Kate Darling is a researcher at MIT, interested in social robotics, robot ethics, and generally how technology intersects with society. She explores the emotional connection between human beings and life-like machines, which for me, is one of the most exciting topics in all of artificial intelligence.

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EPISODE LINKS:
Kate's Website: http://www.katedarling.org/
Kate's Twitter: https://twitter.com/grok_

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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
3:31 - Robot ethics
4:36 - Universal Basic Income
6:31 - Mistreating robots
17:17 - Robots teaching us about ourselves
20:27 - Intimate connection with robots
24:29 - Trolley problem and making difficult moral decisions
31:59 - Anthropomorphism
38:09 - Favorite robot
41:19 - Sophia
42:46 - Designing robots for human connection
47:01 - Why is it so hard to build a personal robotics company?
50:03 - Is it possible to fall in love with a robot?
56:39 - Robots displaying consciousness and mortality
58:33 - Manipulation of emotion by companies
1:04:40 - Intellectual property
1:09:23 - Lessons for robotics from parenthood
1:10:41 - Hope for future of robotics

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The following is a conversation with Kate Darling, a researcher at MIT, interested in social robotics, robot ethics, and generally, how technology intersects with society.

She explores the emotional connection between human beings and lifelike machines, which for me is 1 of the most exciting topics in all of artificial intelligence.

As she writes in her bio, she's a caretaker of several domestic robots, including her Plio dinosaur robots named Yo-Chai, Peter, and Mr.

She's 1 of the funniest and brightest minds I've ever had the fortune to talk to.

This conversation was recorded recently, but before the outbreak of the pandemic.

For everyone feeling the burden of this crisis, I'm sending love your way.

This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.

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And now, here's my conversation with Kate Darling.

What are some ethical issues that arise in the world with robots?

Yeah, that was a reading group that I did when I, like at the very beginning, first became interested in this topic.

So I think if I taught that class today, it would look very, very different.

Robot ethics, it sounds very science fictiony, especially did back then.

But I think that some of the issues that people in robot ethics are concerned with are just around the ethical use of robotic technology in general.

So for example, responsibility for harm, automated weapon systems, things like privacy and data security, things like automation and labor markets.

And then personally, I'm really interested in some of the social issues that come out of our social relationships with robots.

I think most of the stuff we have to talk about is like one-on-one social stuff.

I think that's what you love as well and are expert in.

But at societal level, there's like, there's a presidential candidate now, Andrew Yang, running, concerned about automation and robots and AI in general taking away jobs.

He has a proposal of UBI, Universal Basic Income, of everybody gets a thousand bucks.

As a way to sort of save you if you lose your job from automation, to allow you time to discover what it is that you would like to, or even love to do.

So I lived in Switzerland for 20 years and universal basic income has been more of a topic there, separate from the whole robots and jobs issue.

So it's so interesting to me to see kind of these Silicon Valley people latch onto this concept that came from a very kind of left-wing socialists, you know, kind of a different place in Europe.

But on the automation and labor markets topic, I think that it's very, so sometimes in those conversations, I think people overestimate where robotic technology is right now.

And we also have this fallacy of constantly comparing robots to humans and thinking of this as a one-to-one replacement of jobs.

So even like Bill Gates a few years ago said something about, you know, Maybe we should have a system that taxes robots for taking people's jobs.

And it just, I mean, I'm sure that was taken out of context.

You know, he's a really smart guy, but that sounds to me like kind of viewing it as a one-to-one replacement versus viewing this technology as kind of a supplemental tool that of course is gonna shake up a lot of stuff, it's gonna change the job landscape, but I don't see robots taking all the jobs in the next 20 years.

Right, so maybe drifting into the land of more personal relationships with robots and interaction and so on, I gotta warn you, I go, I may ask some silly philosophical questions, I apologize.

Okay, do you think humans will abuse robots in their interactions?

So you've had a lot of, and we'll talk about it, sort of anthropomorphization and, you know, this intricate dance, emotional dance between human and robot, but there seems to be also a darker side where people, when they treat the other, as servants especially, they can be a little bit abusive or a lot abusive.

So, I mean, 1 of my main interests is the fact that people subconsciously treat robots like living things, and even though they know that they're interacting with a machine, and what it means in that context to behave violently.

I don't know if you could say abuse because you're not actually abusing the inner mind of the robot, the robot doesn't have any feelings.

It also depends on how we define feelings and consciousness, but I think that's another area where people kind of overestimate where we currently are with the technology.

Like the robots are not even as smart as insects right now.

