Kate Darling: Research scientist at the MIT Media Lab specializing in human-robot interaction and robot ethics. Author of 'The New Breed,' which argues robots should be understood through our history with animals rather than as artificial humans.
What this episode covers
Kate Darling and Lex Fridman discuss why comparing robots to humans is the wrong frame, proposing animals as a better analogy since we've long used them for tasks different from our own. They cover the state of robotics (humans are still far better at physical, unpredictable tasks than people assume), why companies keep designing socially clumsy robots, and the emotional bonds people form with machines. A large stretch addresses the ethics of personalized AI: privacy, data ownership, and the danger of social robots becoming a 'potent cocktail' for marketing and manipulation, especially toward kids. The conversation turns personal with reflections on the Jeffrey Epstein scandal at MIT, institutional cowardice, Richard Stallman, leadership and integrity, and ends on relationships, marriage, and the non-zero-sum nature of love.
Recommended on this episode
You Look Like a Thing and I Love You
Janelle Shane
“it's brilliant I can't believe I didn't know about her thank you yeah for weird AI oh yeah I love her book oh she she's great”— Lex Fridman
The guest's own work
The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots
Kate Darling
“you are the author of The New Breed what our history with animals reveals about our future with robots you open the book”— Lex Fridman
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Replika
Luka, Inc.
“there's that replica app I haven't tried it but replicas like a spiritual companion like it's coming”— Kate Darling
Amazon Astro
Amazon
“these companies are investing in embodied versions that move around of Alexa like Astro can I just say”— Kate Darling
Cozmo
Anki
“the people behind Cosmo the the robot the right people to design those as animators like Disney type of people”— Lex Fridman
DALL-E
OpenAI
“the new image generation tools like Dolly uh where they've clearly put in a lot of effort to make sure”— Kate Darling
Ex Machina
Alex Garland
“that convinced the engineer that this thing was sentient and it's basically the plot of ex machina”— Kate Darling
Her
Spike Jonze
“we're about to be living in the movie Her except instead of about love is going to be about”— Lex Fridman
The Fifth Element
Luc Besson
“the more dystopian isn't it the Fifth Element where it's Will Smith in it who's in that movie”— Kate Darling
Big reveals from this episode
- Darling reveals she has eight robot dogs and multiple programmable Roombas at home, with a goal of always having a robot moving.
- Counterintuitive claim: humans (often with animals) still vastly outperform robots at demining war zones, militaries don't want robots for it.
- Both admit to programming Roombas to scream in pain when kicked, and describe genuinely feeling like bad people doing it.
- Darling's defining lesson from the Epstein/MIT fallout: 'sometimes cowards are worse than assholes.'
- Darling discloses that in June 2019 her MIT supervisor groped her and said 'don't worry, I'll take care of your career,' and that her report went nowhere for lack of evidence.
- On Richard Stallman: recounts him licking a female law professor's arm from wrist to elbow, calling it never appropriate.
- Darling flatly predicts a company will put a social robot companion in billions of homes, 'you can steal that idea.'
Worth remembering
- Things get called 'robots' until they lose their 'magic', a vending machine used to be called a robot, now it isn't.
- A study found the biggest spike of negative tweets about the Stop & Shop 'Marty' robot came when the store threw it a birthday party with free cake.
- U.S. road deaths run about one per 80 million miles driven, a safety bar Darling notes is incredibly hard for robots to beat.
- Ferrets are still used to run cables through narrow pipes; militaries have used dolphins for mine detection since the 1960s-70s.
- In Japan, owners hold Buddhist funerals for original Sony aibo robot dogs that can no longer be repaired.
- An ad-analytics expert told Darling she could identify a person's menstrual product from three totally unrelated questions via data aggregation.
- Research found kids preferred robots marketing to them via casual conversation, reasoning 'the robot knows me better than the company does', not grasping the robot is the company's agent.
- Image generators like DALL-E still regurgitate bias: searching 'success' returns mostly men, 'sadness' mostly women.