Living With Robots: Worst Roomates Ever

the floor. Do you not have a roomba? Um, I do not have a pleo or or any of the other gadgets I have to say, Uh, I have a roomba who lives in our household and it's uh current currently. Unfortunately, his battery is weird, so he's his his Well, yeah, I think I kind of picture him as the as the cat's brother, so they don't really see brother does the room. I have a name, um, technically Maximilian because he's red, so named after the red robot and black hole.

But but yeah, so he's a part of the household, especially when he's moving around. UM, so I can't help but think of him throughout the research for this particular podcast, in which we talk about the idea of the robot household, which is already, like I said, a reality to a certain extent in my household, and will be a reality

in your household. Just give it time, they will come. Well, I think about this in our golden age ages, Um, you know, in our sunset years, probably all of us, I'll of you out there listening, will be uh ensconsin some sort of robotic household. I mean, I'm not talking about like Rosie the robot or anything, but um, it's a it's a fairly likely that, you know, as the aging population comes to fruition, at least here in the

United States, that will have some robot helpers. I was I was kind of hoping that when I'm in my my golden years, I will be encased in a robot, like a big armored you know, maybe and we'll talk about that all right, like a power suit like a RoboCup to kind of a thing. And this could be kind of scary. I mean, could think about some wiley senior citizens marauding the streets and their exoskeletons. So so,

why why why are we discussing the why? I mean, obviously there's a robot in my health because they don't like vacuuming the floors, and if the robot can do it, that's great. You can't talk about robots without talking about Japan, right, Okay, because we already know that Japan has has embraced robot technology, and certainly for many reasons, but one of them is

because of their aging population. Right. The Japanese have some of the longest life expectancies and with a large aging population about forty thousand centenarians okay, about forty people over the age of or at one hundred or over the age of one hundred, that's a lot um and fewer children to take care of them due to the line in post World War two birthrates, uh, we have they have a serious problem. In fact, we're talking about the year fifty five, about four out of every ten Japanese

will be classed as elderly. And who's gonna look after them? There are not going to be as many young people around two help grandma across the street. So let's see if we can get a robot in there, right, And and not just top across the street, but just everyday stuff that an elderly person might need help with. To what extent, Can we get a robot in there to improve their quality of life and uh and and make

life possible in some cases. Yeah, it's a very real solution. UM. In addition, each month there are eight hundred and seventy thousand more people around the world who fall into the over age sixty five group. So it's not just Japan, but certainly Japan is is a good lens to look through this. UM. Now, we do have some current technology that we're using. We've talked about this before. Cody the

sponge bath robot for the elderly. Yes, and of course anytime someone says Cody the sponge bath robot, you know you can't help but laugh. But they're actually very helpful. They can open doors and drawers and cabinets using equilibrium point controllers. Um. There's a baby seal Pero, super cute. UM. You know, it moves, it's a little head, it's a

little baby seal. It's really helpful UM for Alzheimer's patients. Okay, kids like having Like you go to an old folks home and there will be a dog or a cat that helps the the individuals there. You know, they can connect with it. Not right, they bond with it. They began to talk to it, tell it things that might otherwise be sort of locked up in their heads. Right.

It's also really effective for kids with autism because and actually a lot of robots and machines like even like the iPad are really effective with kids with autism because it's, uh, it's something they can predict, right, it's the same behavior over and over again. I wonder what Cody, the SpongeBot, the sponge SpongeBob SquarePants. That's what I want to say. Yeah, I wonder what Cody looks like, because I'm picturing a robotic cowboy that it gives sponge baths and it's like, hello, partner,

can you lift your leg? That kind of thing that's so creepy. Yeah, for the badge and everything I know, And then I'm thinking about the ten gallon hat and everything. Um, that's probably some other type of robot for some other fetish thing. Um, there's ties. Oh, the physical therapy bot with twenty six joints in its body. It's a it's a mechanical exercise instructor and and then robotic legs in

the form of an exoskeleton. This really does exist. It's technology from Suberdine, and they're developing robotic legs that elderly or injured people can wear for physical therapy to regain muscle mass and help them to walk again and terrorize the city, right yeah, and and and terrorize all the whipper snappers out there. I's already using hospitals across Japan, of course. And it also monitors signals from the brain and moves the robots limbs as the wearer tries to

