Robots Getting Social

for disappointment. No please. So a while back I was writing a video episode for Forward Thinking about whether robots are going to take our jobs? And if you haven't doing that video, yeah you should go watch it. It's on YouTube. It's a great, great episode. It is. It is. But we have a spoiler for that video. Yeah, there is a spoiler. Actually this We say this in the video pretty early on. It's not the end. Yes, they will. Robots will take our jobs, will take your job, They'll

take our jobs. They'll they'll take all the jobs. But in doing the research for the episode, I came across plenty of good reasons for thinking that some jobs are much much harder to automate than others. And one simple rubric for separating jobs into robot friendly and robot unfriendly is this is the job easily described in an explicit

list of instructions that can be executed over and over. So, in other words, could it be something like pick up blue box, open blue box, put orange sphere in blue box, close blue box. That's easily explained, and it would be something that you could program as a list of actions for a robot that has very simple image recognition software. It really just needs to know what a blue box looks like and what an orange sphere looks like, and

then you're pretty much good. Hard to touch those things that they don't shatter whatever, right, and it's it's just gonna do the same things over and over again. There aren't going to be a lot of changing external conditions, or if there are, they might not matter necessarily. Jobs like this are pretty easy to automate, and they they if if they have not already gone to machines or

computer programs or robots, they probably will soon. So a lot of examples of this might be jobs today, and like data entry or data processing or jobs like telemarketing. A lot of people think that these kind of jobs, because they're so repetitive and you can make clear lists of instructions, can pretty easily be done by machines. Other jobs are very robot unfriendly. They're harder to automate because they require things that are harder to predict, Like you

can't write a program that does unpredictable things. I mean, programs are pretty much by the definition of predicting. And we've talked about random number generators and how difficult it is to have a truly random number generator. Yeah. Yeah. If if you say to a robot, literally any person who exists in the world could walk through that door, how do you deal with that person going to go

like and just shut down? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, So these jobs are the one The hard to automate jobs are the ones that require creativity, strategizing, reacting to unpredictable circumstances and stuff like that. And there are some jobs I thought it was interesting that sound like they fit into the first category, but they actually fit better into the second well. And there are also some that sound like they would fit in the second but seem to fit

just fine the first like you mentioned telemarketing. Well, telemarketing involves having conversations with actual people, and you might think, oh, well a robot would have different would there be some unpredictability, But often in those cases there's a very specific script to follow, whether you're human or robot, and you have a very it's essentially kind of a it's a it's a very simple decision tree, right, You're trying to get the person on the line to say yes or or

no in some cases, and if as long as it continues, it can keep going down that pathway. And we've even seen some interesting clever uses of natural language recognition to create situations where a person is not entirely sure if the if they're actually speaking to a human being or a robot telemarketer. Yeah, and that might be some cases where even if it is really a human, they're they're like trying to get the human to behave like a robot.

So these kind of robo calls like that, that's prime territory for automation, especially also if it's low stakes, you know, because the people the bosses like aren't terrified about what's going to happen if the person being called has a bad experience. You know, it's just that I don't care, right, right, But let's take an example of something from our favorite movie,

Back to the Future Part two. Right, So, in the opposite category is stuff that seems like it might be easy to automate, but that actually it would probably be really hard to automate, And like robot servers in a restaurant. Yeah, so a robot server in a restaurant, what would it

have to do? It seems like you could basically come up with a simple list of instructions like take drink orders, bring drinks, take the food order, bring the food, check the happiness levels at the table, bring the check, uh, process payment, and then you're done. But actually being a server in a restaurant requires hundreds of constant little improvisations h plus more athletic nimbleness than any robot today is

even close to capable of. I mean, can you can you imagine with how clumsy robots are now, something that could like clean tables and move quickly back and forth between a kitchen and a table without running into people. Keep in mind also that most robots are very very good at navigating static environments. So in other words, you program in the knowledge of what the environment is, you know how it is, and give the robot some ability

