Kate Darling: Emotional Connection Between Humans and Robots
AI 与机器学习心理与人性技术与编程历史与文明音乐与艺术
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🔑 关键词
robotsdonrobotgoinghumanconnectioninterestinghardcompaniesdoesntryingsocialtalkgeneralsystemssaidalexasexrelationshipstuff
💬 精彩语录
"approaches, will help us actually get to the core of what is right and what is wrong under our current"
方法，将帮助我们真正了解当前情况下什么是正确的，什么是错误的核心
— Kate Darling （29:49.680）
"useful enough to get people to adopt the technology in great numbers. I think what we did see from the"
足够有用，足以让人们大量采用该技术。我认为我们确实从
— Kate Darling （48:17.280）
"review it with five stars on Apple Podcast, support it on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter"
在 Apple Podcast 上以五颗星评价它，在 Patreon 上支持它，或者在 Twitter 上与我联系
— Kate Darling （00:51.280）
"use it on Linux. Shout out to Ubuntu, 2004, Windows, Android, but it's available everywhere else too."
在 Linux 上使用它。值得称赞的是 Ubuntu、2004、Windows、Android，但它也可以在其他任何地方使用。
— Kate Darling （03:08.640）
"to something in our physical space than something on a screen. We will treat it much more viscerally,"
我们的物理空间中的某些东西而不是屏幕上的某些东西。我们会更加发自内心地对待它，
— Kate Darling （09:23.280）
🎙️ 完整对话（737 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with Kate Darling, a researcher at MIT,
以下是与麻省理工学院研究员 Kate Darling 的对话，
Lex Fridman (00:04.480)
interested in social robotics, robot ethics, and generally how technology intersects with society.
对社交机器人、机器人伦理以及技术如何与社会交叉感兴趣。
Lex Fridman (00:11.040)
She explores the emotional connection between human beings and lifelike machines,
她探索人类与栩栩如生的机器之间的情感联系，
Lex Fridman (00:15.680)
which for me is one of the most exciting topics in all of artificial intelligence.
对我来说，这是所有人工智能中最令人兴奋的主题之一。
Lex Fridman (00:21.360)
As she writes in her bio, she is a caretaker of several domestic robots,
正如她在个人简介中所写，她是几个家用机器人的看护者，
Kate Darling (00:26.240)
including her plio dinosaur robots named Yochai, Peter, and Mr. Spaghetti.
包括她的 plio 恐龙机器人 Yochai、Peter 和 Mr. Spaghetti。
Kate Darling (00:33.600)
She is one of the funniest and brightest minds I've ever had the fortune to talk to.
她是我有幸交谈过的最有趣、最聪明的人之一。
Kate Darling (00:37.840)
This conversation was recorded recently, but before the outbreak of the pandemic.
这段对话是最近录制的，但在大流行爆发之前。
Lex Fridman (00:42.240)
For everyone feeling the burden of this crisis, I'm sending love your way.
对于每一个感受到这场危机负担的人，我向你们表达爱。
Kate Darling (00:46.720)
This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube,
这是人工智能播客。如果您喜欢，请在 YouTube 上订阅，
Kate Darling (00:51.280)
review it with five stars on Apple Podcast, support it on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter
在 Apple Podcast 上以五颗星评价它，在 Patreon 上支持它，或者在 Twitter 上与我联系
Kate Darling (00:56.800)
at Lex Friedman, spelled F R I D M A N. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and never any
Lex Friedman，拼写为 F R I D M A N。像往常一样，我现在会做几分钟的广告，而且永远不会做任何广告。
Kate Darling (01:03.440)
ads in the middle that can break the flow of the conversation. I hope that works for you and
中间的广告可能会打断对话的流畅性。我希望这对你有用
Kate Darling (01:08.000)
doesn't hurt the listening experience. Quick summary of the ads. Two sponsors,
不影响聆听体验。广告的快速摘要。两位赞助商，
Kate Darling (01:13.760)
Masterclass and ExpressVPN. Please consider supporting the podcast by signing up to
Kate Darling (01:19.040)
Masterclass at masterclass.com slash Lex and getting ExpressVPN at expressvpn.com slash Lex
masterclass.com 的 Masterclass 斜线 Lex 并在expressvpn.com 斜线 Lex 获取 ExpressVPN
Kate Darling (01:27.120)
Pod. This show is sponsored by Masterclass. Sign up at masterclass.com slash Lex to get a discount
荚。本次演出由大师班赞助。在 masterclass.com 上注册并削减 Lex 即可获得折扣
Lex Fridman (01:35.440)
and to support this podcast. When I first heard about Masterclass, I thought it was too good to
并支持这个播客。当我第一次听说大师班时，我觉得它太好了
Kate Darling (01:40.720)
be true. For $180 a year, you get an all access pass to watch courses from, to list some of my
说实话。每年只需 180 美元，您就可以获得观看课程的所有访问通行证，并列出我的一些课程
Kate Darling (01:47.680)
favorites. Chris Hadfield on space exploration, Neil deGrasse Tyson on scientific thinking and
最喜欢的。克里斯·哈德菲尔德 (Chris Hadfield) 谈太空探索，尼尔·德格拉斯·泰森 (Neil deGrasse Tyson) 谈科学思维和
Kate Darling (01:53.520)
communication, Will Wright, creator of SimCity and Sims, love those games, on game design,
Kate Darling (02:00.240)
Carlos Santana on guitar, Garry Kasparov on chess, Daniel Nagrano on poker, and many more.
Kate Darling (02:07.680)
Chris Hadfield explaining how rockets work and the experience of being launched into space alone
Kate Darling (02:12.720)
is worth the money. By the way, you can watch it on basically any device. Once again,
Kate Darling (02:18.960)
sign up on masterclass.com slash Lex to get a discount and to support this podcast.
Kate Darling (02:25.040)
This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Get it at expressvpn.com slash Lex Pod to get a discount
Lex Fridman (02:33.120)
and to support this podcast. I've been using ExpressVPN for many years. I love it. It's easy
Kate Darling (02:39.600)
to use, press the big power on button, and your privacy is protected. And, if you like, you can
Kate Darling (02:45.840)
make it look like your location is anywhere else in the world. I might be in Boston now, but I can
Kate Darling (02:50.960)
make it look like I'm in New York, London, Paris, or anywhere else. This has a large number of
Kate Darling (02:56.240)
obvious benefits. Certainly, it allows you to access international versions of streaming websites
Kate Darling (03:01.520)
like the Japanese Netflix or the UK Hulu. ExpressVPN works on any device you can imagine. I
Kate Darling (03:08.640)
use it on Linux. Shout out to Ubuntu, 2004, Windows, Android, but it's available everywhere else too.
Kate Darling (03:17.760)
Once again, get it at expressvpn.com slash Lex Pod to get a discount and to support this podcast.
Lex Fridman (03:26.240)
And now, here's my conversation with Kate Darling.
Kate Darling (03:31.040)
You co taught robot ethics at Harvard. What are some ethical issues that arise
Lex Fridman (03:35.920)
in the world with robots?
Kate Darling (03:39.840)
Yeah, that was a reading group that I did when I, like, at the very beginning,
Kate Darling (03:44.400)
first became interested in this topic. So, I think if I taught that class today,
Kate Darling (03:48.800)
it would look very, very different. Robot ethics, it sounds very science fictiony,
Kate Darling (03:54.800)
especially did back then, but I think that some of the issues that people in robot ethics are
Kate Darling (04:01.840)
concerned with are just around the ethical use of robotic technology in general. So, for example,
Kate Darling (04:06.880)
responsibility for harm, automated weapon systems, things like privacy and data security,
Kate Darling (04:11.760)
things like, you know, automation and labor markets. And then personally, I'm really
Kate Darling (04:19.200)
interested in some of the social issues that come out of our social relationships with robots.
Kate Darling (04:23.760)
One on one relationship with robots.
Lex Fridman (04:25.920)
Yeah.
Kate Darling (04:26.640)
I think most of the stuff we have to talk about is like one on one social stuff. That's what I
Kate Darling (04:30.160)
love. I think that's what you're, you love as well and are expert in. But a societal level,
Kate Darling (04:35.200)
there's like, there's a presidential candidate now, Andrew Yang running,
Kate Darling (04:41.360)
concerned about automation and robots and AI in general taking away jobs. He has a proposal of UBI,
Kate Darling (04:48.640)
universal basic income of everybody gets 1000 bucks as a way to sort of save you if you lose
Kate Darling (04:55.440)
your job from automation to allow you time to discover what it is that you would like to or
Kate Darling (05:02.960)
even love to do.
Kate Darling (05:04.560)
Yes. So I lived in Switzerland for 20 years and universal basic income has been more of a topic
Kate Darling (05:12.160)
there separate from the whole robots and jobs issue. So it's so interesting to me to see kind
Kate Darling (05:19.360)
of these Silicon Valley people latch onto this concept that came from a very kind of
Kate Darling (05:26.560)
left wing socialist, kind of a different place in Europe. But on the automation labor markets
Kate Darling (05:37.120)
topic, I think that it's very, so sometimes in those conversations, I think people overestimate
Kate Darling (05:44.720)
where robotic technology is right now. And we also have this fallacy of constantly comparing robots
Kate Darling (05:51.280)
to humans and thinking of this as a one to one replacement of jobs. So even like Bill Gates a few
Kate Darling (05:57.680)
years ago said something about, maybe we should have a system that taxes robots for taking people's
Kate Darling (06:03.920)
jobs. And it just, I mean, I'm sure that was taken out of context, he's a really smart guy,
Lex Fridman (06:10.480)
but that sounds to me like kind of viewing it as a one to one replacement versus viewing this
Kate Darling (06:15.920)
technology as kind of a supplemental tool that of course is going to shake up a lot of stuff.
