Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: you live in a robot free household, don't you? I
Speaker 1: mean relatively as far as I know. I mean, you
Speaker 1: probably have robots more or less in the form of
Speaker 1: many of your electronic implements, but you do not have
Speaker 1: an actual robot to say, comes out and back into
Speaker 1: the floor. Do you not have a roomba? Um, I
Speaker 1: do not have a pleo or or any of the
Speaker 1: other gadgets I have to say, Uh, I have a
Speaker 1: roomba who lives in our household and it's uh current currently. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: his battery is weird, so he's his his Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I kind of picture him as the as
Speaker 1: the cat's brother, so they don't really see brother does
Speaker 1: the room. I have a name, um, technically Maximilian because
Speaker 1: he's red, so named after the red robot and black hole.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, so he's a part of the household,
Speaker 1: especially when he's moving around. UM, so I can't help
Speaker 1: but think of him throughout the research for this particular podcast,
Speaker 1: in which we talk about the idea of the robot household,
Speaker 1: which is already, like I said, a reality to a
Speaker 1: certain extent in my household, and will be a reality
Speaker 1: in your household. Just give it time, they will come. Well,
Speaker 1: I think about this in our golden age ages, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, in our sunset years, probably all of us,
Speaker 1: I'll of you out there listening, will be uh ensconsin
Speaker 1: some sort of robotic household. I mean, I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about like Rosie the robot or anything, but um, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a fairly likely that, you know, as the
Speaker 1: aging population comes to fruition, at least here in the
Speaker 1: United States, that will have some robot helpers. I was
Speaker 1: I was kind of hoping that when I'm in my
Speaker 1: my golden years, I will be encased in a robot,
Speaker 1: like a big armored you know, maybe and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that all right, like a power suit like a
Speaker 1: RoboCup to kind of a thing. And this could be
Speaker 1: kind of scary. I mean, could think about some wiley
Speaker 1: senior citizens marauding the streets and their exoskeletons. So so,
Speaker 1: why why why are we discussing the why? I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously there's a robot in my health because they don't
Speaker 1: like vacuuming the floors, and if the robot can do it,
Speaker 1: that's great. You can't talk about robots without talking about Japan, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: because we already know that Japan has has embraced robot technology,
Speaker 1: and certainly for many reasons, but one of them is
Speaker 1: because of their aging population. Right. The Japanese have some
Speaker 1: of the longest life expectancies and with a large aging
Speaker 1: population about forty thousand centenarians okay, about forty people over
Speaker 1: the age of or at one hundred or over the
Speaker 1: age of one hundred, that's a lot um and fewer
Speaker 1: children to take care of them due to the line
Speaker 1: in post World War two birthrates, uh, we have they
Speaker 1: have a serious problem. In fact, we're talking about the
Speaker 1: year fifty five, about four out of every ten Japanese
Speaker 1: will be classed as elderly. And who's gonna look after them?
Speaker 1: There are not going to be as many young people
Speaker 1: around two help grandma across the street. So let's see
Speaker 1: if we can get a robot in there, right, And
Speaker 1: and not just top across the street, but just everyday
Speaker 1: stuff that an elderly person might need help with. To
Speaker 1: what extent, Can we get a robot in there to
Speaker 1: improve their quality of life and uh and and make
Speaker 1: life possible in some cases. Yeah, it's a very real solution. UM.
Speaker 1: In addition, each month there are eight hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: thousand more people around the world who fall into the
Speaker 1: over age sixty five group. So it's not just Japan,
Speaker 1: but certainly Japan is is a good lens to look
Speaker 1: through this. UM. Now, we do have some current technology
Speaker 1: that we're using. We've talked about this before. Cody the
Speaker 1: sponge bath robot for the elderly. Yes, and of course
Speaker 1: anytime someone says Cody the sponge bath robot, you know
Speaker 1: you can't help but laugh. But they're actually very helpful.
Speaker 1: They can open doors and drawers and cabinets using equilibrium
Speaker 1: point controllers. Um. There's a baby seal Pero, super cute. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, it moves, it's a little head, it's a
Speaker 1: little baby seal. It's really helpful UM for Alzheimer's patients. Okay,
Speaker 1: kids like having Like you go to an old folks
Speaker 1: home and there will be a dog or a cat
Speaker 1: that helps the the individuals there. You know, they can
Speaker 1: connect with it. Not right, they bond with it. They
Speaker 1: began to talk to it, tell it things that might
Speaker 1: otherwise be sort of locked up in their heads. Right.