move their own way. So this is really good technology that's that's in place and is only going to be improved upon. So it's just a question of when. Yeah, and and certainly if you you know, you put robotics into your your your Google news feed, you're you're just We're just constantly bombarded with these new technologies and new possibilities. But at the at the end of the day, we have to think about, all right, how are we going

to live with these things? Let's talk about the practical as because because we can develope we can dream up ideas and we can develop the tech all day. But what's it gonna be like to share a household with eighteen different robots? Right? What? What? Okay? Rosie the robots seems like an awesome idea, but you know, does she have her own little annoying behaviors? Well, she was pretty annoying on the TV show just the one, right, yes,

I mean the first thing is the voice, right. So, but this is a big question, like there's all these different things people have to get used to living with robots on a day to day basis, And of course there is an entity who has come up with a way of how to measure that. And the entity is called LEAR, which stands for Living with Robots and Interactive Computers, and it's a European funded research project exploring how we'll

live with digital and interactive companions. Um they say. Throughout the project, we're exploring on how to design digital and interactive companions who can develop and read emotions and act cross platform sounds kind of doesn't exactly sound like very cuddly, like, hey,

this is gonna be the best roommate ever. Now, this is the idea that you might have several different mechanical forms that do tasks around the house, but one mind one AI like one how that that lives in your house and it will be like I hope it's not how well, you know that's that's the how kind of sums up the fear. How it's kind of like this Frankenstein, um, Frankstein's monster creation that they didn't embody so much about

what we fear about AI and as we'll discuss. I mean, that's a part of the concerns moving forward with the idea of sharing a house with a robot. Can we trust it? Well? And I mean they're not just looking at this is okay, here you have a robot. It's probably gonna last for a year. No, they're talking about long term relationships here, okay, because you're probably gonna be hanging out with that robot for I don't know, twenty years. It may be the longest relationship of your life. Yeah, um, okay.

So they came up with they, along with other partners, this this thing called five Weeks in the Robot House. Oh yes, this is the University of Hertfordshire, I believe. Yeah, Adapted Systems Research Group, School of Computer Science. This was a really fascinating study. Um, because again I couldn't help but think of the roomba that lives in my house with every example and uh and so so basically what they did they set out to do like five different scenarios,

brought in people non computer science people. Yeah, actually I think it was university students and staff members, and they were all to to hang out with these robots on it in the road in the robot house. Not to be confused with robot house the fraternity from Mars University in futurama exactly that, not that one. And in fact, let me just read this little uh explanation about the paper that's published on this, because I really feel like

it sounds like a great reality TV treatment. It says this paper presents five exploratory trials investigating scenario is likely to occur when a personal robot shares a home with a person, Right, doesn't that seem like the perfect sort of I think it would be great pilot. Yeah, I think we could host it. Okay, let's do it, all right tilse you heard that, But so so let's look

at the different scenarios. Um. The the first one that we have a right up here on is the hot and cold game trial, which is basically the person is trying to guide the robot to do something or find something in the house and they're doing the whole all right, you're a little bit hot. Now you're a little cold.

You're a little hot, you're a little bit cold. But the the way that they were manipulating the test subjects in this was that they were in some cases that the person's response of hot or cold don't actually get

the robot any closer. Like the idea here is not to get the robot to find it, but to frust potentially frustrate the person giving the robot instructions, because this is going to happen right, right, and it should be added to then in all these scenarios we're talking about in robot house, uh, there's a there's a certain amount

of autonomy at play. But in some cases the the people conducting the research manipulated the robot because ultimately, here the idea is not let's see how robots behave, let's see how people behave in the presence of robots. Right, So they were manipulating the robots via a remote control and they called it the Wizard of Oz method. So there, so again there was the hot and cold game trial. Then there's the robot in the family trial, and this

is all about space negotiate negotiation. The idea that all right, you're trying to carry on normal stuff around the house. What happens when you're, say, having a conversation and a robot passes between you. What happens if you're in an argument maybe and the robot decides it needs to clean all the walls in the room at that like, how does that? How does it affect the basic um, the basic feel of the home? How do how are people going to react to it? Um? Then there's the confidential