Kate Darling (06:21.520)
It's going to change the job landscape, but I don't see, you know, robots taking all the
Lex Fridman (06:27.440)
jobs in the next 20 years. That's just not how it's going to work.
Kate Darling (06:30.800)
Right. So maybe drifting into the land of more personal relationships with robots and
Kate Darling (06:36.240)
interaction and so on. I got to warn you, I go, I may ask some silly philosophical questions.
Kate Darling (06:43.280)
I apologize.
Lex Fridman (06:43.920)
Oh, please do.
Kate Darling (06:45.040)
Okay. Do you think humans will abuse robots in their interactions? So you've had a lot of,
Lex Fridman (06:52.560)
and we'll talk about it sort of anthropomorphization and this intricate dance,
Kate Darling (07:00.640)
emotional dance between human and robot, but there seems to be also a darker side where people, when
Kate Darling (07:06.320)
they treat the other as servants, especially, they can be a little bit abusive or a lot abusive.
Lex Fridman (07:13.520)
Do you think about that? Do you worry about that?
Kate Darling (07:16.400)
Yeah, I do think about that. So, I mean, one of my main interests is the fact that people
Kate Darling (07:22.960)
subconsciously treat robots like living things. And even though they know that they're interacting
Kate Darling (07:28.000)
with a machine and what it means in that context to behave violently. I don't know if you could say
Kate Darling (07:35.200)
abuse because you're not actually abusing the inner mind of the robot. The robot doesn't have
Lex Fridman (07:42.000)
any feelings.
Kate Darling (07:42.640)
As far as you know.
Kate Darling (07:44.000)
Well, yeah. It also depends on how we define feelings and consciousness. But I think that's
Kate Darling (07:50.400)
another area where people kind of overestimate where we currently are with the technology.
Lex Fridman (07:54.080)
Right.
Kate Darling (07:54.320)
The robots are not even as smart as insects right now. And so I'm not worried about abuse
Kate Darling (08:00.320)
in that sense. But it is interesting to think about what does people's behavior towards these
Kate Darling (08:05.840)
things mean for our own behavior? Is it desensitizing the people to be verbally abusive
Lex Fridman (08:13.680)
to a robot or even physically abusive? And we don't know.
Kate Darling (08:17.360)
Right. It's a similar connection from like if you play violent video games, what connection does
Kate Darling (08:22.400)
that have to desensitization to violence? I haven't read literature on that. I wonder about that.
Kate Darling (08:32.080)
Because everything I've heard, people don't seem to any longer be so worried about violent video
Lex Fridman (08:37.520)
games.
Kate Darling (08:38.080)
Correct. The research on it is, it's a difficult thing to research. So it's sort of inconclusive,
Lex Fridman (08:46.720)
but we seem to have gotten the sense, at least as a society, that people can compartmentalize. When
Kate Darling (08:53.680)
it's something on a screen and you're shooting a bunch of characters or running over people with
Kate Darling (08:58.320)
your car, that doesn't necessarily translate to you doing that in real life. We do, however,
Kate Darling (09:04.160)
have some concerns about children playing violent video games. And so we do restrict it there.
Kate Darling (09:09.680)
I'm not sure that's based on any real evidence either, but it's just the way that we've kind of
Kate Darling (09:14.400)
decided we want to be a little more cautious there. And the reason I think robots are a little
Kate Darling (09:19.040)
bit different is because there is a lot of research showing that we respond differently
Kate Darling (09:23.280)
to something in our physical space than something on a screen. We will treat it much more viscerally,
Kate Darling (09:29.280)
much more like a physical actor. And so it's totally possible that this is not a problem.
Lex Fridman (09:38.160)
And it's the same thing as violence in video games. Maybe restrict it with kids to be safe,
Lex Fridman (09:43.280)
but adults can do what they want. But we just need to ask the question again because we don't
Kate Darling (09:48.560)
have any evidence at all yet. Maybe there's an intermediate place too. I did my research
Lex Fridman (09:55.840)
on Twitter. By research, I mean scrolling through your Twitter feed.
Kate Darling (10:00.800)
You mentioned that you were going at some point to an animal law conference.
Lex Fridman (10:04.560)
So I have to ask, do you think there's something that we can learn
Lex Fridman (10:07.840)
from animal rights that guides our thinking about robots?
Kate Darling (10:12.320)
Oh, I think there is so much to learn from that. I'm actually writing a book on it right now. That's
Lex Fridman (10:17.120)
why I'm going to this conference. So I'm writing a book that looks at the history of animal
Kate Darling (10:22.400)
domestication and how we've used animals for work, for weaponry, for companionship.
Lex Fridman (10:27.280)
And one of the things the book tries to do is move away from this fallacy that I talked about
Kate Darling (10:33.920)
of comparing robots and humans because I don't think that's the right analogy. But I do think
Kate Darling (10:39.680)
that on a social level, even on a social level, there's so much that we can learn from looking
Kate Darling (10:43.920)
at that history because throughout history, we've treated most animals like tools, like products.
Lex Fridman (10:49.360)
And then some of them we've treated differently and we're starting to see people treat robots in
Kate Darling (10:53.200)
really similar ways. So I think it's a really helpful predictor to how we're going to interact
Kate Darling (10:57.920)
with the robots. Do you think we'll look back at this time like 100 years from now and see
Lex Fridman (11:05.440)
what we do to animals as like similar to the way we view like the Holocaust in World War II?
Kate Darling (11:13.360)
That's a great question. I mean, I hope so. I am not convinced that we will. But I often wonder,
Kate Darling (11:22.480)
you know, what are my grandkids going to view as, you know, abhorrent that my generation did
Kate Darling (11:28.480)
that they would never do? And I'm like, well, what's the big deal? You know, it's a fun question
Kate Darling (11:33.600)
to ask yourself. It always seems that there's atrocities that we discover later. So the things
Kate Darling (11:41.200)
that at the time people didn't see as, you know, you look at everything from slavery to any kinds
Kate Darling (11:49.600)
of abuse throughout history to the kind of insane wars that were happening to the way war was carried
Kate Darling (11:56.480)
out and rape and the kind of violence that was happening during war that we now, you know,
Kate Darling (12:05.360)
we see as atrocities, but at the time perhaps didn't as much. And so now I have this intuition
Kate Darling (12:12.880)
that I have this worry, maybe you're going to probably criticize me, but I do anthropomorphize
Kate Darling (12:20.800)
robots. I don't see a fundamental philosophical difference between a robot and a human being
Kate Darling (12:31.600)
in terms of once the capabilities are matched. So the fact that we're really far away doesn't,
Kate Darling (12:39.200)
in terms of capabilities and then that from natural language processing, understanding
Lex Fridman (12:43.600)
and generation to just reasoning and all that stuff. I think once you solve it, I see though,
Kate Darling (12:48.800)
this is a very gray area and I don't feel comfortable with the kind of abuse that people
Kate Darling (12:53.920)
throw at robots. Subtle, but I can see it becoming, I can see basically a civil rights movement for
Kate Darling (13:01.120)
robots in the future. Do you think, let me put it in the form of a question, do you think robots
Kate Darling (13:07.040)
should have some kinds of rights? Well, it's interesting because I came at this originally
Kate Darling (13:13.520)
from your perspective. I was like, you know what, there's no fundamental difference between
Kate Darling (13:19.040)
technology and like human consciousness. Like we, we can probably recreate anything. We just don't
Kate Darling (13:24.800)
know how yet. And so there's no reason not to give machines the same rights that we have once,
Kate Darling (13:32.640)
like you say, they're kind of on an equivalent level. But I realized that that is kind of a
Kate Darling (13:38.080)
far future question. I still think we should talk about it because I think it's really interesting.
Lex Fridman (13:41.600)
But I realized that it's actually, we might need to ask the robot rights question even sooner than
Kate Darling (13:47.680)
that while the machines are still, quote unquote, really dumb and not on our level because of the
Kate Darling (13:56.160)
way that we perceive them. And I think one of the lessons we learned from looking at the history of
Kate Darling (14:00.560)
animal rights and one of the reasons we may not get to a place in a hundred years where we view
Kate Darling (14:05.360)
it as wrong to, you know, eat or otherwise, you know, use animals for our own purposes is because
Kate Darling (14:11.440)
historically we've always protected those things that we relate to the most. So one example is
Kate Darling (14:17.920)
whales. No one gave a shit about the whales. Am I allowed to swear? Yeah, no one gave a shit about
Kate Darling (14:26.640)
freedom. Yeah, no one gave a shit about the whales until someone recorded them singing. And suddenly
Kate Darling (14:31.200)
people were like, oh, this is a beautiful creature and now we need to save the whales. And that
Kate Darling (14:35.840)
started the whole Save the Whales movement in the 70s. So as much as I, and I think a lot of people
Kate Darling (14:45.360)
want to believe that we care about consistent biological criteria, that's not historically
Lex Fridman (14:52.400)
how we formed our alliances. Yeah, so what, why do we, why do we believe that all humans are created
Kate Darling (15:00.880)
equal? Killing of a human being, no matter who the human being is, that's what I meant by equality,
Kate Darling (15:07.120)
is bad. And then, because I'm connecting that to robots and I'm wondering whether mortality,
Lex Fridman (15:14.480)
so the killing act is what makes something, that's the fundamental first right. So I am currently
Kate Darling (15:21.200)
allowed to take a shotgun and shoot a Roomba. I think, I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure it's not
Kate Darling (15:29.280)
considered murder, right. Or even shutting them off. So that's, that's where the line appears to
Kate Darling (15:36.640)
be, right? Is this mortality a critical thing here? I think here again, like the animal analogy is
Kate Darling (15:44.080)
really useful because you're also allowed to shoot your dog, but people won't be happy about it.
