pet or something completely different and new so it's not something that's a white no but maybe not but I think that's an enlightened outlook it's not clear to me that that's where that's gonna go I think people you know if if people can have imaginary friends then they can have a robot that that becomes a friend that becomes a friend well why is that bad no no I'm asking you is it is there should we I I don't mean to imply it's inherently bad I'm asking you have you guys thought about whether or not it's well the what i keeps me up at night is it isn't that someone might bond or have like a friend as a robot it's that a company is making that robot and maybe is using the robot to emotionally manipulate that person that already happens yeah toys know what's called advertising yeah you're absolutely right psychological brain screw called advertising but no I remember the it was like a furry or a Furby or something but it's a little robot and it's like and it says things like I love you and you're my friend and it's like you know like I was like I would never get that from my kid like that's a loneliest kid in the world that needs this toy that's like giving it love and affection and and reinforcement there was an episode of The Twilight Zone where there's a guy isolated on a planet asteroid somewhere is early before they knew how great what space was really gonna be by name he's on an asteroid and his asteroid apparently has a breathable atmosphere but hoping that it's a holding outside these complement these the holding that aside right okay they couldn't be rescued for like a long time he's slightly going crazy so they brought him a robot a female robot okay and it says turn here and then she comes to life comes to life of course it's played by an actual actress but it doesn't matter she's a robot and then it's say they're their companions and they're there for like a year and then the rescue mission finally comes but there's no room on the ship for her I didn't know what he gets back well we're going back without your companion there's no but she sees she's in it I love her guy takes out his gun shoots her in the head what and then the springs come out and the thing and it said let's go who does that no the other guy who's trying to save his composed his fellow astronaut to remind him that so so what time talk to me okay but yeah I mean robots can fill a void like that they're already being used as an animal therapy replacement in nursing homes because we can't use real animals and so you bring in this baby seal robot that gives you the sense of nurturing something and people become very attached to them Wow no so I'm asking the ethics of the story I just shared with you oh well I I mean I think it's unethical to shoot a lady robot okay but otherwise damaging otherwise they all die because there's only one seat on that rescue ship yeah yeah that's the construct yes and you're an ethicist talk to me woman talk to me thank you now we don't have to resolve the ethical issue no but tell me how would you wear can't it can't be unhealthy though this this bonding that you're talking about it can be yeah I mean if it's being used to manipulate someone or if they're bonding with something so it sounds like she was meant to be a tool and they didn't anticipate that he would bond with her this much yes and this happens in the real world this happens with soldiers bonding with their bomb disposal robots where they treat them like pets and they get really upset if they get broken if they saved your life it does right yeah Peter Singer is written about soldiers actually singers schemes it's like the Princeton philosopher know there are two Peter singers Peter singer there's a Peter singer who has written a book called wired for war about military robots oh and they're apparently soldiers have risked their lives to save the robots that they work with they're actually missing the point of that robot yeah well robots to save their life yeah yeah yes kind of bond with something if it saves your life though and I don't think the people who deployed that really anticipated that response interesting okay so here's the question then if you're gonna make it empirical there's the risk to his psychological health having no companion for a year versus the risk to a psychological health of having a companion that you put a bullet through her head right which of those is worse I mean not having a background in psychology my guess would be ethically I mean you know we get pets and we know they're gonna die and this is a similar thing like that's true you get dog ain't gonna be around 20 years we take a break when we come back more of the relationship between humans and robots we're back Startalk we're exploring the relationship between the robots and humans featuring my interview with the Daniels who recently published the book I am and we have with us as an expert commentator Kate darling okay reintroducing you to those who whoever comes in only in the third segment I don't know who that is animals that's it so anyway thanks for bringing your MIT lab perspectives for us so one of my one of the aspects of anything details that enchanted me is that he has an academic affiliation hmm let's check it out okay um maybe I shouldn't call you Anthony Daley's I should call you professor Daniels this is I'm I know fundamentally an academic so I write my radar what's up well you can call me a professor but I know where you're going because I'm not a professor I am a kind of visiting mm professional at Carnegie Mellon car now one of the leading institutions in computer science and robotics and everything you know automated yeah but I years ago I got connected with it you curious circumstances through the robot Hall of Fame they invited me it's a Institute institution in the Science Museum they're in Pittsburgh they contact him he would I come and accept an award for c-3po to be part of their exhibit yes of course traveling and I don't mean to brag hey I don't mean to brag but I'm in the Bronx Hall of Fame just so you know don't get too big-headed I'm in the Bronx okay and they understand your exit but on the way that where is the where is the whole train it's in the center of Pittsburgh is in the Science