Speaker 1: It's also really effective for kids with autism because and
Speaker 1: actually a lot of robots and machines like even like
Speaker 1: the iPad are really effective with kids with autism because it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's something they can predict, right, it's the same behavior
Speaker 1: over and over again. I wonder what Cody, the SpongeBot,
Speaker 1: the sponge SpongeBob SquarePants. That's what I want to say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder what Cody looks like, because I'm picturing a
Speaker 1: robotic cowboy that it gives sponge baths and it's like, hello, partner,
Speaker 1: can you lift your leg? That kind of thing that's
Speaker 1: so creepy. Yeah, for the badge and everything I know,
Speaker 1: And then I'm thinking about the ten gallon hat and everything. Um,
Speaker 1: that's probably some other type of robot for some other
Speaker 1: fetish thing. Um, there's ties. Oh, the physical therapy bot
Speaker 1: with twenty six joints in its body. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a mechanical exercise instructor and and then robotic legs in
Speaker 1: the form of an exoskeleton. This really does exist. It's
Speaker 1: technology from Suberdine, and they're developing robotic legs that elderly
Speaker 1: or injured people can wear for physical therapy to regain
Speaker 1: muscle mass and help them to walk again and terrorize
Speaker 1: the city, right yeah, and and and terrorize all the
Speaker 1: whipper snappers out there. I's already using hospitals across Japan,
Speaker 1: of course. And it also monitors signals from the brain
Speaker 1: and moves the robots limbs as the wearer tries to
Speaker 1: move their own way. So this is really good technology
Speaker 1: that's that's in place and is only going to be
Speaker 1: improved upon. So it's just a question of when. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and certainly if you you know, you put robotics
Speaker 1: into your your your Google news feed, you're you're just
Speaker 1: We're just constantly bombarded with these new technologies and new possibilities.
Speaker 1: But at the at the end of the day, we
Speaker 1: have to think about, all right, how are we going
Speaker 1: to live with these things? Let's talk about the practical
Speaker 1: as because because we can develope we can dream up
Speaker 1: ideas and we can develop the tech all day. But
Speaker 1: what's it gonna be like to share a household with
Speaker 1: eighteen different robots? Right? What? What? Okay? Rosie the robots
Speaker 1: seems like an awesome idea, but you know, does she
Speaker 1: have her own little annoying behaviors? Well, she was pretty
Speaker 1: annoying on the TV show just the one, right, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean the first thing is the voice, right. So,
Speaker 1: but this is a big question, like there's all these
Speaker 1: different things people have to get used to living with
Speaker 1: robots on a day to day basis, And of course
Speaker 1: there is an entity who has come up with a
Speaker 1: way of how to measure that. And the entity is
Speaker 1: called LEAR, which stands for Living with Robots and Interactive Computers,
Speaker 1: and it's a European funded research project exploring how we'll
Speaker 1: live with digital and interactive companions. Um they say. Throughout
Speaker 1: the project, we're exploring on how to design digital and
Speaker 1: interactive companions who can develop and read emotions and act
Speaker 1: cross platform sounds kind of doesn't exactly sound like very cuddly, like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be the best roommate ever. Now, this
Speaker 1: is the idea that you might have several different mechanical
Speaker 1: forms that do tasks around the house, but one mind
Speaker 1: one AI like one how that that lives in your
Speaker 1: house and it will be like I hope it's not
Speaker 1: how well, you know that's that's the how kind of
Speaker 1: sums up the fear. How it's kind of like this Frankenstein, um,
Speaker 1: Frankstein's monster creation that they didn't embody so much about
Speaker 1: what we fear about AI and as we'll discuss. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a part of the concerns moving forward with the
Speaker 1: idea of sharing a house with a robot. Can we
Speaker 1: trust it? Well? And I mean they're not just looking
Speaker 1: at this is okay, here you have a robot. It's
Speaker 1: probably gonna last for a year. No, they're talking about
Speaker 1: long term relationships here, okay, because you're probably gonna be
Speaker 1: hanging out with that robot for I don't know, twenty years.
Speaker 1: It may be the longest relationship of your life. Yeah, um, okay.