to sense its environment. It can then navigate around obstacles. But in a place like a restaurant, you have a constantly shifting environment. You've got people getting up and leaving, You've got chairs that are moving. So you have a robot that has to have really good path finding technology to maneuver its way through a constantly shifting environment. That's really hard to do. Sure, but there's another factor that we haven't considered yet, which is, you know, in defensive servers,

we know that you guys are not robots. Yeah, there's other stuff that you're doing than just taking the orders and bringing the stuff exactly right. And I think this might actually be the biggest problem with the idea of a robot server, which is that servers need social intelligence good ones do. Yeah, well, this might be the biggest issue of all here, because a server in a restaurant

isn't just a food delivery machine. A good server makes people feel welcome, makes and feel comfortable, uses charm to like up sell drinks and specials and appetizers, can explain things about the restaurant and answer questions about the menu, explain things about the food, describe what something tastes like, and then especially can sort of like calm complaints and help people get what they want, understand what the people want,

and make them feel happy. Like can you imagine, let's say you're out with your family and you know your great aunt she has a complaint about her chicken peccata. Can you imagine a robot server being able to make her feel happy and like make her feel like her complaint had been properly dealt with. I can't imagine anyone

making my grain on feel happy. Well well, but especially not the same kind of software that like answers your telephone call you call the insurance company, and like that thing is what's trying to like make you fear good. Or maybe it's the chatbot that only answers answers any any message with a question I'm not happy. Why do

you think you're not happy? The doctor? Yeah. So, in the context of robots taking our jobs, I think this also means that, in addition to creativity and improvisation, another type of job that will be safely human for a while, our jobs that have a strong demand for good social intelligence. So what does social intelligence mean, I mean, we we sort of gave an idea there, but how would we

define it? I would say one thing is that it means something along the lines of being able to read social cues, to perceive and understand emotional states, and to

intentionally manage and trigger targeted emotions in others. Right, In other words, in order that it has to be able to navigate social situations in a way that appears to be natural and does not make things worse, right, doesn't make someone feel awkward or embarrassed or ill at ease for any reason, whether because you are communicating with a and obviously artificial construct, which already for many of us, is uncomfortable. Right, Yeah, some of us We we in fact,

humans are pretty flexible creatures. We can adapt fairly quickly if we're willing to, sure, sure, And and some of us I mean, I suspect many people listening to this podcast, for example, probably find it charming that the novelty of that kind of interaction, although really like like after a while, you'd be like, I just want not burned chicken cottage, And some of us might actually prefer the interaction with a robot as opposed to a human being. That's true.

That's true. I have days where I'm not sure that I can do this list of things that we're talking about here that has grouped under social intenation. That's true. Well, but I mean we all have to practice our social intelligence skills all the time. Oh sure, yeah, no, this this is not something that we think. It's not something

even humans are always perfect at. Right now, there are plenty of times where you might be wrapped up in something that's going on in your life and you don't pick up on social cues that otherwise you would notice right away. Um, there are plenty of times. I mean I certainly have been guilty of that because I'm I'm always wrapped up in my own mind. Uh So, you know, when we're when we're aware, and when we are capable of seeing it, then that's one thing. But machines, they

don't have that innate ability at all. Right, you have to build that into machines. And now there is an entire emerging field of artificial intelligence that is dedicated to this problem, to the problem of helping machines understand human emotional states and manage them as best as possible, and sort of all the other things we think of as social intelligence, you know, impression management and and navigating complex social scenarios, not being annoying, you know, all these weird

things that they don't come naturally to machine. Right. And and you know, this is important not just for robots that are specifically designed to have social interactions, but robots that are just going to be around humans. You know, they're especially consumers, right because you know, people robot industry people are kind of used to having to program a

robot by typing code into a thing, you know. But but consumers, Yeah, and it kind of and it may be that the robots that you, as a consumer encounter, it may be that there's no direct interaction, but they still those robots still need to have that social intelligence to understand how to navigate through while being as unobtrusive

