Lex Fridman interviews Kate Darling in this episode of the AI Show.

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. This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast.

Time index:

• 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