Speaker 1: So they came up with they, along with other partners,
Speaker 1: this this thing called five Weeks in the Robot House.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, this is the University of Hertfordshire, I believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Adapted Systems Research Group, School of Computer Science. This was
Speaker 1: a really fascinating study. Um, because again I couldn't help
Speaker 1: but think of the roomba that lives in my house
Speaker 1: with every example and uh and so so basically what
Speaker 1: they did they set out to do like five different scenarios,
Speaker 1: brought in people non computer science people. Yeah, actually I
Speaker 1: think it was university students and staff members, and they
Speaker 1: were all to to hang out with these robots on
Speaker 1: it in the road in the robot house. Not to
Speaker 1: be confused with robot house the fraternity from Mars University
Speaker 1: in futurama exactly that, not that one. And in fact,
Speaker 1: let me just read this little uh explanation about the
Speaker 1: paper that's published on this, because I really feel like
Speaker 1: it sounds like a great reality TV treatment. It says
Speaker 1: this paper presents five exploratory trials investigating scenario is likely
Speaker 1: to occur when a personal robot shares a home with
Speaker 1: a person, Right, doesn't that seem like the perfect sort
Speaker 1: of I think it would be great pilot. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we could host it. Okay, let's do it, all
Speaker 1: right tilse you heard that, But so so let's look
Speaker 1: at the different scenarios. Um. The the first one that
Speaker 1: we have a right up here on is the hot
Speaker 1: and cold game trial, which is basically the person is
Speaker 1: trying to guide the robot to do something or find
Speaker 1: something in the house and they're doing the whole all right,
Speaker 1: you're a little bit hot. Now you're a little cold.
Speaker 1: You're a little hot, you're a little bit cold. But
Speaker 1: the the way that they were manipulating the test subjects
Speaker 1: in this was that they were in some cases that
Speaker 1: the person's response of hot or cold don't actually get
Speaker 1: the robot any closer. Like the idea here is not
Speaker 1: to get the robot to find it, but to frust
Speaker 1: potentially frustrate the person giving the robot instructions, because this
Speaker 1: is going to happen right, right, and it should be
Speaker 1: added to then in all these scenarios we're talking about
Speaker 1: in robot house, uh, there's a there's a certain amount
Speaker 1: of autonomy at play. But in some cases the the
Speaker 1: people conducting the research manipulated the robot because ultimately, here
Speaker 1: the idea is not let's see how robots behave, let's
Speaker 1: see how people behave in the presence of robots. Right,
Speaker 1: So they were manipulating the robots via a remote control
Speaker 1: and they called it the Wizard of Oz method. So there,
Speaker 1: so again there was the hot and cold game trial.
Speaker 1: Then there's the robot in the family trial, and this
Speaker 1: is all about space negotiate negotiation. The idea that all right,
Speaker 1: you're trying to carry on normal stuff around the house.
Speaker 1: What happens when you're, say, having a conversation and a
Speaker 1: robot passes between you. What happens if you're in an
Speaker 1: argument maybe and the robot decides it needs to clean
Speaker 1: all the walls in the room at that like, how
Speaker 1: does that? How does it affect the basic um, the
Speaker 1: basic feel of the home? How do how are people
Speaker 1: going to react to it? Um? Then there's the confidential
Speaker 1: information disclosure trial, and that one was my favorite. Yes, Now,
Speaker 1: this is the one where I believe that human will
Speaker 1: take one of the test subjects and they'll be walking
Speaker 1: around the house talking about ways too to redecorate things,
Speaker 1: but they'll end up sort of slipping some personal information,
Speaker 1: and then the robot will bring the personal information up.
Speaker 1: So and I think too that the robot was manipulating
Speaker 1: the conversation to get more personal information about habits and health. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and then yes, and then at certain predetermined points and
Speaker 1: in the conversation, the robot would interrupt the person right
Speaker 1: and awkward fashion. The example they gave him the ride up,
Speaker 1: The experimenter says, I always try to go to sleep
Speaker 1: early so I can get a night's sleep and then
Speaker 1: the robot says, dag the experiment or did not go
Speaker 1: to bed until three o'clock last night, and awkward, did
Speaker 1: that right? Because you're like, robot, yeah, quit, you know,
Speaker 1: why are you? Why are you sharing that information? Right?
Speaker 1: And they they of course they did this on purpose.