as possible. It's it's one of the many things that we have to take into consideration as robots take an increasingly more prominent role in our lives, along with the idea that the robots have to be design in such a way that they are not likely to cause harm to people through their normal operations. I mean, this is why, like we've talked about before, with big industrial robots. Typically there are huge safety rails all around them, because these are just machines that do the same set of actions

over and over again. And if you let a team full of preschoolers run around and you get a bunch of preschoolers welded to a metal wall, it's not good. You don't want that. So this we're we're talking about the social equivalent of that same thing. You don't You don't want the social equivalent of welding preschoolers to a wall. I'm not sure what that looks like, but I kinda I kind of want. Can someone please make us I'll take you to my next family reunion. You will be

able to experience it. No here, I think here's the the real world takeaway. We're gonna have robots in our homes. Yeah, I mean, that's that's pretty clear. We aready. Yeah, we already might have some roomba or something like that. More and more we're gonna be incorporating robotics and artificial intelligence into our home life. And it actually matters that these things are not causing emotional stress and annoyance, like making

our lives more unhappy by not knowing how to behave themselves. Yeah, it's a great point. And so there are entire research departments dedicated to this particular aspect of artificial intelligence, And in fact, there's one that's right down the road from it, right here at Georgia Tech. They've got a socially Intelligent Machines Lab. Yeah. We'll talk about one of the robots that they've worked on a little bit later, but I've had a chance to visit that particular lab. Yeah, it's

pretty darn cool. Guess. Don't mean to brag, but it's pretty neat. Even as even as a University of Georgia graduate, I can appreciate this particular Georgia Tech lab. Uh. So let's talk a little bit about what it means for robots to actually possess social intelligence. You touched on this, Joe, you were talking about the ability to pick up on

those social cues. So I would I would say that a socially intelligent machine has to be able to observe, analyze, and respond to humans accurately and within the proper context of the situation. So one example, and I've seen this as particularly examples in Japan, robots that are part of a hotel check in phase. You come in and you

you need to get your room. You would want that experience to be efficient and pleasant and probably not reliant on too many assumptions because that could get socially awkward depending upon what the nature of the hotel visit could be. Right, Sure, you wouldn't want, for example, you know, yeah, sir, that you have a lovely daughter, this is my wife. That could be awk kind of thing. Yes, that's that's one of the team or examples I could get, but yes,

but in context is really important. So let's say here's another example. I've actually, you know, you we've talked about. I'm not sure if we've talked about on this podcast, but there was a design for a flying drone that's meant to encourage joggers to run. It was to keep pace with joggers so that they have they feel like they have a running buddy. So you know, Now, that's a simple version of a robot. But imagine that we have a more advanced one that actually gives verbal encouragement

so that you can continue to run. Now, let's imagine that said robot veers off the path and into a memorial service at a cemetery. I think saying you can do it, get on up there, keep on moving at a memorial service that, Yeah, that might might not go over so well in the social situation. That is a memorial service. So when we're talking about social intelligence, we're talking about not just responding within the situation the robot

was intended for, but in broader situations. Sure. And I think also side note, this means that we need to teach all robots in the future about graveyards and funeral practices. I think why they're cool. Yeah, now I'm just seeing a bunch of robots listening to the Smiths, and the robots says, hey, baby, let's go hang out in the graveyard. I'm feeling better and better about the lyric I picked

for the beginning of this episode. Okay, So, in addition to understanding context, I think another crucial part of social intelligence is the ability to incorporate new information right because to right, Like, when we interact with people, we don't treat everybody the same way. I mean because they not everybody wants to be treated the same way you treat everybody else. You learn different ways to interact with different people based on what your relationship with them is, and

what their preferences are. Some people like very jokey interactions, some people are a little more business like. Yeah, there's entire fields dedicated to this as well. And it's interesting because the law of the earning behaviors I've seen have concentrated first on something a little simpler, because when we start getting into social interactions, that's a really complex and

and chaotic field. So, I mean, if you feel stress in social situations like social anxiety, a lot of the stress you're probably feeling is it has to do with the complexity of the social interactions that we have. In your fear that you're not meeting expectations, writing, unsure that the choices that you're making are are good choices. Right, yeah, now,

