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Tiffany: When I was growing up in the 70s, I loved the robots in Star Wars.
I was also kind of scared of robots in movies where the evil
robots, where they were going to take over the world.
Today, a lot of people are talking about robot drivers
or robot drones. So, it's either like really good or really bad.
What's the real future of robots?
Why do we have such a love hate relationship with them?
I'm Tiffany Shlain. I'm a mother, filmmaker, I founded the Webby Awards.
This series is about how the future doesn't start
somewhere far off in the distance.
The future starts here.
(upbeat music)
Tiffany: Because I'm so fascinated with robots,
it's a really good thing that I married a professor robotics.
Ken: Am I looking at you or ...
(upbeat music)
Tiffany: So, do you think robots are going to surpass humans and take over?
Ken: No. We don't need to worry about surpassing us.
Tiffany: That's why I love him. He doesn't believe robots are going to take over.
Ken: Actually, the more I learn about robots,
the more I realize how far we still have to go.
Tiffany: How far back does the history of robots go?
Ken: It goes back a long way. They say that the ancient Egyptians
built moving statues. They were the ones who invented the steam engines.
Tiffany: So, they were the original steam punks.
Ken: Yeah. Right.
Actually, there are countless stories in Eastern and Western culture.
The Greeks imagined a statue that comes to life.
There's the Golden Prague. You remember Frankenstein,
leading up to C3PO, an astroboy.
Tiffany: Where are the real robots, like, in our world today?
Ken: Their mostly in factories. Actually, now there are over a million
industrial robots working on the assembly lines
doing things like welding, painting.
Tiffany: Those robots are way too busy to be plotting to take over the world.
Male: I have made that dream come true.
There you have it, greatest creation of mans intelligence.
A human robot. Ha ha ha ha.
Ken: One thing we do have to worry about, is robot drones.
It turns out that robots are better a flying than driving.
Tiffany: Why?
Ken: Because, there's a lot more empty space in the air
than on the road. So, their are more variable.
New drones are agile and essentially invisible.
They can reserve and strike without warning.
Tiffany: Which is really freaking scary.
Ken: Absolutely. There are also many applications where robots can be helpful.
Back in the 1950s we all though robots would replace humans.
We wanted to work less and have more leisure time.
Today, we want jobs. We're focusing on robots that can enhance how we work,
rather than replacing us.
Tiffany: So, robots that are more like companions than tools?
Ken: Right. The emphasis now is on robots that can help us with things, like
folding laundry, driving our cars, assisting surgeons in the operating rooms
to be more precise, even helping people walk.
There's all kinds of interesting research being done
on robots that cooperate with humans.
(upbeat music)
Tiffany: What about everyday life. I mean, we could certainly use on in our house.
What about the robot that actually can clear our dinner table?
Ken: Now, that turns out to be a surprisingly hard problem.
Put yourself in the position of being the robot.
Everything is out of focus for you. What you see is jittery, confusing,
it's very hard to coordinate your sensors and motors.
Your uncertain about your environment and your actions.
Nothing is reliable. Not even your own body.
When you reach out to pick something up ...
Tiffany: You feel very clumsy.
Ken: Right. There's an exciting new concept called belief space.
Tiffany: That sounds so Californian.
Ken: It does, but it's a mathematical frame work,
that allows robots to analysis uncertainly and to learn over time.
So, they can predict which actions are most likely to succeed.
Belief space requires a huge amount of number crunching
to extract the single from the noise.
Which, is why we're developing another concept that we call cloud robotics.
The idea here is that each robot doesn't have to do all the thinking by itself.
Instead, robots can act online, over the internet
to clusters of computers that do the number crunching.
Tiffany: Like, what humans are doing, sharing information over the web?
Ken: Exactly. Robots are now getting on the internet to share data and software.
Tiffany: Does that mean that soon robots are going to meet on robot grinder
or robot Facebook?
Ken: Or inner Facebook?
(laughing)
Ken: Or maybe they'll start procrastinating by watching themselves on YouTube.
Even with the cloud, robots are still very far from being
graceful as humans.
Tiffany: I'm finally getting something that in our whole 17-years
together, I don't think I have fully gotten as deeply as right now.
Which is that all of your art instillation's,
they are really about the gap between what humans can do
and what robots can't do.
Ken: Yes.
Tiffany: Yeah. Yeah. I got you.
Ken: That got this profound. It reveals things about us
that are uniquely human.
Tiffany: What are some of the things that robots can't do?
Ken: Where do I start? They don't have intuition.
They don't have emotion. They can't be creative.
Tiffany: They can't fall in love.
Ken: They can't fall in love. That's why robots are endlessly fascinating.
They remind us how vulnerable we are, and how amazing we are.
Tiffany: I love that. Ooh. Hello.