Lex Fridman (15:49.440)
So we give, we do give animals certain protections from like, you're not allowed to torture your dog
Lex Fridman (15:56.960)
and set it on fire, at least in most states and countries, but you're still allowed to treat it
Kate Darling (16:04.160)
like a piece of property in a lot of other ways. And so we draw these arbitrary lines all the time.
Kate Darling (16:11.920)
And, you know, there's a lot of philosophical thought on why viewing humans as something unique
Kate Darling (16:22.320)
is not, is just speciesism and not, you know, based on any criteria that would actually justify
Kate Darling (16:31.040)
making a difference between us and other species. Do you think in general people, most people are
Kate Darling (16:38.640)
good? Do you think, or do you think there's evil and good in all of us? Is that's revealed through
Kate Darling (16:49.040)
our circumstances and through our interactions? I like to view myself as a person who like believes
Kate Darling (16:55.760)
that there's no absolute evil and good and that everything is, you know, gray. But I do think it's
Kate Darling (17:03.600)
an interesting question. Like when I see people being violent towards robotic objects, you said
Lex Fridman (17:08.080)
that bothers you because the robots might someday, you know, be smart. And is that why?
Kate Darling (17:15.600)
Well, it bothers me because it reveals, so I personally believe, because I've studied way too,
Lex Fridman (17:21.280)
so I'm Jewish. I studied the Holocaust and World War II exceptionally well. I personally believe
Kate Darling (17:26.640)
that most of us have evil in us. That what bothers me is the abuse of robots reveals the evil in
Kate Darling (17:35.440)
human beings. And it's, I think it doesn't just bother me. It's, I think it's an opportunity for
Kate Darling (17:44.320)
roboticists to make, help people find the better sides, the angels of their nature, right? That
Kate Darling (17:53.920)
abuse isn't just a fun side thing. That's a, you revealing a dark part that you shouldn't,
Kate Darling (17:59.600)
that should be hidden deep inside. Yeah. I mean, you laugh, but some of our research does indicate
Kate Darling (18:07.360)
that maybe people's behavior towards robots reveals something about their tendencies for
Kate Darling (18:12.400)
empathy generally, even using very simple robots that we have today that like clearly don't feel
Kate Darling (18:16.720)
anything. So, you know, Westworld is maybe, you know, not so far off and it's like, you know,
Kate Darling (18:27.360)
depicting the bad characters as willing to go around and shoot and rape the robots and the good
Kate Darling (18:32.080)
characters is not wanting to do that. Even without assuming that the robots have consciousness.
Lex Fridman (18:37.520)
So there's a opportunity, it's interesting, there's opportunity to almost practice empathy.
Lex Fridman (18:42.080)
The, on robots is an opportunity to practice empathy.
Kate Darling (18:47.840)
I agree with you. Some people would say, why are we practicing empathy on robots instead of,
Lex Fridman (18:54.320)
you know, on our fellow humans or on animals that are actually alive and experienced the world?
Lex Fridman (18:59.920)
And I don't agree with them because I don't think empathy is a zero sum game. And I do
Kate Darling (19:03.840)
think that it's a muscle that you can train and that we should be doing that. But some people
Kate Darling (19:09.200)
disagree. So the interesting thing, you've heard, you know, raising kids sort of asking them or
Kate Darling (19:20.400)
telling them to be nice to the smart speakers, to Alexa and so on, saying please and so on during
Kate Darling (19:28.000)
the requests. I don't know if, I'm a huge fan of that idea because yeah, that's towards the idea of
Kate Darling (19:34.080)
practicing empathy. I feel like politeness, I'm always polite to all the, all the systems that we
Kate Darling (19:39.120)
build, especially anything that's speech interaction based. Like when we talk to the car, I'll always
Kate Darling (19:44.480)
have a pretty good detector for please to, I feel like there should be a room for encouraging empathy
Kate Darling (19:51.280)
in those interactions. Yeah. Okay. So I agree with you. So I'm going to play devil's advocate. Sure.
Lex Fridman (19:58.400)
So what is the, what is the devil's advocate argument there? The devil's advocate argument
Lex Fridman (1:00:02.240)
but that book was very prescient and I'm not worried about, you know, these systems. I have,
Kate Darling (1:00:11.280)
you know, Amazon's Echo at home and tell Alexa all sorts of stuff. And it helps me because,
Kate Darling (1:00:19.520)
you know, Alexa knows what brand of diaper we use. And so I can just easily order it again.
Lex Fridman (1:00:25.200)
So I don't have any incentive to ask a lawmaker to curb that. But when I think about that data
Kate Darling (1:00:30.880)
then being used against low income people to target them for scammy loans or education programs,
Lex Fridman (1:00:39.200)
that's then a societal effect that I think is very severe and, you know,
Kate Darling (1:00:45.120)
legislators should be thinking about.
Lex Fridman (1:00:47.280)
But yeah, the gray area is the removing ourselves from consideration of like,
Kate Darling (1:00:55.360)
of explicitly defining objectives and more saying,
Lex Fridman (1:00:58.880)
well, we want to maximize engagement in our social network.
Kate Darling (1:01:03.680)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:01:04.240)
And then just, because you're not actually doing a bad thing. It makes sense. You want people to
Kate Darling (1:01:11.840)
keep a conversation going, to have more conversations, to keep coming back
Lex Fridman (1:01:16.480)
again and again, to have conversations. And whatever happens after that,
Kate Darling (1:01:21.920)
you're kind of not exactly directly responsible. You're only indirectly responsible. So I think
Lex Fridman (1:01:28.320)
it's a really hard problem. Are you optimistic about us ever being able to solve it?
Kate Darling (1:01:37.280)
You mean the problem of capitalism? It's like, because the problem is that the companies
Kate Darling (1:01:43.120)
are acting in the company's interests and not in people's interests. And when those interests are
Kate Darling (1:01:47.680)
aligned, that's great. But the completely free market doesn't seem to work because of this
Lex Fridman (1:01:53.840)
information asymmetry.
Lex Fridman (1:01:55.120)
But it's hard to know how to, so say you were trying to do the right thing. I guess what I'm
Kate Darling (1:02:01.120)
trying to say is it's not obvious for these companies what the good thing for society is to
Kate Darling (1:02:07.600)
do. Like, I don't think they sit there with, I don't know, with a glass of wine and a cat,
Kate Darling (1:02:14.880)
like petting a cat, evil cat. And there's two decisions and one of them is good for society.
Kate Darling (1:02:21.120)
One is good for the profit and they choose the profit. I think they actually, there's a lot of
Kate Darling (1:02:26.960)
money to be made by doing the right thing for society. Because Google, Facebook have so much cash
Kate Darling (1:02:36.480)
that they actually, especially Facebook, would significantly benefit from making decisions that
Kate Darling (1:02:40.880)
are good for society. It's good for their brand. But I don't know if they know what's good for
Kate Darling (1:02:46.800)
society. I don't think we know what's good for society in terms of how we manage the
Kate Darling (1:02:56.800)
conversation on Twitter or how we design, we're talking about robots. Like, should we
Lex Fridman (1:03:06.640)
emotionally manipulate you into having a deep connection with Alexa or not?
Lex Fridman (1:03:10.960)
Yeah. Yeah. Do you have optimism that we'll be able to solve some of these questions?
Kate Darling (1:03:17.600)
Well, I'm going to say something that's controversial, like in my circles,
Kate Darling (1:03:22.400)
which is that I don't think that companies who are reaching out to ethicists and trying to create
Kate Darling (1:03:28.480)
interdisciplinary ethics boards, I don't think that that's totally just trying to whitewash
Kate Darling (1:03:32.240)
the problem and so that they look like they've done something. I think that a lot of companies
Kate Darling (1:03:36.960)
actually do, like you say, care about what the right answer is. They don't know what that is,
Lex Fridman (1:03:42.960)
and they're trying to find people to help them find them. Not in every case, but I think
Kate Darling (1:03:48.160)
it's much too easy to just vilify the companies as, like you say, sitting there with their cat
Kate Darling (1:03:52.320)
going, her, her, her, $1 million. That's not what happens. A lot of people are well meaning even
Kate Darling (1:03:59.600)
within companies. I think that what we do absolutely need is more interdisciplinarity,
Kate Darling (1:04:09.840)
both within companies, but also within the policymaking space because we've hurtled into
Kate Darling (1:04:17.360)
the world where technological progress is much faster, it seems much faster than it was, and
Kate Darling (1:04:23.760)
things are getting very complex. And you need people who understand the technology, but also
Kate Darling (1:04:28.480)
people who understand what the societal implications are, and people who are thinking
Kate Darling (1:04:33.440)
about this in a more systematic way to be talking to each other. There's no other solution, I think.
Kate Darling (1:04:39.920)
You've also done work on intellectual property, so if you look at the algorithms that these
Kate Darling (1:04:45.440)
companies are using, like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, so on, I mean that's kind of,
Kate Darling (1:04:51.200)
those are mostly secretive. The recommender systems behind these algorithms. Do you think
Kate Darling (1:04:58.400)
about an IP and the transparency of algorithms like this? Like what is the responsibility of
Kate Darling (1:05:04.320)
these companies to open source the algorithms or at least reveal to the public how these
Kate Darling (1:05:11.440)
algorithms work? So I personally don't work on that. There are a lot of people who do though,
Lex Fridman (1:05:16.000)
and there are a lot of people calling for transparency. In fact, Europe's even trying
Kate Darling (1:05:19.760)
to legislate transparency, maybe they even have at this point, where like if an algorithmic system
Kate Darling (1:05:26.800)
makes some sort of decision that affects someone's life, that you need to be able to see how that
Kate Darling (1:05:31.440)
decision was made. It's a tricky balance because obviously companies need to have some sort of
Kate Darling (1:05:41.280)
competitive advantage and you can't take all of that away or you stifle innovation. But yeah,
Kate Darling (1:05:46.800)
for some of the ways that these systems are already being used, I think it is pretty important that
Kate Darling (1:05:51.680)
people understand how they work. What are your thoughts in general on intellectual property in
Kate Darling (1:05:56.960)
this weird age of software, AI, robotics? Oh, that it's broken. I mean, the system is just broken. So
Lex Fridman (1:06:04.720)
can you describe, I actually, I don't even know what intellectual property is in the space of
Kate Darling (1:06:11.840)
software, what it means to, I mean, so I believe I have a patent on a piece of software from my PhD.