information disclosure trial, and that one was my favorite. Yes, Now, this is the one where I believe that human will take one of the test subjects and they'll be walking around the house talking about ways too to redecorate things, but they'll end up sort of slipping some personal information, and then the robot will bring the personal information up. So and I think too that the robot was manipulating

the conversation to get more personal information about habits and health. Yeah, okay, and then yes, and then at certain predetermined points and in the conversation, the robot would interrupt the person right and awkward fashion. The example they gave him the ride up, The experimenter says, I always try to go to sleep early so I can get a night's sleep and then the robot says, dag the experiment or did not go to bed until three o'clock last night, and awkward, did

that right? Because you're like, robot, yeah, quit, you know, why are you? Why are you sharing that information? Right? And they they of course they did this on purpose. They didn't want the robot to be malicious. But what they wanted to try to if it's almost like a little kid, right, a little kid sometimes doesn't know uh not to say something that is factually correct, but you know, potentially insensitive to the person. So this is going to

happen when a robot stores data on you. And the important thing here too, is that the robot would ideally need to store that data if it's going to navigate not only the physical spaces of your home but the but the spaces of your life. It needs to have some information about when you go to bed, when you're getting up, especially if it's say you you don't want your robot doing certain tasks while you're awake or while

you're in the house. Yeah, if you raid your refrigerator at three am, you know, if you're bag you want your robot not to come, you know, trumping by right, So it came and end up coming into some of the same situations of privacy that we have with email and everything else electronic in our lives. Um, this robot has all this data. Is that data safe? Could somebody hack my robot and find out when I'm home? Could

they hack my robot and find out what? The idea that instantly comes to my mind is the idea of these different models of the kindle where you can pay and get this, you know, basically an electronic reader. You can pay a little less and get one that has ads on it. So I can easily imagine a future where someone said, well, we can't quite afford the home robot that comes AD free, so instead we have to endure the one that will occasionally chime in with commercial

pitches if it comes up in our conversation. That's very possible. I mean think about that. We did the podcast called Raised by Machines, Right, and we talked about the little kids who are being watched at the Japanese retailer and the robots. They're very friendly looking, will take pictures of your children as they're playing, but we'll also beam advertisement

at your child. Uh so, yeah, I mean, you're right to offset the cost, you might be willing to take some sort of robot that is constantly going to tell you about Stuffer's pizza, right, But in that, I mean, how different is that than say, any children's network out there. I guess it's just I guess, I guess it's Again, it's the story of the data. Stuffer's pizza. They really love that pepperoni, you know, or I don't know. I do I care if if stuffer'st knows that, probably not.

But again, it's the ability to mass all this information that's problematic. Well, okay, two more trials that they did in the Robot house real quick. One was watching TV with the robot, and this is basically you're trying to watch TV and the robot will come up and offer you drinks and snacks and stuff, which I think sounds

pretty good. Um. And then there's helping the robot, And in this the humans are engaged in some of their tasks and the robot is trying to get their attention too because it needs to a door opened for it. So in some cases the robots kind of just sort of being passive aggressive about it and kind of hinting at the fact that hey, I wish somebody would open this door for me so I could go through, And then in some of the cases, the robot actually comes up to the person and says, hey, can you get

this door for me? Again? I was thinking about the room. But you know, the roombot gets stuck or this is what I've heard. You know, it's very possible that robot is trying to negotiate a corner and gets stuck. So, um, it's it's measuring to to what extent a human is willing to help out a robot, not because it's being altruistic, but you know, what sort of functionality does this robot have and how much are humans willing to put up with it? Right? And then it plays into the wider

scope of the studies. Do just see how like people think about the robot, how they how they interact with the robot, and what their attitude towards the robot in the house is. Yeah. Yeah, So let's talk about the results of all those five different studies. Okay, so we're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna get back to all this. So hanging there for one second, this podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discus Very channel. At Intel, we

believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join us a curiosity dot com and explore the answers to life's questions. And we're back. First the hot and Cold game trial, the whole You're hot your cold. I'm trying to get the robot to do something, but the robot is frustrating me by not following my instructions. And uh. They found two interesting patterns. One participants assigned less credit to the robot and more to themselves, and participants as signed more

blamed to the robot and less to themselves. So that's rather illuminating. I think about the the idea that if the robots doing good, it's it's on us. If it's doing bad, it's like, come on, technology, you're failing me.