And so I'm not worried about abuse in that sense, But it is interesting to think about what does people's behavior towards these things mean for our own behavior?

Is it desensitizing the people to be verbally abusive to a robot or even physically abusive?

Right, it's a similar connection from like, if you play violent video games.

What connection does that have to desensitization to violence?

It's like, I haven't read literature on that.

Because everything I've heard, people don't seem to any longer be so worried about violent video games.

We've seemed, the research on it is, it's a difficult thing to research, so it's sort of inconclusive, but we seem to have gotten the sense, at least as a society, that people can compartmentalize.

When it's something on a screen and you're like, you know, shooting a bunch of characters or running over people with your car, that doesn't necessarily translate to you doing that in real life.

We do, however, have some concerns about children playing violent video games, and so we do restrict it there.

I'm not sure that's based on any real evidence either, but it's just the way that we've kind of decided, you know, we want to be a little more cautious there.

And the reason I think robots are a little bit different is because there is a lot of research showing that we respond differently to something in our physical space than something on a screen.

We will treat it much more viscerally, much more like a physical actor.

And so it's totally possible that this is not a problem.

And it's the same thing as violence in video games, maybe restrict it with kids to be safe, but adults can do what they want.

But we just need to ask the question again because we don't have any evidence at all yet.

Maybe there's an intermediate place to, I did my research on Twitter.

By research I mean scrolling through your Twitter feed.

You mentioned that you were going at some point to an animal law conference.

So I have to ask, do you think there's something that we can learn from animal rights that guides our thinking about robots?

Oh, I think there is so much to learn from that.

I'm actually writing a book on it right now.

So I'm writing a book that looks at the history of animal domestication and how we've used animals for work, for weaponry, for companionship.

And 1 of the things the book tries to do is move away from this fallacy that I talked about of comparing robots and humans, because I don't think that's the right analogy.

But I do think that on a social level, even on a social level, there's so much that we can learn from looking at that history, because throughout history, we've treated most animals like tools, like products.

And then some of them we've treated differently and we're starting to see people treat robots in really similar ways.

So I think it's a really helpful predictor to how we're gonna interact with the robots.

Do you think we'll look back at this time, like a hundred years from now and see what we do to animals as like similar to the way we view like the Holocaust with the World War II?

But I often wonder, you know, what are my grandkids gonna view as, you know, abhorrent that my generation did, that they would never do?

You know, it's a fun question to ask yourself.

It always seems that there's atrocities that we discover later.

So the things that at the time people didn't see as, you know, you look at everything from slavery to any kinds of abuse throughout history, to the kind of insane wars that were happening, to the way war was carried out, and rape and the kind of violence that was happening during war, that we now, you know, we see as atrocities, but at the time perhaps didn't as much.

And so now I have this intuition that I have this worry, Maybe I'm, you're going to probably criticize me, but I do anthropomorphize robots.

I have, I don't see a fundamental philosophical difference between a robot and a human being in terms of once the capabilities are matched.

So the fact that we're really far away doesn't, in terms of capabilities, and then that from natural language processing, understanding and generation, to just reasoning and all that stuff.

I think once you solve it, I see the, this is a very gray area.

And I don't feel comfortable with the kind of abuse that people throw at robots.

Subtle, but I can see it becoming, I can see basically a civil rights movement for robots in the future.

Do you think, let me put it in the form of a question, do you think robots should have some kinds of rights?

Well, it's interesting because I came at this originally from your perspective.

There's no fundamental difference between technology and human consciousness.

And so there's no reason not to give machines the same rights that we have once, like you say, they're kind of on an equivalent level.

But I realized that that is kind of a far future question.

I still think we should talk about it because I think it's really interesting, but I realized that it's actually, we might need to ask the robot rights question even sooner than that, while the machines are still, you know, quote unquote, really, you know, dumb and not on our level, because of the way that we perceive them.

And I think 1 of the lessons we learned from looking at the history of animal rights, and 1 of the reasons we may not get to a place in a hundred years where we view it as wrong to eat or otherwise use animals for our own purposes, is because historically we've always protected those things that we relate to the most.

Yeah, no 1 gave a shit about the whales until someone recorded them singing.

And suddenly people were like, oh, this is a beautiful creature and now we need to save the whales.

And that started the whole Save the Whales movement in the 70s.

So, as much as I, and I think a lot of people wanna believe that we care about consistent biological criteria, that's not historically how we formed our alliances.

Yeah, so why do we believe that all humans are created equal?

Killing of a human being, no matter who the human being is, that's what I meant by equality, is bad.

And then, because I'm connecting that to robots, and I'm wondering whether mortality, so the killing act is what makes something, that's the fundamental first right.