Kate Darling (1:06:20.240)
You believe? You don't know? No, we went through a whole process. Yeah, I do. You get the spam
Kate Darling (1:06:26.880)
emails like, we'll frame your patent for you. Yeah, it's much like a thesis. But that's useless,
Kate Darling (1:06:36.320)
right? Or not? Where does IP stand in this age? What's the right way to do it? What's the right
Kate Darling (1:06:43.040)
way to protect and own ideas when it's just code and this mishmash of something that feels much
Kate Darling (1:06:51.600)
softer than a piece of machinery? Yeah. I mean, it's hard because there are different types of
Kate Darling (1:06:58.160)
intellectual property and they're kind of these blunt instruments. It's like patent law is like
Kate Darling (1:07:03.280)
a wrench. It works really well for an industry like the pharmaceutical industry. But when you
Kate Darling (1:07:07.200)
try and apply it to something else, it's like, I don't know, I'll just hit this thing with a wrench
Lex Fridman (1:07:12.080)
and hope it works. So software, you have a couple of different options. Any code that's written down
Kate Darling (1:07:21.600)
in some tangible form is automatically copyrighted. So you have that protection, but that doesn't do
Kate Darling (1:07:27.840)
much because if someone takes the basic idea that the code is executing and just does it in a
Kate Darling (1:07:35.440)
slightly different way, they can get around the copyright. So that's not a lot of protection.
Kate Darling (1:07:40.400)
Then you can patent software, but that's kind of, I mean, getting a patent costs,
Lex Fridman (1:07:47.200)
I don't know if you remember what yours cost or like, was it through an institution?
Kate Darling (1:07:51.280)
Yeah, it was through a university. It was insane. There were so many lawyers, so many meetings.
Kate Darling (1:07:57.520)
It made me feel like it must've been hundreds of thousands of dollars. It must've been something
Kate Darling (1:08:02.160)
crazy. Oh yeah. It's insane the cost of getting a patent. And so this idea of protecting the
Kate Darling (1:08:07.760)
inventor in their own garage who came up with a great idea is kind of, that's the thing of the
Kate Darling (1:08:12.560)
past. It's all just companies trying to protect things and it costs a lot of money. And then
Kate Darling (1:08:18.960)
with code, it's oftentimes by the time the patent is issued, which can take like five years,
Kate Darling (1:08:25.120)
probably your code is obsolete at that point. So it's a very, again, a very blunt instrument that
Kate Darling (1:08:31.520)
doesn't work well for that industry. And so at this point we should really have something better,
Lex Fridman (1:08:37.440)
but we don't. Do you like open source? Yeah. Is open source good for society?
Kate Darling (1:08:41.840)
You think all of us should open source code? Well, so at the Media Lab at MIT, we have an
Kate Darling (1:08:48.720)
open source default because what we've noticed is that people will come in, they'll write some code
Lex Fridman (1:08:54.160)
and they'll be like, how do I protect this? And we're like, that's not your problem right now.
Kate Darling (1:08:58.640)
Your problem isn't that someone's going to steal your project. Your problem is getting people to
Kate Darling (1:09:02.160)
use it at all. There's so much stuff out there. We don't even know if you're going to get traction
Kate Darling (1:09:07.040)
for your work. And so open sourcing can sometimes help, you know, get people's work out there,
Lex Fridman (1:09:12.640)
but ensure that they get attribution for it, for the work that they've done. So like,
Kate Darling (1:09:17.360)
I'm a fan of it in a lot of contexts. Obviously it's not like a one size fits all solution.
Lex Fridman (1:09:23.680)
So what I gleaned from your Twitter is, you're a mom. I saw a quote, a reference to baby bot.
Lex Fridman (1:09:32.560)
What have you learned about robotics and AI from raising a human baby bot?
Kate Darling (1:09:42.640)
Well, I think that my child has made it more apparent to me that the systems we're currently
Kate Darling (1:09:48.560)
creating aren't like human intelligence. Like there's not a lot to compare there.
Kate Darling (1:09:54.480)
It's just, he has learned and developed in such a different way than a lot of the AI systems
Kate Darling (1:09:59.920)
we're creating that that's not really interesting to me to compare. But what is interesting to me
Kate Darling (1:10:07.360)
is how these systems are going to shape the world that he grows up in. And so I'm like even more
Kate Darling (1:10:13.520)
concerned about kind of the societal effects of developing systems that, you know, rely on
Kate Darling (1:10:19.680)
massive amounts of data collection, for example. So is he going to be allowed to use like Facebook or
Lex Fridman (1:10:26.720)
Facebook? Facebook is over. Kids don't use that anymore. Snapchat. What do they use? Instagram?
Kate Darling (1:10:33.360)
Snapchat's over too. I don't know. I just heard that TikTok is over, which I've never even seen.
Lex Fridman (1:10:38.080)
So I don't know. No. We're old. We don't know. I need to, I'm going to start gaming and streaming
Kate Darling (1:10:44.560)
my, my gameplay. So what do you see as the future of personal robotics, social robotics, interaction
Kate Darling (1:10:52.960)
with other robots? Like what are you excited about if you were to sort of philosophize about what
Kate Darling (1:10:58.320)
might happen in the next five, 10 years that would be cool to see? Oh, I really hope that we get kind
Kate Darling (1:11:05.040)
of a home robot that makes it, that's a social robot and not just Alexa. Like it's, you know,
Kate Darling (1:11:12.160)
I really love the Anki products. I thought Jibo was, had some really great aspects. So I'm hoping
Kate Darling (1:11:19.520)
that a company cracks that. Me too. So Kate, it was a wonderful talking to you today. Likewise.
Kate Darling (1:11:26.800)
Thank you so much. It was fun. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Kate Darling.
Lex Fridman (1:11:32.080)
And thank you to our sponsors, ExpressVPN and Masterclass. Please consider supporting the
Kate Darling (1:11:37.520)
podcast by signing up to Masterclass at masterclass.com slash Lex and getting ExpressVPN at
Kate Darling (1:11:45.200)
expressvpn.com slash LexPod. If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe on YouTube, review it with
Kate Darling (1:11:52.160)
five stars on Apple podcast, support it on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter
Kate Darling (1:11:57.200)
at Lex Friedman. And now let me leave you with some tweets from Kate Darling. First tweet is
Kate Darling (1:12:05.440)
the pandemic has fundamentally changed who I am. I now drink the leftover milk in the bottom of
Kate Darling (1:12:11.920)
the cereal bowl. Second tweet is I came on here to complain that I had a really bad day and saw that
Kate Darling (1:12:19.600)
a bunch of you are hurting too. Love to everyone. Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next
Kate Darling (1:12:26.320)
time.
Kate Darling (20:02.320)
is that if you are the type of person who has abusive tendencies or needs to get some sort of
Kate Darling (20:08.560)
like behavior like that out, needs an outlet for it, that it's great to have a robot that you can
Kate Darling (20:14.640)
scream at so that you're not screaming at a person. And we just don't know whether that's true,
Kate Darling (20:19.760)
whether it's an outlet for people or whether it just kind of, as my friend once said,
Lex Fridman (20:23.520)
trains their cruelty muscles and makes them more cruel in other situations.
Kate Darling (20:26.880)
Oh boy. Yeah. And that expands to other topics, which I, I don't know, you know, there's a,
Kate Darling (20:36.320)
there's a topic of sex, which is weird one that I tend to avoid it from robotics perspective.
Lex Fridman (20:42.960)
And most of the general public doesn't, they talk about sex robots and so on. Is that an area you've
Kate Darling (20:50.080)
touched at all research wise? Like the way, cause that's what people imagine sort of any kind of
Kate Darling (20:57.920)
interaction between human and robot that shows any kind of compassion. They immediately think
Kate Darling (21:04.160)
from a product perspective in the near term is sort of expansion of what pornography is and all
Kate Darling (21:10.640)
that kind of stuff. Yeah. Do researchers touch this? Well that's kind of you to like characterize
Kate Darling (21:16.000)
it as though there's thinking rationally about product. I feel like sex robots are just such a
Kate Darling (21:20.880)
like titillating news hook for people that they become like the story. And it's really hard to
Kate Darling (21:27.760)
not get fatigued by it when you're in the space because you tell someone you do human robot
Kate Darling (21:32.480)
interaction. Of course, the first thing they want to talk about is sex robots. Yeah, it happens a
Kate Darling (21:37.040)
lot. And it's, it's unfortunate that I'm so fatigued by it because I do think that there
Kate Darling (21:42.320)
are some interesting questions that become salient when you talk about, you know, sex with robots.
Kate Darling (21:48.880)
See what I think would happen when people get sex robots, like if it's some guys, okay, guys get
Kate Darling (21:54.240)
female sex robots. What I think there's an opportunity for is an actual, like, like they'll
Kate Darling (22:03.360)
actually interact. What I'm trying to say, they won't outside of the sex would be the most
Kate Darling (22:09.440)
fulfilling part. Like the interaction, it's like the folks who there's movies and this, right,
Kate Darling (22:15.120)
who pray, pay a prostitute and then end up just talking to her the whole time. So I feel like
Kate Darling (22:21.280)
there's an opportunity. It's like most guys and people in general joke about this, the sex act,
Lex Fridman (22:27.360)
but really people are just lonely inside and they're looking for connection. Many of them.