Museum for and for instance you know they've got they've got to c-3po they got out to d2 they've got a baseball machine that can pot a ball every time get that hoop every time bigger a basketball a basketball it can do it mechanically every time perfectly no matter where you put it in the we're just from there one spot I think you yeah is cheating isn't it yeah and they've got the one of the original arms of that original could pick up an egg and put it there and just do that all the time they've also gone oh so they have the history history and at the time that would have been quite remarkable together to do anything it was the first it was the first what was a industrial robot there was there it is it's got to be able to pick up an egg and not break it not break it but also put it exactly two replicas and do you know the definition of a robot has changed now from the as Marvin days to where we are a machine that can do something kind of that's useful it just doesn't need a human to do it they also have for instance a room as large as this which is a medicine dispensary which is apparently far far more accurate than having a human dispenser in a hospital it's dishing out the drugs but in a good way so guys what if you visited that Hall of Fame let's assume they have all robots what would be your favorite robot cake my favourite robot they only have real ones right like not science fiction well no c-3po is in there is wall-e there I like wall-e you're allowed even though they give us they just have a drawing of wall-e will give you a wall-e you're like well that's cute I like that okay how about you alien covenant which wasn't the best movie in the world but Michael Fassbender oh yeah hot robot but not as hot as what's-his-face in AI he was the male sex robot after yeah just um God did I just go gay for robots Oakley did it totally totally did anyway Michael Fassbender plays two robots he plays himself he plays Walter who has no emotions but then he plays Walters evil twin who does and they're both robot and they're both robots but the one without emotions believe it or not easily manipulated by the one who has emotions because when you're evil you can do evil but when you don't have any emotions and you and you and you're susceptible you're just susceptible to anything wait so that's your favorite role yeah yeah which one the evil washer no why because I don't have it in me to be that and I think in some I think maybe if I did it what I would feel differently maybe you need it to complete you Oh would that be cool so at what point do you think about the good and evil that it robot might or might not do either because they're programmed to or because they learn it on their own right yeah I don't think we think about it in terms of inherent good or evil but more how is the technology being used by those who should know the difference between good and evil yes hey you men Missy now apparently at some point these machines will be programmed by algorithms hit written by people even if they're written by other machines written at some point by people and good and evil will be kind of inherent in that algorithm yeah it's gonna be a whole mess of gray well I had to take the conversation there okay the future of AI infused in robots let's see what Anthony Daniel says I am a little frightened by AI and you're quite right to come in to deal with the talks of the students with an objective eye that I hate I don't know any I didn't really understand much of the science but I have an outer perspective and gradually through practice you know I'm enjoying a virtual reality augmented reality all these sort of things that are gradually bringing the theatrical user if you will be entertainment user into the scene so you're not just a asset-backed participant you you are actually involved so maybe the the gradualism of this prevents anyone from even noticing the day that AI takes over I think kind of that's already happening but in the world of entertainment which is what the entertainment Technology Center is about the growth in in involving entertainment it is very very marked you know with all these headsets coming onto the leap motion and all that kind of thing but in a world where robots are going to industrialize jobs and take jobs away from humans which they've already begun doing yeah we better look to what humans can do apart from twiddle their thumbs so let me let me ask you now then whatever you were not thinking about evil in the moment how about evil in the future about AI turning evil how about have have let me ask you a tighter question has AI as portrayed in film gone the right places that we all should be thinking about we're missing something yes they're missing a ton and I love science fiction I think that science fiction opens people's minds to thinking about what's possible but we have so many dystopian stories of robots taking over that people are fearing robot uprisings when that's very premature and we should be worried about other things that are happening right now but you didn't say that it wouldn't happen you just said it's premature so 2027 so tell me so what where should we be focused well there are a lot of issues right now with privacy data security supplement versus replacement of human ability with you know reinforcing racial gender stereotypes in the design of these technologies like all of this is happening right now there's autonomous weapon systems being developed there's things we should be concerned about that aren't the robots becoming smart and taking over the world I think that that one also tends to be a lot of rich white dudes worried about that one because they don't have to worry about the other stuff they're just like my only danger is that a robot makeup me I don't have to worry about like facial recognition holding me sociologically insightful plus you've seen the racial sinks in bathrooms the racist sinks no I don't know about this no they can't see black hands yeah and we've done this with all types of Technology because it's all white dudes building right and so I just thought it was the sink didn't work I chanted waiting for the water who's an automat has happened to them and nothing so maybe that sink doesn't work so they go