Speaker 1: They didn't want the robot to be malicious. But what
Speaker 1: they wanted to try to if it's almost like a
Speaker 1: little kid, right, a little kid sometimes doesn't know uh
Speaker 1: not to say something that is factually correct, but you know,
Speaker 1: potentially insensitive to the person. So this is going to
Speaker 1: happen when a robot stores data on you. And the
Speaker 1: important thing here too, is that the robot would ideally
Speaker 1: need to store that data if it's going to navigate
Speaker 1: not only the physical spaces of your home but the
Speaker 1: but the spaces of your life. It needs to have
Speaker 1: some information about when you go to bed, when you're
Speaker 1: getting up, especially if it's say you you don't want
Speaker 1: your robot doing certain tasks while you're awake or while
Speaker 1: you're in the house. Yeah, if you raid your refrigerator
Speaker 1: at three am, you know, if you're bag you want
Speaker 1: your robot not to come, you know, trumping by right,
Speaker 1: So it came and end up coming into some of
Speaker 1: the same situations of privacy that we have with email
Speaker 1: and everything else electronic in our lives. Um, this robot
Speaker 1: has all this data. Is that data safe? Could somebody
Speaker 1: hack my robot and find out when I'm home? Could
Speaker 1: they hack my robot and find out what? The idea
Speaker 1: that instantly comes to my mind is the idea of
Speaker 1: these different models of the kindle where you can pay
Speaker 1: and get this, you know, basically an electronic reader. You
Speaker 1: can pay a little less and get one that has
Speaker 1: ads on it. So I can easily imagine a future
Speaker 1: where someone said, well, we can't quite afford the home
Speaker 1: robot that comes AD free, so instead we have to
Speaker 1: endure the one that will occasionally chime in with commercial
Speaker 1: pitches if it comes up in our conversation. That's very possible.
Speaker 1: I mean think about that. We did the podcast called
Speaker 1: Raised by Machines, Right, and we talked about the little
Speaker 1: kids who are being watched at the Japanese retailer and
Speaker 1: the robots. They're very friendly looking, will take pictures of
Speaker 1: your children as they're playing, but we'll also beam advertisement
Speaker 1: at your child. Uh so, yeah, I mean, you're right
Speaker 1: to offset the cost, you might be willing to take
Speaker 1: some sort of robot that is constantly going to tell
Speaker 1: you about Stuffer's pizza, right, But in that, I mean,
Speaker 1: how different is that than say, any children's network out there.
Speaker 1: I guess it's just I guess, I guess it's Again,
Speaker 1: it's the story of the data. Stuffer's pizza. They really
Speaker 1: love that pepperoni, you know, or I don't know. I
Speaker 1: do I care if if stuffer'st knows that, probably not.
Speaker 1: But again, it's the ability to mass all this information
Speaker 1: that's problematic. Well, okay, two more trials that they did
Speaker 1: in the Robot house real quick. One was watching TV
Speaker 1: with the robot, and this is basically you're trying to
Speaker 1: watch TV and the robot will come up and offer
Speaker 1: you drinks and snacks and stuff, which I think sounds
Speaker 1: pretty good. Um. And then there's helping the robot, And
Speaker 1: in this the humans are engaged in some of their
Speaker 1: tasks and the robot is trying to get their attention
Speaker 1: too because it needs to a door opened for it.
Speaker 1: So in some cases the robots kind of just sort
Speaker 1: of being passive aggressive about it and kind of hinting
Speaker 1: at the fact that hey, I wish somebody would open
Speaker 1: this door for me so I could go through, And
Speaker 1: then in some of the cases, the robot actually comes
Speaker 1: up to the person and says, hey, can you get
Speaker 1: this door for me? Again? I was thinking about the room.
Speaker 1: But you know, the roombot gets stuck or this is
Speaker 1: what I've heard. You know, it's very possible that robot
Speaker 1: is trying to negotiate a corner and gets stuck. So, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's measuring to to what extent a human is
Speaker 1: willing to help out a robot, not because it's being altruistic,
Speaker 1: but you know, what sort of functionality does this robot
Speaker 1: have and how much are humans willing to put up
Speaker 1: with it? Right? And then it plays into the wider
Speaker 1: scope of the studies. Do just see how like people
Speaker 1: think about the robot, how they how they interact with
Speaker 1: the robot, and what their attitude towards the robot in
Speaker 1: the house is. Yeah. Yeah, So let's talk about the
Speaker 1: results of all those five different studies. Okay, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna get
Speaker 1: back to all this. So hanging there for one second,
Speaker 1: this podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors
Speaker 1: of Tomorrow and the Discus Very channel. At Intel, we
Speaker 1: believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join us
Speaker 1: a curiosity dot com and explore the answers to life's questions.
Speaker 1: And we're back. First the hot and Cold game trial,
Speaker 1: the whole You're hot your cold. I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: the robot to do something, but the robot is frustrating
Speaker 1: me by not following my instructions. And uh. They found
Speaker 1: two interesting patterns. One participants assigned less credit to the
Speaker 1: robot and more to themselves, and participants as signed more
Speaker 1: blamed to the robot and less to themselves. So that's
Speaker 1: rather illuminating. I think about the the idea that if
Speaker 1: the robots doing good, it's it's on us. If it's
Speaker 1: doing bad, it's like, come on, technology, you're failing me.