and that's a great point. Now, obviously the robots aren't going to be experiencing social anxiety, but they could end up that we know of, but they could certainly encourage it in other people if they the robots are not behaving in a way that the people were expecting. If they have said something and the robots seems to behave in a in a completely counterintuitive way, that could really

cause some issue. Oh yeah, well, I was just trying to communicate the complexity like, Yeah, us humans who are pretty good at social interaction have enough trouble with it that sometimes we can get anxiety about it. How So, a lot of the learning I've seen has been oriented to teaching a robot to perform a series of tasks

by performing them for the robot. Actually the one that there's one in Georgia Tech that does this where you could have a robot and it goes into observation mode and watches what you do, so you could pick up let's say that you've got, you know, kind of going back to that example of the sphere in the box. Let's say you've got a sphere on a desk in a box in the desk, and you open up the box, you pick up the sphere, you put the sphere in the box, you close the box. The robot will observe

this and then be able to repeat those steps. And even if if you've designed the robot properly, it might be able to ask questions like does it matter what how I pick up the this thing? Does that matter? Does it matter how I close the box doesn't? If it's four flaps, does it matter? Or which flaps are closed first? Is there a sequence? Right, if it were a cube that you were putting inside the box instead of his sphere, doesn't matter which side of the cube

is facing up perfect exactly right. So that's that's a building block, not to make it a weird, stupid pun, but that's a building block for the kinds of interactions where a robot starting to get into more complex situations, such as, this person is exhibiting behaviors that indicate that they are in a happy mood. So what is the appropriate response for this particular person when they are in a happy mood. Maybe it's playing that person's favorite upbeat

song because it's going to enhance that happy mood. And then that's what the robot ends up doing. Uh, these are you know, it's going to take these these basic steps before you get into something so complex. Is all right, Now we've got two people, two people the robot has

to interact with. If we're talking about a home robot, it might have profiles for each member of the family, for example, but it knows that person number two is not really into music, so playing songs aren't going to have that same emotional effect as for the first person, So it may have to build an entirely different set of interactions, just as we humans would kind of intuitively know from our interactions, like what you know works and doesn't work with the people in our lives. And you

start to realize, Wow, this is this is tough. This is a non trivial challenge in artificial intelligence. Absolutely. Let's talk about some of the teams and some of the robots that are that are taking these challenges head on. Sure. Yeah, so we've got a collection of different robots. These are These are mainly robots designed specifically to have social interactions with humans, and lots of we should say that lots

of computer programs and robots have some elements of this. Yeah. Um, I mean typically you're not going to be interacting with a robot that's just designed to be social, because what's the point other than a novelty. I mean, typically social intelligence is a feature of a robot that intended to do something else. Yeah, except for I guess therapy, but yeah, that's true. Therapy, butts would be a great example. Yeah.

I started to think that in some of these, some of these cases, we're heading toward a future like in future rama, where we have robots built to be hoboes or gamblers or whatever, and you think, why would anyone ever build a robot, But we are doing that. Yeah. So one robot that I actually watched this adorable video earlier today was this robot called Gibo. Had you heard about this one before? I have? I had seen pictures. I had not seen the video or read about Gibo,

but I had seen photos of Gibo before. Okay, so this is nothing super complex. Gibo is just supposed to be a social robot that's really designed as a kind of around the house helper. So imagine kind of an embodied serie in a way. It can track faces and recognize individual household members, take pictures, record voice reminders, um and do a lot of the stuff you might have

like apps on your smartphone. It can even do things like um like sort of like a similar feature as FaceTime, where you are in one place, one of your family members is somewhere else they are using their smartphone, and then Gibo just projects their face onto its face. So you have a a direction to look in and it's an actual physical thing. It's not something you're holding in your hand. You're looking down at Gibos quote unquote face, which is really kind of a round screen. Yeah, it's

this like it's this kind of friendly. I yeah. And it has a camera in it so it can it can quote unquote see that allows it to do the tracking. Now it doesn't like walk around the house or anything. It's sort of on a stationary base. But you could pick it up and move it around with you a little more than five pounds, I think. And the thing about this is nothing about this robot is like crazy mind blowing, you know. It's not like doing anything all

that weird. It's sort of a cuddly smartphone or cuddly series kind of thing. It you can talk to it, it'll talk back to you. It tries to, uh to be friendly and fit in around the house. Right. So it's supposed to kind of provide a lot of those features that you would find in a smartphone, but in a way that is more socially interactive. Sure. Sure that's and that's a little bit more relatable because your smartphone.