But that to me, that seemed right on target, because haven't you when whenever you've been beating on your keyboard, like you know, a jack and apes, it's sort of like you're blaming the computer, but it's always user right, right this thing or you know, my phone drives me crazy, but most of the time is my my big phones but aren't able to navigate it. Well, I think like even some giant thombs. Well like even with the room, but in the in in our house, he has frustrated

me in the past by refusing to to work properly. Uh, and it times I'll be like, oh, come on, room, but why won't you work? Why won't you vacuum this floor? And and sometimes it will come down to I have there's a step I need to take cleaning you that I have not known to take in the past, where I didn't or or I haven't known exactly to what extent, Like I didn't know that occasionally you might need to take your room but out into the backyard internal leafblower

on it. But but sometimes it works, so store that away. But but yeah, so it's it's easy to imagine this, and like, if you have this robot in your house, are we just gonna always be yelling at it? Is it just gonna be this emotional punching bag. Well, it's very possible, right, What is that the saying about familiarity breeds contempt? Yeah? Right, alright, So robot and the family trial, what did we learn with this? Okay, well, but the

participants didn't really actually mind the robots moving about so much. Um, but they really appreciated the fact that robots would say excuse me when negotiating space around them. So it always comes down to the little niceties in life, don't you think, yeah again to the room. But I don't think I find it that annoying if the robot is in the room with me, or certainly if it if the roller bumps into me, even I'm not like going to freak

out because I know it's just navigating the space. It's doing its job, and if I really want to get upset about it, I can turn the room, but of off in vacuum my own floor, which is not going to happen all right now. The confidential information trial, now this is the one where people generally were very concerned U five participantorating themselves as feeling uncomfortable or very uncomfortable.

Uh five participants were we're neutral into we're comfortable. But but enough red flags were raised here that people were like, I don't really like the robot bringing up personal stuff during my conversations or throwing my own words back at me. Right and again, like to your point earlier, they they knew that data needed to be stored about them. But again it was Yeah, it was throwing the information in

their face. Um, are being concerned about how it was going to be maintained, you know, what sort of sensitive information and security measures were going to be taken, which would make sense, right, I mean, these are the conversations that we're having about cloud computing right now. So um yeah, I mean and you know, is my robot gonna blackmail me? Yeah? I mean it was my response. Yeah, I mean, we it's it's a big fear the whole basically, the fear

of the AI potentially turning against us. There was an old sci fi original picture, and if anybody knows the name of this, let me know, because I could not

find it searching around. But there was a film where they had like an automated system in the house and there was like a robot hand that travels around on this little runner along the ceiling like it does embodied robot hand, well know, like a terminator arm kind of thing that was attached to a a wheeled gadget that runs around on like a trolley car and the ceiling and it eventually goes hey wire and starts running around with a knife but see, I knew that. I just knew.

That's like that the you know, the premise of any good horror story, and bring a cannon on stage. You gotta fire, right, all right? So watching TV with the robot, that one did pretty well. People tended to not mind a robot offering you drinks and snacks during your favorite show. This is what I thought was so funny about it. They were like, okay, yeahcent of them thought the robot was making too much effort, but they were like, oh but still, I was pretty well attended to, you know.

And then finally helping the robot trial. This one was interesting because it seems like people did not respond really well to the subtle hints the robot was giving and and even either they didn't notice that the robot needed help at all, or they were like, I think the robot needs help, but I really don't know what I could do, or if I'm supposed to help the robot,

that's right. There are three responses. They claimed to either be unaware, or they were aware but they weren't quite sure, as you just mentioned, or they thought that watching TV was more important. Oh well, you know, if it's a really good show, I guess right. But it reminded me of the Bostander effect that we talked about um in people's willingness, like what is my appropriate response and could