Speaker 1: But that to me, that seemed right on target, because
Speaker 1: haven't you when whenever you've been beating on your keyboard,
Speaker 1: like you know, a jack and apes, it's sort of
Speaker 1: like you're blaming the computer, but it's always user right,
Speaker 1: right this thing or you know, my phone drives me crazy,
Speaker 1: but most of the time is my my big phones
Speaker 1: but aren't able to navigate it. Well, I think like
Speaker 1: even some giant thombs. Well like even with the room,
Speaker 1: but in the in in our house, he has frustrated
Speaker 1: me in the past by refusing to to work properly. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it times I'll be like, oh, come on, room,
Speaker 1: but why won't you work? Why won't you vacuum this floor?
Speaker 1: And and sometimes it will come down to I have
Speaker 1: there's a step I need to take cleaning you that
Speaker 1: I have not known to take in the past, where
Speaker 1: I didn't or or I haven't known exactly to what extent,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't know that occasionally you might need to
Speaker 1: take your room but out into the backyard internal leafblower
Speaker 1: on it. But but sometimes it works, so store that away.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, so it's it's easy to imagine this,
Speaker 1: and like, if you have this robot in your house,
Speaker 1: are we just gonna always be yelling at it? Is
Speaker 1: it just gonna be this emotional punching bag. Well, it's
Speaker 1: very possible, right, What is that the saying about familiarity
Speaker 1: breeds contempt? Yeah? Right, alright, So robot and the family trial,
Speaker 1: what did we learn with this? Okay, well, but the
Speaker 1: participants didn't really actually mind the robots moving about so much. Um,
Speaker 1: but they really appreciated the fact that robots would say
Speaker 1: excuse me when negotiating space around them. So it always
Speaker 1: comes down to the little niceties in life, don't you think,
Speaker 1: yeah again to the room. But I don't think I
Speaker 1: find it that annoying if the robot is in the
Speaker 1: room with me, or certainly if it if the roller
Speaker 1: bumps into me, even I'm not like going to freak
Speaker 1: out because I know it's just navigating the space. It's
Speaker 1: doing its job, and if I really want to get
Speaker 1: upset about it, I can turn the room, but of
Speaker 1: off in vacuum my own floor, which is not going
Speaker 1: to happen all right now. The confidential information trial, now
Speaker 1: this is the one where people generally were very concerned
Speaker 1: U five participantorating themselves as feeling uncomfortable or very uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Uh five participants were we're neutral into we're comfortable. But
Speaker 1: but enough red flags were raised here that people were like,
Speaker 1: I don't really like the robot bringing up personal stuff
Speaker 1: during my conversations or throwing my own words back at me.
Speaker 1: Right and again, like to your point earlier, they they
Speaker 1: knew that data needed to be stored about them. But
Speaker 1: again it was Yeah, it was throwing the information in
Speaker 1: their face. Um, are being concerned about how it was
Speaker 1: going to be maintained, you know, what sort of sensitive
Speaker 1: information and security measures were going to be taken, which
Speaker 1: would make sense, right, I mean, these are the conversations
Speaker 1: that we're having about cloud computing right now. So um yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean and you know, is my robot gonna blackmail me? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean it was my response. Yeah, I mean, we
Speaker 1: it's it's a big fear the whole basically, the fear
Speaker 1: of the AI potentially turning against us. There was an
Speaker 1: old sci fi original picture, and if anybody knows the
Speaker 1: name of this, let me know, because I could not
Speaker 1: find it searching around. But there was a film where
Speaker 1: they had like an automated system in the house and
Speaker 1: there was like a robot hand that travels around on
Speaker 1: this little runner along the ceiling like it does embodied
Speaker 1: robot hand, well know, like a terminator arm kind of
Speaker 1: thing that was attached to a a wheeled gadget that
Speaker 1: runs around on like a trolley car and the ceiling
Speaker 1: and it eventually goes hey wire and starts running around
Speaker 1: with a knife but see, I knew that. I just knew.
Speaker 1: That's like that the you know, the premise of any
Speaker 1: good horror story, and bring a cannon on stage. You
Speaker 1: gotta fire, right, all right? So watching TV with the robot,
Speaker 1: that one did pretty well. People tended to not mind
Speaker 1: a robot offering you drinks and snacks during your favorite show.
Speaker 1: This is what I thought was so funny about it.