Lex Fridman (22:32.400)
And it'd be unfortunate if that connection is established through the sex industry. I feel like
Kate Darling (22:40.880)
it should go into the front door of like, people are lonely and they want a connection.
Kate Darling (22:46.480)
Well, I also feel like we should kind of de, you know, de stigmatize the sex industry because,
Kate Darling (22:54.000)
you know, even prostitution, like there are prostitutes that specialize in disabled people
Kate Darling (22:59.440)
who don't have the same kind of opportunities to explore their sexuality. So it's, I feel like we
Kate Darling (23:07.920)
should like de stigmatize all of that generally. But yeah, that connection and that loneliness is
Kate Darling (23:13.200)
an interesting topic that you bring up because while people are constantly worried about robots
Kate Darling (23:19.360)
replacing humans and oh, if people get sex robots and the sex is really good, then they won't want
Kate Darling (23:23.840)
their, you know, partner or whatever. But we rarely talk about robots actually filling a hole where
Kate Darling (23:29.680)
there's nothing and what benefit that can provide to people. Yeah, I think that's an exciting,
Kate Darling (23:37.120)
there's a whole giant, there's a giant hole that's unfillable by humans. It's asking too much of
Kate Darling (23:43.120)
your, of people, your friends and people you're in a relationship with in your family to fill that
Kate Darling (23:47.280)
hole. There's, because, you know, it's exploring the full, like, you know, exploring the full
Kate Darling (23:54.640)
complexity and richness of who you are. Like who are you really? Like people, your family doesn't
Kate Darling (24:02.560)
have enough patience to really sit there and listen to who are you really. And I feel like
Kate Darling (24:06.800)
there's an opportunity to really make that connection with robots. I just feel like we're
Kate Darling (24:11.760)
complex as humans and we're capable of lots of different types of relationships. So whether that's,
Kate Darling (24:18.720)
you know, with family members, with friends, with our pets, or with robots, I feel like
Kate Darling (24:23.360)
there's space for all of that and all of that can provide value in a different way.
Kate Darling (24:29.040)
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm jumping around. Currently most of my work is in autonomous vehicles.
Lex Fridman (24:35.520)
So the most popular topic among the general public is the trolley problem. So most, most,
Lex Fridman (24:45.760)
most roboticists kind of hate this question, but what do you think of this thought experiment?
Lex Fridman (24:52.720)
What do you think we can learn from it outside of the silliness of
Kate Darling (24:56.000)
the actual application of it to the autonomous vehicle? I think it's still an interesting
Kate Darling (25:00.320)
ethical question. And that in itself, just like much of the interaction with robots
Lex Fridman (25:06.880)
has something to teach us. But from your perspective, do you think there's anything there?
Kate Darling (25:10.960)
Well, I think you're right that it does have something to teach us because,
Lex Fridman (25:14.320)
but I think what people are forgetting in all of these conversations is the origins of the trolley
Kate Darling (25:19.840)
problem and what it was meant to show us, which is that there is no right answer. And that sometimes
Kate Darling (25:25.600)
our moral intuition that comes to us instinctively is not actually what we should follow if we care
Kate Darling (25:34.240)
about creating systematic rules that apply to everyone. So I think that as a philosophical
Kate Darling (25:40.800)
concept, it could teach us at least that, but that's not how people are using it right now.
Kate Darling (25:48.160)
These are friends of mine and I love them dearly and their project adds a lot of value. But if
Kate Darling (25:54.000)
we're viewing the moral machine project as what we can learn from the trolley problems, the moral
Kate Darling (25:59.680)
machine is, I'm sure you're familiar, it's this website that you can go to and it gives you
Kate Darling (26:04.720)
different scenarios like, oh, you're in a car, you can decide to run over these two people or
Kate Darling (26:10.640)
this child. What do you choose? Do you choose the homeless person? Do you choose the person who's
Kate Darling (26:15.280)
jaywalking? And so it pits these like moral choices against each other and then tries to
Kate Darling (26:21.520)
crowdsource the quote unquote correct answer, which is really interesting and I think valuable data,
Lex Fridman (26:29.040)
but I don't think that's what we should base our rules in autonomous vehicles on because
Kate Darling (26:34.160)
it is exactly what the trolley problem is trying to show, which is your first instinct might not
Kate Darling (26:39.840)
be the correct one if you look at rules that then have to apply to everyone and everything.
Lex Fridman (26:45.680)
So how do we encode these ethical choices in interaction with robots? For example,
Lex Fridman (26:50.800)
autonomous vehicles, there is a serious ethical question of do I protect myself?
Kate Darling (26:58.960)
Does my life have higher priority than the life of another human being? Because that changes
Kate Darling (27:05.280)
certain control decisions that you make. So if your life matters more than other human beings,
Kate Darling (27:11.600)
then you'd be more likely to swerve out of your current lane. So currently automated emergency
Kate Darling (27:16.960)
braking systems that just brake, they don't ever swerve. So swerving into oncoming traffic or
Kate Darling (27:25.520)
no, just in a different lane can cause significant harm to others, but it's possible that it causes
Kate Darling (27:31.840)
less harm to you. So that's a difficult ethical question. Do you have a hope that
Kate Darling (27:41.680)
like the trolley problem is not supposed to have a right answer, right? Do you hope that
Kate Darling (27:46.480)
when we have robots at the table, we'll be able to discover the right answer for some of these
Kate Darling (27:50.960)
questions? Well, what's happening right now, I think, is this question that we're facing of
Lex Fridman (27:58.480)
what ethical rules should we be programming into the machines is revealing to us that
Kate Darling (28:03.600)
our ethical rules are much less programmable than we probably thought before. And so that's a really
Kate Darling (28:11.280)
valuable insight, I think, that these issues are very complicated and that in a lot of these cases,
Kate Darling (28:19.360)
it's you can't really make that call, like not even as a legislator. And so what's going to
Kate Darling (28:25.200)
happen in reality, I think, is that car manufacturers are just going to try and avoid
Kate Darling (28:31.440)
the problem and avoid liability in any way possible. Or like they're going to always protect
Lex Fridman (28:36.000)
the driver because who's going to buy a car if it's programmed to kill someone?
Kate Darling (28:40.320)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (28:41.520)
Kill you instead of someone else. So that's what's going to happen in reality.
Lex Fridman (28:47.040)
But what did you mean by like once we have robots at the table, like do you mean when they can help
Lex Fridman (28:51.680)
us figure out what to do?
Kate Darling (28:54.720)
No, I mean when robots are part of the ethical decisions. So no, no, no, not they help us. Well.
Lex Fridman (29:04.880)
Oh, you mean when it's like, should I run over a robot or a person?
Kate Darling (29:08.560)
Right. That kind of thing. So what, no, no, no. So when you, it's exactly what you said, which is
Kate Darling (29:15.760)
when you have to encode the ethics into an algorithm, you start to try to really understand
Lex Fridman (29:22.640)
what are the fundamentals of the decision making process you make to make certain decisions.
Kate Darling (29:28.000)
Should you, like capital punishment, should you take a person's life or not to punish them for
Lex Fridman (29:34.960)
a certain crime? Sort of, you can use, you can develop an algorithm to make that decision, right?
Lex Fridman (29:42.480)
And the hope is that the act of making that algorithm, however you make it, so there's a few
Kate Darling (29:49.680)
approaches, will help us actually get to the core of what is right and what is wrong under our current
Lex Fridman (29:59.600)
societal standards.
Lex Fridman (30:00.720)
But isn't that what's happening right now? And we're realizing that we don't have a consensus on
Lex Fridman (30:05.600)
what's right and wrong.
Lex Fridman (30:06.560)
You mean in politics in general?
Kate Darling (30:08.240)
Well, like when we're thinking about these trolley problems and autonomous vehicles and how to
Kate Darling (30:12.880)
program ethics into machines and how to, you know, make AI algorithms fair and equitable, we're
Kate Darling (30:22.320)
realizing that this is so complicated and it's complicated in part because there doesn't seem
Kate Darling (30:28.080)
to be a one right answer in any of these cases.
Lex Fridman (30:30.640)
Do you have a hope for, like one of the ideas of the moral machine is that crowdsourcing can help
Kate Darling (30:35.680)
us converge towards, like democracy can help us converge towards the right answer.
Lex Fridman (30:42.080)
Do you have a hope for crowdsourcing?
Kate Darling (30:43.920)
Well, yes and no. So I think that in general, you know, I have a legal background and
Kate Darling (30:49.520)
policymaking is often about trying to suss out, you know, what rules does this particular society
Kate Darling (30:55.440)
agree on and then trying to codify that. So the law makes these choices all the time and then
Kate Darling (31:00.000)
tries to adapt according to changing culture. But in the case of the moral machine project,
Kate Darling (31:06.080)
I don't think that people's choices on that website necessarily reflect what laws they would
Kate Darling (31:12.240)
want in place. I think you would have to ask them a series of different questions in order to get
Kate Darling (31:18.480)
at what their consensus is.
Kate Darling (31:20.720)
I agree, but that has to do more with the artificial nature of, I mean, they're showing
Kate Darling (31:25.680)
some cute icons on a screen. That's almost, so if you, for example, we do a lot of work in virtual
Kate Darling (31:32.800)
reality. And so if you put those same people into virtual reality where they have to make that
Kate Darling (31:38.720)
decision, their decision would be very different, I think.
Kate Darling (31:42.720)
I agree with that. That's one aspect. And the other aspect is it's a different question to ask
Kate Darling (31:47.840)
someone, would you run over the homeless person or the doctor in this scene? Or do you want cars to
Lex Fridman (31:55.360)
always run over the homeless people?