I even help? I don't know. Yeah, it kind of and it makes me think like, well, if there were a bunch of other people in the room where they feel pressured to then go and help the robot, A suppose it's just sitting there going you know what, it's a really good place in this movie right now, I'm not going to get up and help you out of that corner. Now. This is one that I feel like would be different in an actual home environment where the robot belonged to you or something, or it was you

were more part of it. Because these were test subjects, so I could see them being like, I don't know if I'm supposed to help the robot. They didn't say anything about helping the robot. You know, at the beginning of the test, they just told me to watch TV and eat snacks. And I could totally get a credit

for it, man, but more snacks please. Well. One of the the overall findings that came out of that one too, though, it was they because they end up making various arguments about what we need to think about going forward with the with the feature of the robot house, and they said, you need to have clear signals if the robot needs help, you need there no beating around the bush. Robot needs to let you know. And that's something I feel that

the room bat robot. And then I hope this doesn't sound like too much like an advertisement for the room, but it's the only robot that lives in. But you clearly have a relationship with your room. But yeah, and I'm convinced that when you like your room, but you call it max, but when it's in trouble you call it Maximilian. Is well, yeah, if I'm talking to it

and giving it a hard time. But but but the thing about the design, and this is an older model that we have, so I feel like the makers are already on top of this a little like it has definite little sing song beeps that it gives for such

different circumstances. And I'm not well versed enough in its language to know necessarily which what what it's saying with each one of them, but they're there are definite sounds that it makes when it makes make when it's stuck that it will make when it's uh, when it's running low on battery, or when it finished. And that's like this little victory song and all. So I feel like it is already a pretty clear about when it needs

my help. Um well, I think it again. It just sort of brings up how complicated uh communication is, even just among humans. Then to have a machine trying to communicate with us and living with all those little different nuances that we take for granted, those um you know, nonverbal signals that we give each other that helps us to negotiate the world, or certain social norms. Like one thing that came up was the whole passing between two

people when they're having a conversation. It's something that people generally don't do, just on principle, unless you absolutely have to cross between two people having a conversation, you just don't do it because it's rude. But the robots and

these studies didn't have any problem with that. The people, of course did, and so that's something you would have to think about, like the robot keeping a safe, a reasonable polite distance from people during certain parts of one's life, and this would spill over to like the robot being able to realize if there is, say a heated argument going on, and knowing that that it's maybe not the

best time to decorate the walls or deliver some personal data. Right. Yeah, not to throw any facts back that you ever remind you about things. Well, you're saying, you know, in an emotional state, or if you've just woken up and you're clearly or if you're you know, you're in a grumpy mood, maybe knows not to mess with you that kind of thing. And there's so many nuances that we would need to

navigate in addition to navigating the space. And that's the other thing, navigating the space and navigating these moving people in a way that's safe. Like like we have a rule in our household that the well, I guess the rule is the room, but doesn't go in the kitchen either. But the cat doesn't go in the kitchen. Be not so much because the cat's gonna jump on anything. But it's a dangerous place to have an animal underfoot because

you could potentially injure the animal and or yourself. You're carrying the plates, you're carrying hot dishes, you're you're carrying knives. It's just not a safe environment for an animal to be walking around your feet. Likewise, you would need to take these concerns into into mind when figuring out how a robot navigates the household. Yeah, rope lot should not go into the utility room, right, No, no axes, uh no,

no writing, lawnmowers definitely don't see robot. Well, yeah, actually make a little algorithm of it, but maybe that robot stays outside. Well. One of the studies that that you sent me it Um mentioned how that the possibility of having the one robot mind that uses different bodies in

the house about the idea that it would be. It would be sincd with the with with the electrical grid for the apartment or house, so it would be able to tell when certain appliances or objects were being used and therefore no like where you were or in other cases they'd be able to like know where your footfalls are happening in the house, just keeping track of where the person is at all times and to know and also you can imagine this being implemented into larger data

to know that well, they never go in the basement during the day, So I'm going to do something annoying in the basement, that's the time, right, and they could also use that information to punk you in the bathroom

and turn off all the lights. The Robot House study that one of the big findings though, was that they're finding suggested a quote negative relationship between robot autonomy and human responsibility when both are working on a collaborating task, which I've found uh again kind of telling about us and uh and you know, and and it just brings like, how to what extent can we avoid that? Like our again, our robots just gonna be punching bags in our houses? Are we going to just yell at them? Are they

going to be our our abused servants? I mean, I honestly can see some sort of literature coming out or psychological studies about how to best deal with AI and cooperate with it, with with the end goal being that the better information you give your robot, the better you cooperate, but that the better service is going to provide you.