Speaker 1: They were like, okay, yeahcent of them thought the robot
Speaker 1: was making too much effort, but they were like, oh
Speaker 1: but still, I was pretty well attended to, you know.
Speaker 1: And then finally helping the robot trial. This one was
Speaker 1: interesting because it seems like people did not respond really
Speaker 1: well to the subtle hints the robot was giving and
Speaker 1: and even either they didn't notice that the robot needed
Speaker 1: help at all, or they were like, I think the
Speaker 1: robot needs help, but I really don't know what I
Speaker 1: could do, or if I'm supposed to help the robot,
Speaker 1: that's right. There are three responses. They claimed to either
Speaker 1: be unaware, or they were aware but they weren't quite sure,
Speaker 1: as you just mentioned, or they thought that watching TV
Speaker 1: was more important. Oh well, you know, if it's a
Speaker 1: really good show, I guess right. But it reminded me
Speaker 1: of the Bostander effect that we talked about um in
Speaker 1: people's willingness, like what is my appropriate response and could
Speaker 1: I even help? I don't know. Yeah, it kind of
Speaker 1: and it makes me think like, well, if there were
Speaker 1: a bunch of other people in the room where they
Speaker 1: feel pressured to then go and help the robot, A
Speaker 1: suppose it's just sitting there going you know what, it's
Speaker 1: a really good place in this movie right now, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to get up and help you out of
Speaker 1: that corner. Now. This is one that I feel like
Speaker 1: would be different in an actual home environment where the
Speaker 1: robot belonged to you or something, or it was you
Speaker 1: were more part of it. Because these were test subjects,
Speaker 1: so I could see them being like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm supposed to help the robot. They didn't say
Speaker 1: anything about helping the robot. You know, at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the test, they just told me to watch TV
Speaker 1: and eat snacks. And I could totally get a credit
Speaker 1: for it, man, but more snacks please. Well. One of
Speaker 1: the the overall findings that came out of that one too, though,
Speaker 1: it was they because they end up making various arguments
Speaker 1: about what we need to think about going forward with
Speaker 1: the with the feature of the robot house, and they said,
Speaker 1: you need to have clear signals if the robot needs help,
Speaker 1: you need there no beating around the bush. Robot needs
Speaker 1: to let you know. And that's something I feel that
Speaker 1: the room bat robot. And then I hope this doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like too much like an advertisement for the room,
Speaker 1: but it's the only robot that lives in. But you
Speaker 1: clearly have a relationship with your room. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm convinced that when you like your room, but you
Speaker 1: call it max, but when it's in trouble you call
Speaker 1: it Maximilian. Is well, yeah, if I'm talking to it
Speaker 1: and giving it a hard time. But but but the
Speaker 1: thing about the design, and this is an older model
Speaker 1: that we have, so I feel like the makers are
Speaker 1: already on top of this a little like it has
Speaker 1: definite little sing song beeps that it gives for such
Speaker 1: different circumstances. And I'm not well versed enough in its
Speaker 1: language to know necessarily which what what it's saying with
Speaker 1: each one of them, but they're there are definite sounds
Speaker 1: that it makes when it makes make when it's stuck
Speaker 1: that it will make when it's uh, when it's running
Speaker 1: low on battery, or when it finished. And that's like
Speaker 1: this little victory song and all. So I feel like
Speaker 1: it is already a pretty clear about when it needs
Speaker 1: my help. Um well, I think it again. It just
Speaker 1: sort of brings up how complicated uh communication is, even
Speaker 1: just among humans. Then to have a machine trying to
Speaker 1: communicate with us and living with all those little different
Speaker 1: nuances that we take for granted, those um you know,
Speaker 1: nonverbal signals that we give each other that helps us
Speaker 1: to negotiate the world, or certain social norms. Like one
Speaker 1: thing that came up was the whole passing between two
Speaker 1: people when they're having a conversation. It's something that people
Speaker 1: generally don't do, just on principle, unless you absolutely have
Speaker 1: to cross between two people having a conversation, you just
Speaker 1: don't do it because it's rude. But the robots and
Speaker 1: these studies didn't have any problem with that. The people,
Speaker 1: of course did, and so that's something you would have
Speaker 1: to think about, like the robot keeping a safe, a
Speaker 1: reasonable polite distance from people during certain parts of one's life,
Speaker 1: and this would spill over to like the robot being
Speaker 1: able to realize if there is, say a heated argument
Speaker 1: going on, and knowing that that it's maybe not the
Speaker 1: best time to decorate the walls or deliver some personal data. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not to throw any facts back that you ever remind
Speaker 1: you about things. Well, you're saying, you know, in an
Speaker 1: emotional state, or if you've just woken up and you're
Speaker 1: clearly or if you're you know, you're in a grumpy mood,
Speaker 1: maybe knows not to mess with you that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And there's so many nuances that we would need to
Speaker 1: navigate in addition to navigating the space. And that's the
Speaker 1: other thing, navigating the space and navigating these moving people
Speaker 1: in a way that's safe. Like like we have a
Speaker 1: rule in our household that the well, I guess the
Speaker 1: rule is the room, but doesn't go in the kitchen either.