Although I think that we all have certain attributes that we give it, we don't really you know, name them. And and no, I'll never name that phone. It did phone phone. Uh so the next one we wanted to talk about is Pepper Okay, So Pepper is According to the company that makes it, Aldebron is the first humanoid robot designed to live with humans. And it's a conversational robot, and it's supposed to detect and react to emotions, kind

of like what we're talking about earlier. It can move about in its own and that's about all I can do is have conversations move around autonomously, so you don't have to direct it. Um and uh. It watches your facial expressions and your body language for social cues to your emotional state, and it pays attention to your word choice to try and get a handle on what kind

of mood you might be in. But so I guess essentially builds an index of words that you are more likely to use when you are angry, perhaps of the four letter variety. Huh yeah. But it is meant to have these social interactions and responses so that it has these these appropriate responses for whatever mood you happen to

be in. You know, I hate to sounds cynical, but I wonder to what extent, especially early versions of these kinds of robots are going to be again, like Sirie, not in what they do, but in how people treat them, because I can't remember the figure, Like some significant percentage of what people say to Siri is just profanity, Like they're just they think it's funny, you know, like what will series say if I tell her to do this rude thing? You know? My favorite was serie where can

I Hide a body? And the response was the nearest quarry is three? Like that is amazing. Yeah, well, you know, it's that novelty factor before you get really used to something and before something works extremely well. I think that we're gonna be treating these robots like like robots, and and you know, it's like playing a text based adventure and just like typing in weird things just to see

if the programmers thought, yeah, to put inside. And then we reach we'll reach the point where we'll get more and more movies and this is already the case, but we'll get more and more movies that give us an

emotional attachment to robots. So we'll see that more and more in the pop culture, and then gradually the technology will also reach that same level where we will start to have emotional attachments to these robots beyond the what you might call superficial ones that we have now, Like there are people who if they're if their roomba were to get damaged, would feel genuine emotional stress about that, not not just related to I need to replace my room, Bob,

but more like a member of the family has been hurt kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, And uh, I think that Jarvis from the Iron Man movies is a is a really good example of that. And there is a robot called Emo Spark that was kind of reminding us in the research of of that sort of Jarvis character. Yeah, so this isn't really a robot. Yeah, this is more

like an artificial intelligence that lives inside a cube. So because the cube is a cube, you could set it on a shelf and but it's a cube, open it up and let the cinambytes out. Cinnabonn have a little home or Simpson moment. Uh. But no, it is like Jarvison that it feels almost like it's a disembodied artificial intelligence that can inhabit a space within your home. So, so imagine you've got this cube. The cube is what contains the you know, it's the hardware that contains the

software that runs this Emo Spark robot. Uh. The Emo Spark robot can sense and interact with its environment through things like Bluetooth and WiFi. It also uses webcams and microphones and a connection to your smartphone. So this is what gives it that that window to the world, and it can recognize people. It can look at facial cues again to determine moods. It actually maps your face against eighty different points and tries to figure out your mood

based upon your expression. So, um, yeah, this is kind of an interesting design. If you want to take a look at the Emo Sparks, it does look like this kind of you know, uh, Cino byte meets tron cube thing, and uh yet you know, it's it's one of those that could potentially have this sort of natural interaction. You know. We we are seeing this kind of stuff in the homes already with things like like the Xbox and PlayStation