Kate Darling (31:57.120)
I think, yeah. So let's talk about anthropomorphism. To me, anthropomorphism, if I can
Kate Darling (32:04.320)
pronounce it correctly, is one of the most fascinating phenomena from like both the
Kate Darling (32:09.760)
engineering perspective and the psychology perspective, machine learning perspective,
Lex Fridman (32:14.480)
and robotics in general. Can you step back and define anthropomorphism, how you see it in
Lex Fridman (32:23.280)
general terms in your work?
Kate Darling (32:25.360)
Sure. So anthropomorphism is this tendency that we have to project human like traits and
Kate Darling (32:32.160)
behaviors and qualities onto nonhumans. And we often see it with animals, like we'll project
Kate Darling (32:38.800)
emotions on animals that may or may not actually be there. We often see that we're trying to
Kate Darling (32:43.760)
interpret things according to our own behavior when we get it wrong. But we do it with more
Kate Darling (32:49.120)
than just animals. We do it with objects, you know, teddy bears. We see, you know, faces in
Kate Darling (32:53.680)
the headlights of cars. And we do it with robots very, very extremely.
Kate Darling (32:59.200)
You think that can be engineered? Can that be used to enrich an interaction between an AI
Lex Fridman (33:05.200)
system and the human?
Lex Fridman (33:07.120)
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Lex Fridman (33:08.480)
And do you see it being used that way often? Like, I don't, I haven't seen, whether it's
Kate Darling (33:17.600)
Alexa or any of the smart speaker systems, often trying to optimize for the anthropomorphization.
Lex Fridman (33:26.560)
You said you haven't seen?
Kate Darling (33:27.920)
I haven't seen. They keep moving away from that. I think they're afraid of that.
Kate Darling (33:32.400)
They actually, so I only recently found out, but did you know that Amazon has like a whole
Lex Fridman (33:38.080)
team of people who are just there to work on Alexa's personality?
Lex Fridman (33:44.480)
So I know that depends on what you mean by personality. I didn't know that exact thing.
Lex Fridman (33:50.480)
But I do know that how the voice is perceived is worked on a lot, whether if it's a pleasant
Kate Darling (33:59.920)
feeling about the voice, but that has to do more with the texture of the sound and the
Lex Fridman (34:04.080)
audio and so on. But personality is more like...
Kate Darling (34:08.640)
It's like, what's her favorite beer when you ask her? And the personality team is different
Kate Darling (34:13.120)
for every country too. Like there's a different personality for German Alexa than there is
Kate Darling (34:17.520)
for American Alexa. That said, I think it's very difficult to, you know, use the, really,
Kate Darling (34:26.800)
really harness the anthropomorphism with these voice assistants because the voice interface
Kate Darling (34:34.000)
is still very primitive. And I think that in order to get people to really suspend their
Kate Darling (34:40.000)
disbelief and treat a robot like it's alive, less is sometimes more. You want them to project
Kate Darling (34:47.520)
onto the robot and you want the robot to not disappoint their expectations for how it's
Kate Darling (34:51.040)
going to answer or behave in order for them to have this kind of illusion. And with Alexa,
Kate Darling (34:57.920)
I don't think we're there yet, or Siri, that they're just not good at that. But if you
Kate Darling (35:03.280)
look at some of the more animal like robots, like the baby seal that they use with the
Kate Darling (35:08.720)
dementia patients, it's a much more simple design. It doesn't try to talk to you. It
Kate Darling (35:12.960)
can't disappoint you in that way. It just makes little movements and sounds and people
Kate Darling (35:17.760)
stroke it and it responds to their touch. And that is like a very effective way to harness
Lex Fridman (35:23.280)
people's tendency to kind of treat the robot like a living thing.
Kate Darling (35:28.880)
Yeah. So you bring up some interesting ideas in your paper chapter, I guess,
Kate Darling (35:35.520)
Anthropomorphic Framing Human Robot Interaction that I read the last time we scheduled this.
Kate Darling (35:40.400)
Oh my God, that was a long time ago.
Lex Fridman (35:42.160)
Yeah. What are some good and bad cases of anthropomorphism in your perspective?
Lex Fridman (35:49.280)
Like when is the good ones and bad?
Kate Darling (35:52.000)
Well, I should start by saying that, you know, while design can really enhance the
Kate Darling (35:56.400)
anthropomorphism, it doesn't take a lot to get people to treat a robot like it's alive. Like
Kate Darling (36:01.360)
people will, over 85% of Roombas have a name, which I'm, I don't know the numbers for your
Kate Darling (36:07.360)
regular type of vacuum cleaner, but they're not that high, right? So people will feel bad for the
Kate Darling (36:12.160)
Roomba when it gets stuck, they'll send it in for repair and want to get the same one back. And
Kate Darling (36:15.840)
that's, that one is not even designed to like make you do that. So I think that some of the cases
Kate Darling (36:23.280)
where it's maybe a little bit concerning that anthropomorphism is happening is when you have
Kate Darling (36:28.560)
something that's supposed to function like a tool and people are using it in the wrong way.
Lex Fridman (36:32.000)
And one of the concerns is military robots where, so gosh, 2000, like early 2000s, which is a long
Kate Darling (36:44.160)
time ago, iRobot, the Roomba company made this robot called the Pacbot that was deployed in Iraq
Lex Fridman (36:51.840)
and Afghanistan with the bomb disposal units that were there. And the soldiers became very emotionally
Kate Darling (36:59.040)
attached to the robots. And that's fine until a soldier risks his life to save a robot, which
Kate Darling (37:08.800)
you really don't want. But they were treating them like pets. Like they would name them,
Kate Darling (37:12.560)
they would give them funerals with gun salutes, they would get really upset and traumatized when
Kate Darling (37:17.280)
the robot got broken. So in situations where you want a robot to be a tool, in particular,
Kate Darling (37:23.760)
when it's supposed to like do a dangerous job that you don't want a person doing,
Kate Darling (37:26.960)
it can be hard when people get emotionally attached to it. That's maybe something that
Kate Darling (37:32.960)
you would want to discourage. Another case for concern is maybe when companies try to
Kate Darling (37:39.840)
leverage the emotional attachment to exploit people. So if it's something that's not in the
Kate Darling (37:45.520)
consumer's interest, trying to like sell them products or services or exploit an emotional
Kate Darling (37:51.200)
connection to keep them paying for a cloud service for a social robot or something like that might be,
Kate Darling (37:57.200)
I think that's a little bit concerning as well.
Kate Darling (37:59.680)
Yeah, the emotional manipulation, which probably happens behind the scenes now with some like
Lex Fridman (38:04.720)
social networks and so on, but making it more explicit. What's your favorite robot?
Lex Fridman (38:12.000)
Fictional or real?
Kate Darling (38:13.280)
No, real. Real robot, which you have felt a connection with or not like, not anthropomorphic
Kate Darling (38:23.360)
connection, but I mean like you sit back and say, damn, this is an impressive system.
Kate Darling (38:32.080)
Wow. So two different robots. So the, the PLEO baby dinosaur robot that is no longer sold that
Kate Darling (38:38.960)
came out in 2007, that one I was very impressed with. It was, but, but from an anthropomorphic
Kate Darling (38:45.440)
perspective, I was impressed with how much I bonded with it, how much I like wanted to believe
Lex Fridman (38:50.080)
that it had this inner life.
Lex Fridman (38:51.760)
Can you describe PLEO, can you describe what it is? How big is it? What can it actually do?
Kate Darling (38:58.160)
Yeah. PLEO is about the size of a small cat. It had a lot of like motors that gave it this kind
Kate Darling (39:06.400)
of lifelike movement. It had things like touch sensors and an infrared camera. So it had all
Kate Darling (39:11.440)
these like cool little technical features, even though it was a toy. And the thing that really
Kate Darling (39:18.800)
struck me about it was that it, it could mimic pain and distress really well. So if you held
Kate Darling (39:24.160)
it up by the tail, it had a tilt sensor that, you know, told it what direction it was facing
Lex Fridman (39:28.240)
and it would start to squirm and cry out. If you hit it too hard, it would start to cry.
Lex Fridman (39:34.080)
So it was very impressive in design.
Lex Fridman (39:38.240)
And what's the second robot that you were, you said there might've been two that you liked.
Lex Fridman (39:43.680)
Yeah. So the Boston Dynamics robots are just impressive feats of engineering.
Lex Fridman (39:49.760)
Have you met them in person?
Kate Darling (39:51.280)
Yeah. I recently got a chance to go visit and I, you know, I was always one of those people who
Kate Darling (39:55.280)
watched the videos and was like, this is super cool, but also it's a product video. Like,
Lex Fridman (39:59.920)
I don't know how many times that they had to shoot this to get it right.
Kate Darling (40:02.800)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (40:03.360)
But visiting them, I, you know, I'm pretty sure that I was very impressed. Let's put it that way.
Kate Darling (40:10.000)
Yeah. And in terms of the control, I think that was a transformational moment for me
Lex Fridman (40:15.520)
when I met Spot Mini in person.
Kate Darling (40:17.840)
Yeah.
Kate Darling (40:18.640)
Because, okay, maybe this is a psychology experiment, but I anthropomorphized the,
Lex Fridman (40:26.160)
the crap out of it. So I immediately, it was like my best friend, right?
Kate Darling (40:30.880)
I think it's really hard for anyone to watch Spot move and not feel like it has agency.
Kate Darling (40:35.760)
Yeah. This movement, especially the arm on Spot Mini really obviously looks like a head.
Lex Fridman (40:44.160)
Yeah.
Kate Darling (40:44.400)
That they say, no, wouldn't mean it that way, but it obviously, it looks exactly like that.