Speaker 1: But the cat doesn't go in the kitchen. Be not
Speaker 1: so much because the cat's gonna jump on anything. But
Speaker 1: it's a dangerous place to have an animal underfoot because
Speaker 1: you could potentially injure the animal and or yourself. You're
Speaker 1: carrying the plates, you're carrying hot dishes, you're you're carrying knives.
Speaker 1: It's just not a safe environment for an animal to
Speaker 1: be walking around your feet. Likewise, you would need to
Speaker 1: take these concerns into into mind when figuring out how
Speaker 1: a robot navigates the household. Yeah, rope lot should not
Speaker 1: go into the utility room, right, No, no axes, uh no,
Speaker 1: no writing, lawnmowers definitely don't see robot. Well, yeah, actually
Speaker 1: make a little algorithm of it, but maybe that robot
Speaker 1: stays outside. Well. One of the studies that that you
Speaker 1: sent me it Um mentioned how that the possibility of
Speaker 1: having the one robot mind that uses different bodies in
Speaker 1: the house about the idea that it would be. It
Speaker 1: would be sincd with the with with the electrical grid
Speaker 1: for the apartment or house, so it would be able
Speaker 1: to tell when certain appliances or objects were being used
Speaker 1: and therefore no like where you were or in other
Speaker 1: cases they'd be able to like know where your footfalls
Speaker 1: are happening in the house, just keeping track of where
Speaker 1: the person is at all times and to know and
Speaker 1: also you can imagine this being implemented into larger data
Speaker 1: to know that well, they never go in the basement
Speaker 1: during the day, So I'm going to do something annoying
Speaker 1: in the basement, that's the time, right, and they could
Speaker 1: also use that information to punk you in the bathroom
Speaker 1: and turn off all the lights. The Robot House study
Speaker 1: that one of the big findings though, was that they're
Speaker 1: finding suggested a quote negative relationship between robot autonomy and
Speaker 1: human responsibility when both are working on a collaborating task,
Speaker 1: which I've found uh again kind of telling about us
Speaker 1: and uh and you know, and and it just brings like,
Speaker 1: how to what extent can we avoid that? Like our again,
Speaker 1: our robots just gonna be punching bags in our houses?
Speaker 1: Are we going to just yell at them? Are they
Speaker 1: going to be our our abused servants? I mean, I
Speaker 1: honestly can see some sort of literature coming out or
Speaker 1: psychological studies about how to best deal with AI and
Speaker 1: cooperate with it, with with the end goal being that
Speaker 1: the better information you give your robot, the better you cooperate,
Speaker 1: but that the better service is going to provide you.
Speaker 1: I know that sounds weird, but I think that this
Speaker 1: is the sort of things that we're going to see
Speaker 1: in the future because it's going to become so important
Speaker 1: to our day to day lives, especially if you're a
Speaker 1: senior citizen just trying to to live, especially if you're
Speaker 1: senior citizen and hand right and you're just trying to
Speaker 1: get a meal together. UM, you don't want to be
Speaker 1: really fighting with your robot fighting in air quotes, I suppose, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and to what extent to then, if someone is
Speaker 1: abusive towards their robot is to what extent is that
Speaker 1: a real red flag about that individual? And maybe there
Speaker 1: needs to be some sort of intervention. I know there's
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, like AI psychology newfield, if it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually I guess it's at least emerging. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: it's certainly being used to try to UM to program machines,
Speaker 1: and but in terms of how we are dealing with
Speaker 1: robots or psychological basis and how we can better deal
Speaker 1: with them, I don't think that it's in full force. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and at what point do they have rights? At
Speaker 1: what point does it significantly advanced AI have some sort
Speaker 1: of human rights for itself? But no, I mean that's
Speaker 1: a that's an interesting proposition. I mean that that we've
Speaker 1: talked about animal rights before, right, so you know, it's
Speaker 1: always hard to get outside of our human psyche, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's easy to antimorphizes something when we think
Speaker 1: they're cute or they're dangerous, but you know, outside of that,
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to say, oh, well, that has
Speaker 1: rights or shouldn't have rights because it's not us. That
Speaker 1: was another aspect of the study, the robot house study.