controllers that allow for voice control. So this is kind of the next step when where it goes beyond a passive system that's trying to recognize voice commands and then respond to them and have one that can actually have some form of communication back to the person who is issuing the commands. In the first place, so it becomes not just a list of commands and then responses, but in actual communication, a conversation that leads to whatever the

outcome the person hoped for, you know, was in mind. Yeah, uh, And I wanted to talk for a second going back to the stuff that they're working on at Georgia Tech in their Socially Intelligent Machines Lab, because they're they're kind of working on more the the building blocks of a more practical household robot and how people are going to be interacting with that, because part of creating and ease of interaction between consumers and robots is going to be

making robots that can learn new tasks with a minimal effort on behalf of the owner, right, right, So you don't have to sit at a terminal and type lines of code so it can open up a can of

cat food. Yeah. Yeah, And kind of the first half of that was what we were talking about earlier with with that unsupervised learning, wherein the robot is watching a human completed task, and you know, so even if it doesn't have any idea what the objects in this task are, you know, it doesn't know what if it needs to set a table. It doesn't know what cups and plates and food are, but it can be taught to know what those things look like where to place them in

a table setting. Um right, that that plates come first, food comes later. Otherwise people are unhappy, right right, Sure, exactly that kind of stuff. And when you break it down into those kind of steps, it becomes a relatively

easy thing for robot to learn how to do. But that's really only half of the equation, because the second half of of how humans naturally learn how to do stuff is being able to ask questions of their teacher and so and that that's what they're calling active learning in robot circles, and it's it's letting the robot ask questions of the human teacher while it's being presented with

this new task that it's watching. But that's a trickier question you might expect, like having a robot know how to ask the question to figure out what it needs to figure out. Right, it comes naturally to us, but it doesn't necessarily come naturally to machine. Right, So sure you have to you have to teach a robot when it's actually permissible to ask a question. And and furthermore, how to ask a good question, what does the question mean?

And then what does the answer mean? Like to to ask a good question, you have to understand what relevant information is to know that you need it right. Yeah, and and in fact, the examples the robot were specifically talking about is called Simon, the robot um But yeah, and I got to see Simon. That Simon was the one I was talking about. Specifically, I got to see Simon. Uh didn't get to see Simon really in in full

um in full robot mode. But I had a great conversation with Henrik Christensen, who is the head of robotics over a Georgia Tech and he was telling me all about this approach. And it's so interesting the idea that the robot can start to build this kind of of database, this index of information of the various things in its environment, the relationships between those things. Uh we which ones are

meant to be used in certain ways. It's it's learning in a similar way to the way humans learn, but it's but it's already got a huge step up and that it's got a basic grammar syntax vocabulary that it can follow. It doesn't have to learn the language. It just has to learn, you know, and has to be able to learn how to interact with its environment. And granted, even that is going to be limited based upon what

the programmers anticipate. Right there may be and in fact, there will be situations that are unique to every home that a programmer could not anticipate. And in in some cases, I'm sure there will be times where it will be very difficult to explain to the robot what something is for, or how it's used, or why it's there. It will be tricky and um, you know. The the question then is how do you address those those outliers, things that are outside the normal experience. How do you explain into

the robot how to use your furby? Why are you explaining that to your robot? I mean, other than the fact that that would be adorable. I just okay, I just answered my own question. No, now I'm thinking about it, and I totally want a robot. The robot in Ferbie are plotting against you. They're having conversations deep into the night.

But but so yeah, this this lab at Georgia Tech is laying some of this really cool groundwork, um for for you know, it sounds like a lot of these other robots are are kind of fun, but aside from the interesting fact that they existed there there may be moving towards something like being a therapy bot or being able to interact with the human uh, doing household chores and stuff like that. But I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah,

I mean all the pieces are kind of out there. Yeah, I think all these are are sort of making steps in the right direction. Though at the same time, as impressive as all this is, we recognize how big the gap is between this and like Rosie from the Jetsons. Yeah, yeah, the best socially intelligent robots today are nothing like a human. And another question is do we want them to be? Yes? Like if we so you say yes, yes, I don't know.

