Robots and reality

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1:11Welcome to the Forum from the BBC World Service. I am Issy Lawrence. No, it really is me. The reason I sounded strangely robotic is just my producer was playing around with my voice. but it gives you a clue as to what we'll be talking about today.

1:44That, as you may have guessed, is the sound of washing up, but it's a robot doing the work rather than a human. The robot has been put together by one of my guests today, Professor Ousmane Roshan from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and his team from his 7X household robotics company. We'll hear from Ousmane in a moment, but first let's see what kind of domestic robot helpers would World Service listeners prefer. Lots of listeners told us on Facebook that they would like help with all the basic chores from cleaning toilets to ironing. But there were some more imaginative answers too. I wish an inventor would create a little drone that could fly around my house carefully and do the dusting.

2:31I'd like to see a robotic vacuum cleaner with a long snake-like neck. It would probably be equipped with a camera, LED, lidar and AI to go into the small nooks and crannies where a normal robotic vacuum cannot go. The AI would ensure that only dirt is sucked up and not a misplaced valuable. And this long neck would move of its own accord and go up to the ceiling and might find spider webs. But perhaps there could be an option to not ingest the spiders but to set them free later on. I'd love a robot that can make tea for my husband on his command. The robot I would really like is Rosie from the Jetsons in the 1960s.

3:21She could do it all and you didn't have to worry about her messing things up. You tell her to clean the kitchen and she would do it. In my country, all the household chores are usually done by women. But if I had responsibility for doing them, I would need a robot for laundry and washing the dishes. I would love a weeding bot. for the garden. Should be arachnoform with eight legs to walk about on and each ending in a different tool. If in doubt, it would send a picture to my phone asking if the plant it has found is wanted or not. Listeners, Vatlana, Ash, Jean, Laurie, Hazrat and Lynn. By the way, the Jetsons were a futuristic family from a TV cartoon series broadcast in the 1960s, and Rosie was their extremely capable humanoid robot.

4:18But why are we focusing on domestic robots in this programme? It turns out that robotic helpers for the home are now probably the most widespread of all robots in civilian use. Precise numbers are hard to come by, but as a conservative estimate, there are tens of millions of robotic floor sweepers and lawnmowers in domestic settings. Would you like a robot to vacuum your floors, Emma? Yeah, yeah. You know, I grew up with a father, a mathematician and physicist, who regularly said, by the time you earn your own money, there will be fully automated homes, something like that, you know. So I'm afraid my expectations of a domestic robot are too high to be satisfied with just a vacuum cleaner that probably quotes Rilke or something.

5:11So with that mindset, so I grew up a robot vacuum cleaner that is just driving around on its own. I think it's simply not enough for me to invest in. That's Emma Braslavsky, German novelist and author of an award-winning story about a robotic future called I'm Your Man that was recently made into a film. But what about you, Ben? Do robot floor sweepers, or lawnmowers for that matter, appeal to you? Yeah, I love them actually. I like them because they're simple. And what you do is when you look at them, you imbue them with all sorts of life and character and stuff, which isn't actually there, but it's your imagination playing tricks with you.

5:51That's Ben Russell, curator of mechanical engineering at the Science Museum in London and the editor of a book on our 500-year quest to make machines human. Now, Usman, you design and make robots, so I have a slightly different question for you. As far as I know, there has not been a huge uptick in the public's demand for domestic floor sweepers recently. And yet the robots that you are working on suggest that we may actually be living through a paradigm shift in robotics. So how has that come about? They're basically companies that are mass producing parts of robots, like robotic arms. So the price of robots has reduced considerably.

6:36You know, very basic robots, for example, robots with six degrees of freedom in the arm, which is what is normally considered to be able to do a lot of tasks that humans can do. These arms in particular, their price has dropped considerably. So now researchers in AI and machine learning, like myself, I guess, can buy these robots and train them to do more sophisticated housework like washing dishes and laundry. And the AI has matured also much more in the last years. The models are more accurate and this is bringing about a paradigm shift in robotics. And so in the last couple of years, there has been a flurry of companies showing off their robots new domestic skills.

7:26And I should say that for the purposes of this programme, when I say robot, I mean a machine that moves by itself, senses the environment around it. And it's also able to react independently to the input of its sensors and modify its behaviour. So by this definition, the self-propelled floor sweeper that navigates around obstacles in your home is a robot. Your washing machine, however sophisticated, is not. Other definitions are available, but that's for another programme.