to another sink then I wave my hand some more eventually you know it'll hit so if you do the experiment you put in a darker surface or a lighter surface it's it's it's reflecting reflects it yeah reflecting reflecting the light right right so what you're saying is white men say it white man there's also a lot of gender stuff right right we'll design things thinking that they are the model of what it is and should be and and capturing their concerns but it's also not their fault like we all view the world through our own experiences and so the problem is that we don't have diverse teams building technology that's really where it is it is their fault if they're not hiring you or Chuck trying to stave off viral day [Laughter] yes sir you're hired but we don't want any trouble no but you raised it a very important point if if I'm stereotyping here but if white men are programming all of the code that will be the future of AI it could have remarkable remarkably biased consequences as an unintended concept is right you're speaking about this as though this is in the future but this is actually happening right now well got you listen yeah I know that's why my hands are dirty Chuck can clean his hands and you don't know when alright so how about this let's let's try to land this plane okay what do you what do you think is our largest F dilemma going forward I think the thing I worry about the most is that a lot of AI the way it's built right now realized on data collection they need massive amounts of data and so I worry about privacy because there's no incentive to curb that right now interesting because if you want to know all about humans you want got to know and we want to do everything they do but then other people will also have access to that data governments will companies will and that's already happening in China where they're collecting information privately but then the government forces them to turn over the information including facial recognition that happens on just the streets of the cities yeah all that camera data yeah how to identify foreign national exactly one round them up right right exactly so yeah so how do we lean into because I do think there are so many positive use cases for this text so how do we lean into those positive use cases and curb some of this stuff that's nuts that question I'm asking I'd appreciate ask that no all right so hmm let's get some parting thoughts a parting thought here I you know I'm I'm really I'm really disturbed by the fact that there are racist things man okay sorry to take you off the rail Chuck it's okay give me give us something hopeful here reflecting on it all okay I'll give you something hopeful so you know how people are sometimes nice to robots and then they feel silly about it like they'll say excuse me to their robot vacuum cleaner or they'll like say please or thank you to Alexa the Amazons assistant I don't think people need to feel silly about that because I think that what that is saying is that their first instinct is to be kind to another and so what I really really love about robots is that they are kind of a reflection of our own humanity in a way I mean our interactions with the robot yeah our interactions with them that's cool that's cool I like that so if you're a good person a robot will tease that out of you but if you're a bad person the robot will do this you're bringing it somewhere dark robots are good she tried unless they saw she was trying I know help woman some help here okay okay all right so it can be give us insight into humanity yes into our own empathy and psychology and how we relate to others so we can learn more about ourselves from interacting with robot cool because I don't think that's been explored much in storytelling no it hasn't right actually that is a very good like platform to use as a jumping-off point for like it has been explored but it's not what everyone's thinking about or talking about right right right so here's what I think not that you asked but we don't care but Media Lab that is the real side of anything out here I think and I don't even know if I have foundation to think this way I think the apocalyptic scenarios are overplayed I think we always we always deal into our base lowest fears mm-hmm because fear tends to always override our joys that's natural I think first for survival right you can you know if you're not afraid of something and it kills you then gone is the gene to be afraid of stuff that will kill you right so you take it out of the gene pool so I think that's been overplayed my worry is that our distraction with the evil prevents us from thinking more creatively about the good that robotic AI can bring to this world and I don't I don't want to lose out on the creative solutions that they can bring so so Kate I put it entirely on your shoulders yeah this office is not called the Media Lab this is just Neil's office today all right we'll just in the crib we're gonna send you back home back to your back to your peeps and we want you to solve this problem challenge accepted excellent Chuck always a pleasure good to have you Kate thanks for coming down from Boston thank you so much for having all right and now we know you up there will surely do this again absolutely will totally take it to another place yeah because that your kind of expertise doesn't have to walk up and down the street all the time so we're digging this yeah you've been watching possibly listening to this episode of Startalk robots and humans and I just want to thank Kate Chuck and do the show absolutely as always I bid you to keep looking up

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 215,990

Keywords: startalk, star talk, startalk radio, neil degrasse tyson, neil tyson, science, space, astrophysics, astronomy, podcast, space podcast, science podcast, astronomy podcast, niel degrasse tyson, physics, Anthony Daniels, Chuck Nice, Kate Darling, C-3PO, Star Wars, The Rise of Skywalker, robot, robotics, artificial intelligence, humanity, robotic advancements, uncanny valley, soul, asymmetrical design, AI, C3P0, C3PO, R2D2, human robot interaction, humanoid robot, anthony daniels interview

Id: L53SXKeAUyQ

Length: 64min 31sec (3871 seconds)

Published: Mon May 04 2020