I I think the question might be, um, should socially intelligent robots be like well mannered humans or should they be a different kind of entity? No? No, I I personally, Uh, well, I don't think I would not define what a socially intelligent robot should or should not really be like as much as I joke about it. But well, no, I mean I know we're not like setting the rules. I guess what I'm asking is what do people what? What

do most people really want. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that I would be creeped out by something trying to interact with me as a human or as it thinks or was programmed to think that a human would would interact. You know. I think that it may be that we define like a subset of behaviors that we expect from and are comfortable with as far as a robotic entity is concerned. So things that you know, these are the kind of interactions that I think will be fine.

They're very straightforward. Uh, you know, outside of things like the robots that are meant for therapy or of of one nature or another, those obviously you need to have more of a kind of comforting approach. But for robots that we're having interactions with on a daily basis, Like if it's a robot that, for example, Uber has famously invested a lot of money in autonomous cars, you would want that interaction to be pretty smooth and probably pretty quiet.

If I know most people who have complained about Uber, it's that. Listen, when I get a when I get a newber car, I don't want you talking to me. I just want you to take me to the place where I wanted to go, and then I want to get out of the car, and then I want to be on my married little way. Um, don't remind you that you're a human. See, I don't have that particular interaction. I'll talk if they want to talk, but I don't want to initiate conversation because I figure this is someone

who interacts. I can hardly believe that about you, Jonathan. It's once in a while I'm able to be considerate of other human beings. But all right, but but this is a point, right that where where in this particular context where Uber would have a Thomas Cars, which are technically robots. I mean, that's essentially a robot. How do how what kind of social intelligence do those robots need in order to be able to uh do their their job and do so in a way that is the

most satisfying experience to the customer. Well, I've got an analogy for household robots and whether or not we should expect their social intelligence to be like that of humans or to be a different kind of thing. How about dogs? I mean, we love dogs, but you don't. There's the difference between a well behaved dog and an ill manner badly behaved dog. But a well mannered dog doesn't act like a human. It's just a different kind of vinity.

And I wonder if well mannered robots we would expect to be just a different kind of thing than humans. I think. I think it will also depend on the form factor, Like, if the robot is a humanoid robot, would we expect it to have more human like traits? Oh yeah? Oh man, a humanoid robot that acted more dog like, well not necessarily dog catlike would be pretty awful. But well, well, but no, no. I I was thinking

about that too, and I'm I'm not sure. I'm not sure how comfortable I would be giving a robot any orders in my house, Like I I don't know, It's it's a very basic thing that I'm not sure if I could, in good conscience say, hey, robot, go make me some toast. I've got this really important Facebook articles. Well, when you put bread in a toaster, do you ask the sister nicely to toast your bread or do you just push the button and walk away through that that

toaster is just a slave to your demands. I'm just saying, like, but I can see what you're saying in terms of of the emotional situation, like if it were too human one, I certainly wouldn't want a robot to do my bidding that was indistinguishable from a human, because I would feel like I was ordering a human around, which I mean

that would be creepy. Uh. To be more serious though, going down this this pathway of of you know, let's let's get a little philosophical, it's also possible that we could have these very socially interactive robots that people would feel comfortable talking to and confiding in in ways that they might not with another person. Particularly if there's like a problem that's weighing on their mind that they want to express, but they don't feel comfortable talking about it

to anybody in their circle. They're they're support group, they might want to talk to a robot. Which if that happens, and I assume it will happen, the next logical thing that will happen is people will design robots specifically to get information from folks. Uh sure, sort of like a monitor your children, Barbie, yeah, or or you know uh, or spy upon your employees to find out who's actually leaking corporate secrets to your So you plant a robot

employee among them that sits at the lunch table. Know, all you have to do is you work at a big company, and and everyone at that company is told, Hey, guess what, we're making this awesome robot that's gonna help people at home, and everyone who works here gets a free one. Tell us what you really think about the boss. I'm just saying, like free robots, Like if if if we were offered a free robot, I'd likely be one of the people saying, I will take that free robot.