I know that sounds weird, but I think that this is the sort of things that we're going to see in the future because it's going to become so important to our day to day lives, especially if you're a senior citizen just trying to to live, especially if you're senior citizen and hand right and you're just trying to

get a meal together. UM, you don't want to be really fighting with your robot fighting in air quotes, I suppose, yeah, And and to what extent to then, if someone is abusive towards their robot is to what extent is that a real red flag about that individual? And maybe there needs to be some sort of intervention. I know there's I'm telling you, like AI psychology newfield, if it doesn't

actually I guess it's at least emerging. Well, I mean it's certainly being used to try to UM to program machines, and but in terms of how we are dealing with robots or psychological basis and how we can better deal with them, I don't think that it's in full force. Yeah, And and at what point do they have rights? At what point does it significantly advanced AI have some sort of human rights for itself? But no, I mean that's

a that's an interesting proposition. I mean that that we've talked about animal rights before, right, so you know, it's always hard to get outside of our human psyche, and you know, it's easy to antimorphizes something when we think they're cute or they're dangerous, but you know, outside of that, it's kind of hard to say, oh, well, that has rights or shouldn't have rights because it's not us. That was another aspect of the study, the robot house study.

They had the four different models they had people look at remember um two headheads you didn't. They had the mechanoid versions, which just looked like clunky machines that fold around your house. And then they had two versions and hands and arms. Uh. In this so they were also gauging like which which models the people prefer. Do they want something that looks just like a you know, a piece of equipment rolling around the house, or do they

want the person? Yeah, which brings up the whole on Kenny Valley Harry, which we'll talk about it in a different podcast sometimes soon here. But alsot of issues that pop up. So hey, let's uh pull something from the mail bag, why don't we all right? One comes to us from John. John rides in and says, hi, Robert,

Julie and Matt, Hey check that out. Matt, you gotta mention, Uh, I enjoy your podcast and am pleasantly surprised that your ability to take any topic and captivate my attention as you dive into the topics and discuss the science behind them. I cannot help but let my mind wander as well in listening to the podcast I'm bringing Science Monster in

and other references of the Blue Brain Project. I cannot help but wonder will it ever be possible to create a man that is our caliber of reasoning and understanding? As we dive into the mysteries of God and unravel the complexity of the human are we not enlightened and so influenced in an ever changing light? Will our understanding of ourselves mirror our true consciousness? Or will the knowledge we gain influence our evolution to deeper, more introspective self.

Every great discovery has in time changed our view of the world and likewise changed our thinking. Therefore, can we truly understand the mind? Or will it's ever changing nature adapt to the new understandings we find and continue to work in complex perhaps altering uh are the physical connections and thus connecting the physical properties of the knowledge that we hold, and thus keeping the brain and mind transfixed in a world scene uh, but not touched or understood

just some cooper thought your fans. John, Wow, I really like that because it made me think a lot about how we've talked about when the fictions of our realities fall away, sometimes we're frightened of because we feel like there's no mystery left. And he is, in fact, I think, suggesting that there's the possibility for deeper in introspection and

maybe even other mysteries. Indeed, and this is exactly the kind of like fan mail I like to to get because I feel like a lot of what we do is like we throw up some really cool ideas, some really cool um research into various topics and then just sort of throw hopefully throw open the barn doors for everyone to sort of go out and think even even farther about it. And well, yeah, yeah, and it's great to hear that that someone's been procolating on that in

their ideas. Yeah, it fires me up, indeed, So thanks John, and glad to hear that some of our podcasts have got your you got your brain move in there, So if you would like to share anything with us, and in particular, and I'm interested to hear from other pool who have robots in in their household, um, even far more advanced robotic households or workplaces uh than my own. Uh. How do you interact with the robot? How do you feel about the robot? It's a part of your life?

And and and also along these five different tests that we studied in this podcast, how do how do? How does your experience? The line up with their findings. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter. We'll blow the Mind on both of those and um, you know you can you can share stuff there or or you can always drop us a line. Let us know the name you have given to your room BA by sending us an email at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,

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