Lex Fridman (40:51.440)
And so it's almost impossible to not think of it as a, almost like the baby dinosaur,
Lex Fridman (40:57.120)
but slightly larger. And this movement of the, of course, the intelligence is,
Kate Darling (41:02.560)
their whole idea is that it's not supposed to be intelligent. It's a platform on which you build
Kate Darling (41:08.480)
higher intelligence. It's actually really, really dumb. It's just a basic movement platform.
Kate Darling (41:13.520)
Yeah. But even dumb robots can, like, we can immediately respond to them in this visceral way.
Lex Fridman (41:19.920)
What are your thoughts about Sophia the robot? This kind of mix of some basic natural language
Lex Fridman (41:26.640)
processing and basically an art experiment.
Kate Darling (41:31.040)
Yeah. An art experiment is a good way to characterize it. I'm much less impressed
Lex Fridman (41:35.920)
with Sophia than I am with Boston Dynamics.
Kate Darling (41:37.840)
She said she likes you. She said she admires you.
Lex Fridman (41:40.720)
Yeah. She followed me on Twitter at some point. Yeah.
Kate Darling (41:44.160)
She tweets about how much she likes you.
Lex Fridman (41:45.680)
So what does that mean? I have to be nice or?
Kate Darling (41:48.320)
No, I don't know. I was emotionally manipulating you. No. How do you think of
Kate Darling (41:55.040)
that? I think of the whole thing that happened with Sophia is quite a large number of people
Kate Darling (42:01.360)
kind of immediately had a connection and thought that maybe we're far more advanced with robotics
Kate Darling (42:06.640)
than we are or actually didn't even think much. I was surprised how little people cared
Kate Darling (42:13.680)
that they kind of assumed that, well, of course AI can do this.
Lex Fridman (42:19.200)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (42:19.440)
And then if they assume that, I felt they should be more impressed.
Kate Darling (42:26.960)
Well, people really overestimate where we are. And so when something, I don't even think Sophia
Kate Darling (42:33.200)
was very impressive or is very impressive. I think she's kind of a puppet, to be honest. But
Kate Darling (42:38.400)
yeah, I think people are a little bit influenced by science fiction and pop culture to
Kate Darling (42:43.120)
think that we should be further along than we are.
Lex Fridman (42:45.200)
So what's your favorite robots in movies and fiction?
Kate Darling (42:48.400)
WALLI.
Kate Darling (42:49.680)
WALLI. What do you like about WALLI? The humor, the cuteness, the perception control systems
Lex Fridman (42:58.400)
operating on WALLI that makes it all work? Just in general?
Kate Darling (43:02.960)
The design of WALLI the robot, I think that animators figured out, starting in the 1940s,
Lex Fridman (43:10.880)
how to create characters that don't look real, but look like something that's even better than real,
Kate Darling (43:19.040)
that we really respond to and think is really cute. They figured out how to make them move
Lex Fridman (43:23.120)
and look in the right way. And WALLI is just such a great example of that.
Kate Darling (43:27.600)
You think eyes, big eyes or big something that's kind of eyeish. So it's always playing on some
Lex Fridman (43:35.040)
aspect of the human face, right?
Kate Darling (43:36.960)
Often. Yeah. So big eyes. Well, I think one of the first animations to really play with this was
Kate Darling (43:44.080)
Bambi. And they weren't originally going to do that. They were originally trying to make the
Kate Darling (43:48.720)
deer look as lifelike as possible. They brought deer into the studio and had a little zoo there
Lex Fridman (43:53.280)
so that the animators could work with them. And then at some point they were like,
Kate Darling (43:57.520)
if we make really big eyes and a small nose and big cheeks, kind of more like a baby face,
Kate Darling (44:02.640)
then people like it even better than if it looks real. Do you think the future of things like
Kate Darling (44:10.800)
Alexa in the home has possibility to take advantage of that, to build on that, to create
Kate Darling (44:18.960)
these systems that are better than real, that create a close human connection? I can pretty
Kate Darling (44:25.680)
much guarantee you without having any knowledge that those companies are going to make these
Kate Darling (44:32.080)
things. And companies are working on that design behind the scenes. I'm pretty sure.
Lex Fridman (44:37.440)
I totally disagree with you.
Lex Fridman (44:38.960)
Really?
Lex Fridman (44:39.440)
So that's what I'm interested in. I'd like to build such a company. I know
Lex Fridman (44:43.200)
a lot of those folks and they're afraid of that because how do you make money off of it?
Kate Darling (44:49.120)
Well, but even just making Alexa look a little bit more interesting than just a cylinder
Kate Darling (44:54.560)
would do so much.
Kate Darling (44:55.680)
It's an interesting thought, but I don't think people are from Amazon perspective are looking
Kate Darling (45:02.240)
for that kind of connection. They want you to be addicted to the services provided by Alexa,
Kate Darling (45:08.320)
not to the device. So the device itself, it's felt that you can lose a lot because if you create a
Kate Darling (45:17.440)
connection and then it creates more opportunity for frustration for negative stuff than it does
Lex Fridman (45:26.800)
for positive stuff is I think the way they think about it.
Kate Darling (45:29.920)
That's interesting. Like I agree that it's very difficult to get right and you have to get it
Lex Fridman (45:35.600)
exactly right. Otherwise you wind up with Microsoft's Clippy.
Lex Fridman (45:40.000)
Okay, easy now. What's your problem with Clippy?
Lex Fridman (45:43.360)
You like Clippy? Is Clippy your friend?
Kate Darling (45:45.040)
Yeah, I like Clippy. I was just, I just talked to, we just had this argument and they said
Kate Darling (45:51.680)
Microsoft's CTO and they said, he said he's not bringing Clippy back. They're not bringing
Kate Darling (45:57.520)
Clippy back and that's very disappointing. I think it was Clippy was the greatest assistance
Kate Darling (46:05.600)
we've ever built. It was a horrible attempt, of course, but it's the best we've ever done
Kate Darling (46:10.800)
because it was a real attempt to have like a actual personality. I mean, it was obviously
Kate Darling (46:17.760)
technology was way not there at the time of being able to be a recommender system for assisting you
Kate Darling (46:25.040)
in anything and typing in Word or any kind of other application, but still it was an attempt
Lex Fridman (46:30.480)
of personality that was legitimate, which I thought was brave.
Kate Darling (46:34.880)
Yes, yes. Okay. You know, you've convinced me I'll be slightly less hard on Clippy.
Lex Fridman (46:39.840)
And I know I have like an army of people behind me who also miss Clippy.
Lex Fridman (46:43.680)
Really? I want to meet these people. Who are these people?
Kate Darling (46:47.200)
It's the people who like to hate stuff when it's there and miss it when it's gone.
Lex Fridman (46:55.280)
So everyone.
Lex Fridman (46:56.240)
It's everyone. Exactly. All right. So Enki and Jibo, the two companies,
Kate Darling (47:04.880)
the two amazing companies, the social robotics companies that have recently been closed down.
Lex Fridman (47:10.080)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (47:12.160)
Why do you think it's so hard to create a personal robotics company? So making a business
Kate Darling (47:17.840)
out of essentially something that people would anthropomorphize, have a deep connection with.
Lex Fridman (47:23.840)
Why is it so hard to make it work? Is the business case not there or what is it?
Kate Darling (47:28.880)
I think it's a number of different things. I don't think it's going to be this way forever.
Kate Darling (47:35.600)
I think at this current point in time, it takes so much work to build something that only barely
Kate Darling (47:43.360)
meets people's minimal expectations because of science fiction and pop culture giving people
Kate Darling (47:49.680)
this idea that we should be further than we already are. Like when people think about a robot
Kate Darling (47:53.920)
assistant in the home, they think about Rosie from the Jetsons or something like that. And
Kate Darling (48:00.000)
Enki and Jibo did such a beautiful job with the design and getting that interaction just right.
Lex Fridman (48:06.240)
But I think people just wanted more. They wanted more functionality. I think you're also right that
Kate Darling (48:11.440)
the business case isn't really there because there hasn't been a killer application that's
Kate Darling (48:17.280)
useful enough to get people to adopt the technology in great numbers. I think what we did see from the
Kate Darling (48:23.440)
people who did get Jibo is a lot of them became very emotionally attached to it. But that's not,
Lex Fridman (48:31.040)
I mean, it's kind of like the Palm Pilot back in the day. Most people are like, why do I need this?
Lex Fridman (48:35.040)
Why would I? They don't see how they would benefit from it until they have it or some
Kate Darling (48:40.160)
other company comes in and makes it a little better. Yeah. Like how far away are we, do you
Kate Darling (48:45.760)
think? How hard is this problem? It's a good question. And I think it has a lot to do with
Kate Darling (48:50.320)
people's expectations and those keep shifting depending on what science fiction that is popular.
Lex Fridman (48:56.160)
But also it's two things. It's people's expectation and people's need for an emotional
Kate Darling (49:01.840)
connection. Yeah. And I believe the need is pretty high. Yes. But I don't think we're aware of it.
Kate Darling (49:10.080)
That's right. There's like, I really think this is like the life as we know it. So we've just kind
Kate Darling (49:16.960)
of gotten used to it of really, I hate to be dark because I have close friends, but we've gotten
Kate Darling (49:24.640)
used to really never being close to anyone. Right. And we're deeply, I believe, okay, this is
Kate Darling (49:32.720)
hypothesis. I think we're deeply lonely, all of us, even those in deep fulfilling relationships.
Kate Darling (49:37.680)
In fact, what makes those relationship fulfilling, I think is that they at least tap into that deep
Kate Darling (49:43.120)
loneliness a little bit. But I feel like there's more opportunity to explore that, that doesn't
Kate Darling (49:49.040)
inter, doesn't interfere with the human relationships you have. It expands more on the,
Kate Darling (49:55.280)
that, yeah, the rich deep unexplored complexity that's all of us, weird apes. Okay.