Can this free robot carry me the way home? Because I don't know that I can carry the robot home, and one of us is going to be doing a lot of the work, so I wanted to be the robot in this case, you could call an uber. But at anyway, Yeah, get that autonomous car come up and let me my robot buddy, and then I'm outnumbered. I've got two. But yeah, the point being that that, I mean there are actual people who have have brought this up,

who have written papers on this subject. The idea that if we get to a point with socially intelligent robots where we feel comfortable enough to confide in them in order to receive comfort. Then there is already the incentive to build robots specifically to gather information that might you might want to remain private. So, in other words, if people do this behavior, and if there's a way to to profit from that behavior, someone is going to act upon that. That is perfectly logical in the way our

world works. It's not the bright, beautiful future that I want where you know, you can have these interactions then be be assured that they're between you and you're the robot that you're talking to. Um, well, yeah, yeah, I mean eventually you've just got you've just got do android stream of electric sheet of scenario where you've got probably a robot interrogating probably another robot. Right. That was this

turtle that I came across on my way here. I just left it there in the middle of the belt line. Well no, first you've turned it over on its back. Yeah. It was odd too, because you would have thought it would have been a tortoise, not a turtle. But it was definitely a turtle. That was kind of strange. There's pawns along the belt line, there are there are all right, So, uh, socially intelligent robots is going to continue to be a thing.

I am curious. Do you guys have any guests like, like, I know this is putting you on the spot, but like a prediction of when we will get to a point where a robot will be socially intelligent enough to interact in a a typical social setting. Let's say I don't know a cotillion, oh for years, let's play it. Uh no, Um, I'm not sure. I think I honestly, Oh, technology is changing so fast these days. Well, I'm tempted to say some huge number, like like fifty to a

hundred years. I think my answer would play on the same thing I was just talking about a few minutes ago. It would be the difference between something that's very convincingly human versus something that's just very socially pleasant and acceptable but not necessarily human. It's its own paradigm, it's its own thing. I think the latter is going to happen much sooner. In fact, might argue that the latter already exists and it's just going to be refined. Yeah, I'm

going with fifteen years. That's when we're gonna see robots capable of interacting in social situations as well as your typical human wow, I believe that it could happen. I mean, I'm I'm dubious. It seems like a lot of I mean, we're we're coming a long way in terms of natural language processing and all of that, but it's it's so much. Mostly I'm confident that by no one's going to listen to this episode in fact check me. So I'll be all right. I feel pretty confident about that. That's a

good way to play the game. It's a fairly it's a fairly arbitrary number, not prices, right, You're just like, as long as you don't yeah, I think, um, I think yeah, I think that. Uh. I think that we are making advances in the field of artificial intelligence at an incredible rate, and that I think that rate is likely to stay steady. Now, we should point out that these advances aren't on a path like Moore's law, right they are, they are far below the path of Moore's law.

But I do think that advances in various fields are pointing the way to incredible achievements in artificial intelligence. And I think that by having a robot capable of having a social interaction that would be more or less indistinguishable from a typical person. It's ambitious, but I think achievable. Uh. And if rolls around and it turns out that we had hit some obstacles we could not have anticipated. Demand money I want. I wanted my socially my socially acceptable robot,

but I will accept money. It's place that's almost always going to be the case, actually, Joe, I I like, I like our range of of optimism. Yeah. Yeah, And you know again, I think it's always important you always have to acknowledge the fact that there are challenges. If you ignore that there are challenges, you're pretty much guaranteed to fail. You need to acknowledge the challenges so that you can figure out ways to overcome them on your quest to whatever your goal happens to be, in this case,

creating a socially intelligent robot. Joe, you came up with the idea for this podcast. I think it was a lot of fun. It was. It was entertaining and fun to research the various types of robots that are in this field. So thank you, Thank you guys. Now we all start getting tons of great suggestions from you listeners out there. We want those to keep coming in because we really love the fact that you're guiding the conversation. You're you're part of the conversation. Keep up the great works.

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