Speaker 1: They had the four different models they had people look
Speaker 1: at remember um two headheads you didn't. They had the
Speaker 1: mechanoid versions, which just looked like clunky machines that fold
Speaker 1: around your house. And then they had two versions and
Speaker 1: hands and arms. Uh. In this so they were also
Speaker 1: gauging like which which models the people prefer. Do they
Speaker 1: want something that looks just like a you know, a
Speaker 1: piece of equipment rolling around the house, or do they
Speaker 1: want the person? Yeah, which brings up the whole on
Speaker 1: Kenny Valley Harry, which we'll talk about it in a
Speaker 1: different podcast sometimes soon here. But alsot of issues that
Speaker 1: pop up. So hey, let's uh pull something from the
Speaker 1: mail bag, why don't we all right? One comes to
Speaker 1: us from John. John rides in and says, hi, Robert,
Speaker 1: Julie and Matt, Hey check that out. Matt, you gotta mention, Uh,
Speaker 1: I enjoy your podcast and am pleasantly surprised that your
Speaker 1: ability to take any topic and captivate my attention as
Speaker 1: you dive into the topics and discuss the science behind them.
Speaker 1: I cannot help but let my mind wander as well
Speaker 1: in listening to the podcast I'm bringing Science Monster in
Speaker 1: and other references of the Blue Brain Project. I cannot
Speaker 1: help but wonder will it ever be possible to create
Speaker 1: a man that is our caliber of reasoning and understanding?
Speaker 1: As we dive into the mysteries of God and unravel
Speaker 1: the complexity of the human are we not enlightened and
Speaker 1: so influenced in an ever changing light? Will our understanding
Speaker 1: of ourselves mirror our true consciousness? Or will the knowledge
Speaker 1: we gain influence our evolution to deeper, more introspective self.
Speaker 1: Every great discovery has in time changed our view of
Speaker 1: the world and likewise changed our thinking. Therefore, can we
Speaker 1: truly understand the mind? Or will it's ever changing nature
Speaker 1: adapt to the new understandings we find and continue to
Speaker 1: work in complex perhaps altering uh are the physical connections
Speaker 1: and thus connecting the physical properties of the knowledge that
Speaker 1: we hold, and thus keeping the brain and mind transfixed
Speaker 1: in a world scene uh, but not touched or understood
Speaker 1: just some cooper thought your fans. John, Wow, I really
Speaker 1: like that because it made me think a lot about
Speaker 1: how we've talked about when the fictions of our realities
Speaker 1: fall away, sometimes we're frightened of because we feel like
Speaker 1: there's no mystery left. And he is, in fact, I think,
Speaker 1: suggesting that there's the possibility for deeper in introspection and
Speaker 1: maybe even other mysteries. Indeed, and this is exactly the
Speaker 1: kind of like fan mail I like to to get
Speaker 1: because I feel like a lot of what we do
Speaker 1: is like we throw up some really cool ideas, some
Speaker 1: really cool um research into various topics and then just
Speaker 1: sort of throw hopefully throw open the barn doors for
Speaker 1: everyone to sort of go out and think even even
Speaker 1: farther about it. And well, yeah, yeah, and it's great
Speaker 1: to hear that that someone's been procolating on that in
Speaker 1: their ideas. Yeah, it fires me up, indeed, So thanks John,
Speaker 1: and glad to hear that some of our podcasts have
Speaker 1: got your you got your brain move in there, So
Speaker 1: if you would like to share anything with us, and
Speaker 1: in particular, and I'm interested to hear from other pool
Speaker 1: who have robots in in their household, um, even far
Speaker 1: more advanced robotic households or workplaces uh than my own. Uh.
Speaker 1: How do you interact with the robot? How do you
Speaker 1: feel about the robot? It's a part of your life?
Speaker 1: And and and also along these five different tests that
Speaker 1: we studied in this podcast, how do how do? How
Speaker 1: does your experience? The line up with their findings. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook and Twitter. We'll blow the
Speaker 1: Mind on both of those and um, you know you
Speaker 1: can you can share stuff there or or you can
Speaker 1: always drop us a line. Let us know the name
Speaker 1: you have given to your room BA by sending us
Speaker 1: an email at blow the Mind at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
Speaker 1: we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.