8:03Let's now look at some key moments in robot history. Humans have dreamt of autonomous machines that would make our lives easier since at least the time of ancient Greece, two and a half thousand years ago. But real robots, which fit the criteria that I've just outlined, only appeared after the Second World War. This man was a real pioneer. In a simple villa on the outskirts of Bristol lives Dr. Gray Walter, a neurologist, who makes robots as a hobby. They are small and he doesn't dress them up to look like men. He calls them tortoises. And so cunningly have their insides been designed that they respond to the stimuli of light and touch in a completely lifelike manner.

8:50One thing that struck me in that BBC TV clip from 1950 was the reporter describing Dr Grey Walter as a neurologist. Dr Walter certainly was a very eminent physician, but he was more than that wasn't he ben yeah really i suppose you might say he's a neurophysiologist if we're going to start splitting hairs around that sort of thing so you know he's interested in the physical structures of the brain as well as everything else he's a multifaceted character so he's a member of what's called the ratio club which is a group of engineers and mathematicians and neurologists and they they get together they have a beer and they have quite extended and protracted arguments about well what's actually happening inside the brain that sort of thing but But he's really, I suppose you might say, he's a sort of modeler of brains.

9:34And he builds those two robots at the Festival of Britain in 1951. And they really capture the public imagination. It's interesting. I think one of them's called Elmer and the other one's called Elsie. I think that might be right. Yeah. So it's quite funny how they're sort of scientific machines. Like so many robots, they're actually experimenting how brains work. But actually, they get personalised like that. And they get called tortoises. What could they do? It's interesting. They are physically almost like tortoises. So their shells are actually sort of see-through plastic, I think. So you can see everything that's going on inside them.

10:05They move around. They move towards light. They respond to touch. If their batteries are running down, they actually go back to their sort of hutch, their charging point. And they sort of run for cover and charge their batteries again. So they're very lifelike. But were they very complicated robots? No, well, they're relatively simple. I suppose the thing is, if you're investigating the brain, you know, which has, I don't know, billions of tiny components to it, that's an experiment too far in a way. But actually, just to say, OK, we're going to take a tiny, tiny sliver of the brain, a tiny bit of it, and see what happens with that, which actually experimental terms is actually a lot easier.

10:34It's remarkable that the tortoise robots could accomplish all this with what Dr. Gray-Walter said was the equivalent of just a few animal neurons. Do you find the sort of minimalist approach to robotics inspiring, Osman? I mean, generally, when you want to solve a really complex, difficult problem, I think it's probably good to try and take a minimalist approach. It's a simpler approach. It is what we're doing also. You know, instead of, you know, deciding that, OK, we'll have a machine just imitate every possible action we're showing it, try to give it some level of understanding of the world.

11:14I think if you use something other than a simple or minimalist approach, you'll end up doing something called overfitting, which means that it'll just remember what it saw and that's pretty much it. So it definitely is something that is highly inspiring, I would say, to our work.

11:39in the 1940s and 1950s the nascent robotics community on both sides of the Atlantic came up with many concepts that to this day are fundamental to the discipline can you tell us about the main ones Ben? I would say there's two main sort of building blocks which are set up quite early. The first one is what we call cybernetics. And that's really about how information is communicated inside the brain. And that's about things like feedback mechanisms, feedback loops, sort of input going in, being processed, and then having an effect of the other side of it, which of course is what robots using AI or different forms of intelligence use.

12:19The other thing they're really fascinated with is something called neural networks. so inside your brain I think there are billions of neurons which are flashing around in there and it's almost like a way of sort of channeling information towards making a decision but the interesting thing is actually neural networks are actually what's being used to power artificial intelligence today so this is how smart these people were they could see straight on at that early stage the real crux of the issue which was to subsequently come back and you can see what's happened with AI now in terms of the capabilities and the possibilities which are presented

12:56the guiding principle of robotics development was and still is to make machines that would replace the jobs which humans find dull dirty or dangerous but i wonder if there is more to our enduring fascination with robots than that i already mentioned ancient greece where writers like Homer and Hesiod conjured up robotic cauldrons and gold-plated maidservants. And Emma, this interest in robots has continued in literature ever since then, hasn't it? Oh, yeah. The robot motif is very old in human stories and changed over the time. So in ancient Greek, for instance, what I think is really interesting, they had no fear of machines because their guiding signs or leading signs was generally clay or sculpture.

13:49And it was the colorfully painted gods made of clay that actually deserved their fears. So mechanical figures were more like tools to them, but they had no animated side. So I think this robot motif changed in the Middle Ages very strong. So also pushed by the Catholic Church, there was coming up this mythological fear, like horror literature. And this fear, of course, was rooted in losing power over the, let's say, moral landscape, because these artificial beings were not created by God and obviously not subordinated to the church. So this even was coming again in the 18th, 19th centuries with this machine euphoria and then with romanticism as a resistance.