So I am currently allowed to take a shotgun and shoot a Roomba, I think.

So that's where the line appears to be, right?

I think here again, like the animal analogy is really useful because you're also allowed to shoot your dog, but people won't be happy about it.

So we do give animals certain protections from like, you know, you're not allowed to torture your dog and set it on fire, at least in most states and countries, you know.

But you're still allowed to treat it like a piece of property in a lot of other ways.

And so, we draw these arbitrary lines all the time.

And there's a lot of philosophical thought on why viewing humans as something unique is just speciesism and not based on any criteria that would actually justify making a difference between us and other species.

Do you think in general, most people are good?

Or do you think there's evil and good in all of us?

That's revealed through our circumstances and through our interactions.

I like to view myself as a person who like, believes that there's no absolute evil and good and that everything is, you know, gray.

But I do think it's an interesting question.

Like when I see people being violent towards robotic objects you said that bothers you because the robots might someday be smart and is that what?

Well it bothers me because it reveals, so I personally believe, because I've studied way too much, so I'm Jewish, I studied the Holocaust and World War II exceptionally well.

I personally believe that most of us have evil in us, that what bothers me is the abuse of robots reveals the evil in human beings.

It's, I think it's an opportunity for roboticists to make, help people find the better sides, the angels of their nature, right?

That that abuse isn't just a fun side thing, that's you revealing a dark part that should be hidden deep inside.

Yeah, I mean, you laugh, but some of our research does indicate that maybe people's behavior towards robots reveals something about their tendencies for empathy generally, even using very simple robots that we have today that clearly don't feel anything.

So, Westworld is maybe, not so far off and it's depicting the bad characters as willing to go around and shoot and rape the robots and the good characters is not wanting to do that.

Even without assuming that the robots have consciousness.

So there's a opportunity, it's interesting, there's an opportunity to almost practice empathy.

Robots is an opportunity to practice empathy.

Some people would say, why are we practicing empathy on robots instead of on our fellow humans or on animals that are actually alive and experience the world?

And I don't agree with them because I don't think empathy is a 0 sum game and I do think that it's a muscle that you can train and that we should be doing that, but some people disagree.

So the interesting thing, you've heard, you know, raising kids, sort of asking them or telling them to be nice to the smart speakers, to Alexa and so on, saying please and so on during the requests.

I don't know if, I'm a huge fan of that idea.

Because yeah, that's towards the idea of practicing empathy.

I feel like politeness, I'm always polite to all the systems that we build, especially anything that's speech interaction based, like when we talk to the car, I always have a pretty good detector for please.

I feel like there should be a room for encouraging empathy in those interactions.

Okay, so I agree with you, so I'm gonna play devil's advocate.

Yeah, what is the devil's advocate argument there?

The devil's advocate argument is that if you are the type of person who has abusive tendencies or needs to get some sort of like behavior like that out, needs an outlet for it, that it's great to have a robot that you can scream at so that you're not screaming at a person.

And we just don't know whether that's true, whether it's an outlet for people, or whether it just kind of, as my friend once said, trains their cruelty muscles and makes them more cruel in other situations.

Oh boy, yeah, And that expands to other topics, which I don't know.

There's a topic of sex, which is a weird 1 that I tend to avoid from robotics perspective, and mostly the general public doesn't.

Is that an area you've touched at all research-wise?

Like the way, because that's what people imagine sort of any kind of interaction between human and robot that shows any kind of compassion.

They immediately think from a product perspective in the near term is sort of expansion of what pornography is and all that kind of stuff.

That's kind of you to like characterize it as though they're thinking rationally about product.

I feel like sex robots are just such a like titillating news hook for people that they become like the story.

And it's really hard to not get fatigued by it when you're in the space, because you tell someone you do human-robot interaction, of course the first thing they wanna talk about is sex robots.

And it's unfortunate that I'm so fatigued by it because I do think that there are some interesting questions that become salient when you talk about sex with robots?

See what I think would happen when people get sex robots, like if you're, let's have guys, okay guys get female sex robots.

What I think there's an opportunity for is an actual, like they'll actually interact, What I'm trying to say, they won't, outside of the sex would be the most fulfilling part.

Like the interaction, it's like the folks who, there's movies and this, right?

Who pay a prostitute and then end up just talking to her the whole time.

It's like most guys and people in general joke about the sex act, but really people are just lonely inside and they're looking for connection, many of them.

And it'd be unfortunate if that connection is established through the sex industry.

I feel like it should go into the front door of like people are lonely and they want a connection.