Lex Fridman (50:02.560)
I think you're right. Do you think it's possible to fall in love with a robot?
Kate Darling (50:05.440)
Oh yeah, totally. Do you think it's possible to have a longterm committed monogamous relationship
Kate Darling (50:13.360)
with a robot? Well, yeah, there are lots of different types of longterm committed monogamous
Kate Darling (50:18.480)
relationships. I think monogamous implies like, you're not going to see other humans sexually or
Kate Darling (50:26.400)
like you basically on Facebook have to say, I'm in a relationship with this person, this robot.
Kate Darling (50:32.320)
I just don't like, again, I think this is comparing robots to humans when I would rather
Kate Darling (50:37.760)
compare them to pets. Like you get a robot, it fulfills this loneliness that you have
Kate Darling (50:46.640)
in maybe not the same way as a pet, maybe in a different way that is even supplemental in a
Kate Darling (50:52.400)
different way. But I'm not saying that people won't like do this, be like, oh, I want to marry
Kate Darling (50:58.640)
my robot or I want to have like a sexual relation, monogamous relationship with my robot. But I don't
Kate Darling (51:05.840)
think that that's the main use case for them. But you think that there's still a gap between
Kate Darling (51:11.520)
human and pet. So between a husband and pet, there's a different relationship. It's engineering.
Lex Fridman (51:24.480)
So that's a gap that can be closed through. I think it could be closed someday, but why
Kate Darling (51:30.160)
would we close that? Like, I think it's so boring to think about recreating things that we already
Kate Darling (51:34.880)
have when we could create something that's different. I know you're thinking about the
Kate Darling (51:43.040)
people who like don't have a husband and like, what could we give them? Yeah. But I guess what
Kate Darling (51:50.080)
I'm getting at is maybe not. So like the movie Her. Yeah. Right. So a better husband. Well,
Kate Darling (52:01.280)
maybe better in some ways. Like it's, I do think that robots are going to continue to be a different
Kate Darling (52:07.360)
type of relationship, even if we get them like very human looking or when, you know, the voice
Kate Darling (52:13.360)
interactions we have with them feel very like natural and human like, I think there's still
Kate Darling (52:18.320)
going to be differences. And there were in that movie too, like towards the end, it kind of goes
Kate Darling (52:22.480)
off the rails. But it's just a movie. So your intuition is that, because you kind of said
Kate Darling (52:30.000)
two things, right? So one is why would you want to basically replicate the husband? Yeah. Right.
Lex Fridman (52:39.120)
And the other is kind of implying that it's kind of hard to do. So like anytime you try,
Kate Darling (52:46.160)
you might build something very impressive, but it'll be different. I guess my question is about
Kate Darling (52:51.920)
human nature. It's like, how hard is it to satisfy that role of the husband? So we're moving any of
Kate Darling (53:01.200)
the sexual stuff aside is the, it's more like the mystery, the tension, the dance of relationships
Kate Darling (53:08.240)
you think with robots, that's difficult to build. What's your intuition? I think that, well, it also
Kate Darling (53:16.720)
depends on are we talking about robots now in 50 years in like indefinite amount of time. I'm
Kate Darling (53:22.960)
thinking like five or 10 years. Five or 10 years. I think that robots at best will be like, it's
Kate Darling (53:29.920)
more similar to the relationship we have with our pets than relationship that we have with other
Kate Darling (53:33.920)
people. I got it. So what do you think it takes to build a system that exhibits greater and greater
Kate Darling (53:41.520)
levels of intelligence? Like it impresses us with this intelligence. Arumba, so you talk about
Kate Darling (53:47.440)
anthropomorphization that doesn't, I think intelligence is not required. In fact, intelligence
Kate Darling (53:52.960)
probably gets in the way sometimes, like you mentioned. But what do you think it takes to
Kate Darling (54:00.640)
create a system where we sense that it has a human level intelligence? So something that,
Kate Darling (54:07.360)
probably something conversational, human level intelligence. How hard do you think that problem
Kate Darling (54:11.920)
is? It'd be interesting to sort of hear your perspective, not just purely, so I talk to a lot
Kate Darling (54:18.320)
of people, how hard is the conversational agents? How hard is it to pass the torrent test? But my
Kate Darling (54:24.640)
sense is it's easier than just solving, it's easier than solving the pure natural language
Kate Darling (54:33.440)
processing problem. Because I feel like you can cheat. Yeah. So how hard is it to pass the torrent
Kate Darling (54:41.760)
test in your view? Well, I think again, it's all about expectation management. If you set up
Kate Darling (54:47.120)
people's expectations to think that they're communicating with, what was it, a 13 year old
Kate Darling (54:52.160)
boy from the Ukraine? Yeah, that's right. Then they're not going to expect perfect English,
Kate Darling (54:56.160)
they're not going to expect perfect, you know, understanding of concepts or even like being on
Kate Darling (55:00.640)
the same wavelength in terms of like conversation flow. So it's much easier to pass in that case.
Lex Fridman (55:08.560)
Do you think, you kind of alluded this too with audio, do you think it needs to have a body?
Kate Darling (55:14.960)
I think that we definitely have, so we treat physical things with more social agency,
Kate Darling (55:21.440)
because we're very physical creatures. I think a body can be useful.
Lex Fridman (55:29.840)
Does it get in the way? Is there a negative aspects like...
Kate Darling (55:33.600)
Yeah, there can be. So if you're trying to create a body that's too similar to something that people
Kate Darling (55:38.320)
are familiar with, like I have this robot cat at home that has robots. I have a robot cat at home
Kate Darling (55:44.320)
that has roommates. And it's very disturbing to watch because I'm constantly assuming that it's
Kate Darling (55:50.960)
going to move like a real cat and it doesn't because it's like a $100 piece of technology.
Lex Fridman (55:57.040)
So it's very like disappointing and it's very hard to treat it like it's alive. So you can get a lot
Kate Darling (56:04.800)
wrong with the body too, but you can also use tricks, same as, you know, the expectation
Kate Darling (56:09.680)
management of the 13 year old boy from the Ukraine. If you pick an animal that people
Kate Darling (56:13.360)
aren't intimately familiar with, like the baby dinosaur, like the baby seal that people have
Kate Darling (56:17.680)
never actually held in their arms, you can get away with much more because they don't have these
Kate Darling (56:22.400)
preformed expectations. Yeah, I remember you thinking of a Ted talk or something that clicked
Kate Darling (56:27.280)
for me that nobody actually knows what a dinosaur looks like. So you can actually get away with a
Kate Darling (56:34.400)
lot more. That was great. So what do you think about consciousness and mortality
Kate Darling (56:46.400)
being displayed in a robot? So not actually having consciousness, but having these kind
Kate Darling (56:55.760)
of human elements that are much more than just the interaction, much more than just,
Kate Darling (57:01.600)
like you mentioned with a dinosaur moving kind of in an interesting ways, but really being worried
Kate Darling (57:07.440)
about its own death and really acting as if it's aware and self aware and identity. Have you seen
Lex Fridman (57:16.080)
that done in robotics? What do you think about doing that? Is that a powerful good thing?
Kate Darling (57:24.560)
Well, I think it can be a design tool that you can use for different purposes. So I can't say
Kate Darling (57:29.600)
whether it's inherently good or bad, but I do think it can be a powerful tool. The fact that the
Kate Darling (57:36.480)
pleo mimics distress when you quote unquote hurt it is a really powerful tool to get people to
Kate Darling (57:46.720)
engage with it in a certain way. I had a research partner that I did some of the empathy work with
Kate Darling (57:52.560)
named Palash Nandi and he had built a robot for himself that had like a lifespan and that would
Kate Darling (57:57.760)
stop working after a certain amount of time just because he was interested in whether he himself
Kate Darling (58:02.800)
would treat it differently. And we know from Tamagotchis, those little games that we used to
Kate Darling (58:10.320)
have that were extremely primitive, that people respond to this idea of mortality and you can get
Kate Darling (58:17.600)
people to do a lot with little design tricks like that. Now, whether it's a good thing depends on
Lex Fridman (58:21.920)
what you're trying to get them to do. Have a deeper relationship, have a deeper connection,
Kate Darling (58:27.760)
sign a relationship. If it's for their own benefit, that sounds great. Okay. You could do that for a
Kate Darling (58:34.800)
lot of other reasons. I see. So what kind of stuff are you worried about? So is it mostly about
Kate Darling (58:39.920)
manipulation of your emotions for like advertisement and so on, things like that? Yeah, or data
Kate Darling (58:44.880)
collection or, I mean, you could think of governments misusing this to extract information
Kate Darling (58:51.280)
from people. It's, you know, just like any other technological tool, it just raises a lot of
Kate Darling (58:57.200)
questions. If you look at Facebook, if you look at Twitter and social networks, there's a lot
Kate Darling (59:02.880)
of concern of data collection now. What's from the legal perspective or in general,
Lex Fridman (59:12.240)
how do we prevent the violation of sort of these companies crossing a line? It's a great area,
Lex Fridman (59:19.760)
but crossing a line, they shouldn't in terms of manipulating, like we're talking about and
Kate Darling (59:24.480)
manipulating our emotion, manipulating our behavior, using tactics that are not so savory.
Kate Darling (59:32.080)
Yeah. It's really difficult because we are starting to create technology that relies on
Kate Darling (59:38.960)
data collection to provide functionality. And there's not a lot of incentive,
Kate Darling (59:44.000)
even on the consumer side, to curb that because the other problem is that the harms aren't
Kate Darling (59:49.600)
tangible. They're not really apparent to a lot of people because they kind of trickle down on a
Kate Darling (59:55.040)
societal level. And then suddenly we're living in like 1984, which, you know, sounds extreme,
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