14:43Again, we have this mythological fear in this literature, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the Gothic novel. And it's again and again in the beginning of the 20th century. so we have the golem mythological protector especially in prague of the jews the jewish ghetto and this human-like being was used as a kind of a how we call it today like a terminator to protect somebody and to make afraid others so this is a line you you have it till today especially in the science fiction genre. And the word robot was actually first time used by the Czech author Karel Čapek and his theatre play Rur. And it needs nothing else than work, actually.

15:36And robot was created to substitute human work, you know. Well, just to repeat you, the word robot is derived from the Czech word robota, meaning hard or forced labour. And when I reread Carol Chapik's play, which gave us that word, I was surprised how many themes that we are still discussing today in connection with robots were already there a century ago. In the play, robots don't just perform domestic chores. They take over factory and farm production, too, because they are much cheaper than humans. Here's a short extract from a BBC dramatisation of RUR directed by Glyn Dearman. One robot can replace two and a half workmen The human machine Miss Glory was terribly imperfect It had to be removed sooner or later It was too expensive It was not very effective It no longer answered the requirements of modern engineering Nature has no idea of keeping pace with modern labour From a technical point of view The whole of childhood is a sheer stupidity So much time lost

16:43Spoiler alert But in the play, the blind zeal of the engineers, like those we've just heard, combined with the boundless greed of the company making them, quickly leads to unrest and things don't end well for us humans. I often shy away from using the word prophetic, but maybe it really is apt for this play, Emma. I think it deals with this fear of this technology and this, again, archaic, mythologized fear. The human being will be substituted by robots. And I think it has to do with our view of humanity and of our missing sovereignty towards technology. And I think this is something that we have to learn to get a strong attitude towards technology, to use it as tools.

17:36And this is, I think, very strong. You can feel it very strong, this fear in this play to get substituted by robots to work. What actually is the fear of that time? And is the fear also of today using AI, you know, whether it can be used sensibly or whether it will try to either replace us or make us more stupid. I think it's a dialectical process. We create technology in our own image and it teaches us who we are. And we urgently need to renew our attitude towards technology, which is still, I think, stuck somewhere between ancient Greece and the Middle Ages. What do you think about all of that, Ben?

18:18Do you think that this play is prophetic or do you think... Oh, I think it absolutely is. When you build a robot, it's a very powerful statement about what you think of yourself as a human being. And what's interesting, I think, is when you compare Chapex robots to actual robots in the real world, because the robots in the real world are these sort of big sort of tin men and they're a bit clunky and they walk with much difficulty and it's all a bit... But actually, Chapex robots are almost like these amazingly sci-fi bioengineered creatures, almost made from sort of synthetic... Materials. Materials.

18:52I mean, they really are properly futuristic and sci-fi. It's not like what it is in the real world, where it's this sort of big metal man type sort of stereotype. Do you have any thoughts about this, Usman? I think it depends a bit on how we use robots, where they're deployed. If we decide to just replace all the workers in a manufacturing plant with just robots, that probably will lead to problems. But if we make robots to help you do your dishes and do your laundry, maybe that will relieve some problems. So it depends a bit on how we go about it. Well, it's presumably harder for your dishwasher to unionize unless they're all in the factory together.

19:36That's my thought anyway. With all the focus on AI, there is now much talk about whether machines can think like humans or even better than humans. or whether robots, particularly domestic helpers, should be humanoid, in other words, looking quite a bit like us. But I'm beginning to wonder whether these are the wrong questions. Should we instead be asking ourselves, can robots act like humans regardless of what they look like? What do you think, Ben? I suppose we always tend to anthropomorphise. We tend to imbue things with life, don't we? I'm sure it's one of our unique sort of human traits. and I've had endless conversations with roboticists they kept saying no no it's not about anthropomorphism you know the human form actually isn't the best form to take with so many applications for robots it's not about that and I kept saying well you know you've just named your robot Brian and it's you know it's wearing trainers and that sort of thing and in a way it was interesting because those roboticists were actually denying their own humanity and their own human instincts to give the machine life but on the other hand when you think about it the human world is based around the human form.

20:45It's made by human hands. And I suppose there is a logic in a way of, well, if the human form is central to everything, the physical world that we've created, why not create robots that kind of take the same form and have the same characteristics? There's a lot of logic in that and it kind of makes sense. And the way that the AI is going is it's finally caught up with the physical nature of robots and given them the smarts they've always needed to actually make them sufficiently dynamic and adaptable to better do that properly. What do you think, Emma? I mean, obviously, you wrote about a very human-like robot.

21:16Is that necessary, do you think, for future robotics? I think there is a lot of potential that can bring us here and there to another level. I believe in it. But I would like to shift a little bit the question here, because you ask, can robots act like humans, something like that? In terms of literature, to ask, can robots produce better literature or art? So what could be the answer without being ideological or dogmatic? So perhaps we need to ask counter questions like can an LLM or embodied AI ever have a mother or pimples or a miscarriage or heart attack, dementia or children of its own and so on?