Well, I also feel like we should kind of de-stigmatize the sex industry because even prostitution, like there are prostitutes that specialize in disabled people who don't have the same kind of opportunities to explore their sexuality.

So it's, I feel like we should like destigmatize all of that generally.

But yeah, that connection and that loneliness is an interesting topic that you bring up because while people are constantly worried about robots replacing humans and oh, if people get sex robots and the sex is really good then they won't want their partner or whatever, but we rarely talk about robots actually filling a hole where There's nothing and what benefit that can provide to people.

Yeah, I think that's an exciting, there's a giant hole that's unfillable by humans.

It's asking too much of your friends and people you're in a relationship with in your family to fill that hole.

Because it's exploring the full, exploring the full complexity and richness of who you are.

People, your family doesn't have enough patience to really sit there and listen to who are you really.

And I feel like there's an opportunity to really make that connection with robots.

I just feel like we're complex as humans and we're capable of lots of different types of relationships.

So whether that's with family members, with friends, with our pets, or with robots, I feel like there's space for all of that and all of that can provide value in a different way.

Currently most of my work is in autonomous vehicles.

So the most popular topic among general public is the trolley problem.

So most, most, Most roboticists kind of hate this question, but what do you think of this thought experiment?

What do you think we can learn from it outside of the silliness of the actual application of it to the autonomous vehicle?

I think it's still an interesting ethical question and that in itself, just like much of the interaction with robots, has something to teach us, but from your perspective, do you think there's anything there?

Well, I think you're right that it does have something to teach us, but I think what people are forgetting in all of these conversations is the origins of the trolley problem and what it was meant to show us,

is that there is no right answer and that sometimes our moral intuition that comes to us instinctively is not actually what we should follow if we care about creating systematic rules that apply to everyone.

So I think that as a philosophical concept, it could teach us at least that, but that's not how people are using it right now.

Like we have, and these are friends of mine and like I love them dearly and their project adds a lot of value.

But if we're viewing the Moral Machine project as what we can learn from the trolley problems, the Moral Machine is, I'm sure you're familiar, it's this website that you can go to and it gives you different scenarios.

Like, oh, you're in a car, you can decide to run over these 2 people or this child.

Do you choose the person who's jaywalking?

And so it pits these moral choices against each other and then tries to crowdsource the quote-unquote correct answer, which is really interesting and I think valuable data, but I don't think that's what we should base our rules in autonomous vehicles on, because it is exactly what the trolley problem is trying to show, which is your first instinct might not be the correct 1 if you look at rules that then have to apply to everyone and everything.

So how do we encode these ethical choices in interaction with robots?

So for example, in autonomous vehicles, there is a serious ethical question of, do I protect myself?

Does my life have higher priority than the life of another human being because that changes certain controlled decisions that you make.

So if your life matters more than other human beings, then you'd be more likely to swerve out of your current lane.

So currently automated emergency braking systems that just break, they don't ever swerve.

So swerving into oncoming traffic or no, just in a different lane can cause significant harm to others, but it's possible that it causes less harm to you.

Do you have a hope that, like the trolley problem's not supposed to have a right answer, right?

Do you hope that when we have robots at the table, we'll be able to discover the right answer for some of these questions?

Well, what's happening right now, I think, is this question that we're facing of, what ethical rules should we be programming into the machines is revealing to us that our ethical rules are much less programmable than we probably thought before.

And so that's a really valuable insight, I think, that these issues are very complicated and that in a lot of these cases, you can't really make that call, like not even as a legislator.

And so what's gonna happen in reality, I think is that car manufacturers are just gonna try and avoid the problem and avoid liability in any way possible.

Or like, they're gonna always protect the driver because who's gonna buy a car if it's programmed to kill you instead of someone else.

So that's what's gonna happen in reality.

But what did you mean by once we have robots at the table?

Do you mean when they can help us figure out what to do?

No, I mean when robots are part of the ethical decisions.

Oh, you mean when it's like, should I run over a robot or a person?

So, it's exactly what you said, which is when you have to encode the ethics into an algorithm, you start to try to really understand what are the fundamentals of the decision-making process you make to make certain decisions.

Should you, like capital punishment, should you take a person's life or not to punish them for a certain crime?

Sort of, you can use, you can develop an algorithm to make that decision, right?

And the hope is that the act of making that algorithm, however you make it, so there's a few approaches, will help us actually get to the core of what is right and what is wrong under our current societal standards.

But isn't that what's happening right now?

And we're realizing that we don't have a consensus on what's right and wrong.

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Kate Darling: Social Robotics | Lex Fridman Podcast #98