22:00would it ever suffer from something so the question is so what can it tell us that we can be part of and yes AI has access to all of humanity's quotes and word chains of course but every word comes from a feeling a longing a pain so perhaps it will take an era of coexistence between humans and machines before we can have something to tell each other, or perhaps not and never. So this is actually what is, for me, more interesting, because we always talk about intelligence. You know, we have always this word intelligent was, I think it's a little bit deceiving and leading us to a wrong understanding of what it is, what kind of tool is this, you know.

22:49Do you have any thoughts of this, Osman? Yes, I think that for robots to act like humans, we might need a bit more development on the AI side. But it's about being able to make mistakes and either being told that this is a mistake or self-correct themselves or at least have some understanding of maybe I'm supposed to be doing this, but I'm doing it wrong. that's important to embed in a robot. I mean, if it's just watching videos, does it really know what to do if it made mistakes? So we want robots to do our work and we want them to be perfect. We want them to do the perfect folding, the best cleaning.

23:33But if we want it to act like humans, we have to give it that space to acknowledge and understand that, okay, yeah, I can make mistakes and I'm not perfect. So far in this program, we've talked about robots making our lives easier. But what if they start getting things wrong, either by mistake or even deliberately? Stay with us to find out more after a short break.

24:07This is summer at its peak. Whole Foods Market Summer Fruit Fest is your invitation to eat the season. Fresh, organic, and bursting with flavor. Start your day with peaches and organic blueberries and yogurt. Build a grazing board with fresh fruit, prosciutto, and artisanal cheese. Then fire up the grill with no antibiotics ever proteins and fresh produce. Savor the season. Shop Summer Fruit Fest at Whole Foods Market. Don't play games with us. A vicious gang of hackers causing chaos for businesses, councils and hospitals. What if I don't finish this treatment and this cancer grows? But they didn't care.

24:45I'm dying laughing. Making outrageous demands for money. They wanted millions. It was high tech and high stakes. The country's under attack. And it was highly secretive until someone exposed it all. Cyber hack season four, The Conti Files. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

25:09Welcome back to The Forum from the BBC World Service. I am Izzy Lawrence and today I'm talking about robots, mostly domestic ones, with robot designer Usman Roshan, Ben Russell, a historian of robotics, and the writer of robot fiction, Emma Braslowski. Even before the 20th century, people weren't just dreaming about robots, they were also building machines that seemed to move by themselves. These machines are called automata, and they were usually powered by a sophisticated clockwork mechanism. Even though these were some of the most complex objects of their day, few of their design principles were taken up by modern robotics.

25:55But there was a mechanical flute player that foreshadowed an approach widely adopted by artificial intelligence in the last couple of decades. This remarkable musician was made by the French inventor Jacques Vaucanson in 1738. Tell us, why was it so revolutionary, Ben? The flute player by Vaucanson becomes this sort of totemic moment, because the sort of structured, formal way to do it would be, say, OK, you want to play an instrument, the first thing you need to do is come up with the whole law of acoustics. You know, how do you make sound? Quake it. I mean, where do you even start? You know, no one even really knows what heat is, for example.

26:32So something like sound, you think, well, no idea. But what he mainly does is he actually thinks about, well, why don't we just watch human beings? And how does a human being play a flute? So Ryan having to have all this technical, theoretical underpinning, he just realises just how much a very sort of dynamic tacit knowledge, stuff you do instinctively without kind of realizing or even thinking about it so if you're a professional flutist you have the most amazing technique and you can do these things without really sort of rationalizing it it just happens and so what he's trying to do is he's actually sidestepping a whole pile of quite complicated theory and say well just watch human beings i remember there was a one of the cybernetics people in the uk trying to rationalize things like movement and understanding what might happen next in any series of events and actually what he does he's thinking about people who are playing cricket if you're fielding in cricket there could be all sorts of complicated ways of calculating trajectories and where's the ball going to go and what velocity is it moving at and how fast you need to move to get the spot and what he did he said no just forget all that basically the rule is that if the ball's going up in the air you run backwards and if it's going down you run forwards until you eventually get the ball and so in a way it's quite interesting i think because um this is how how forward-looking volkenson is for a mechanic working in the 18th century is actually when you look at how AI is developing I think there's actually a lot of modelling of that sort of tacit stuff the things you do without really thinking about it and they're trying to turn that behaviour into data and once you can identify the patterns in that you can replicate it so it's a similar approach.

28:04Usman I understand that some of your robot work uses a similar approach. Tell us how do you teach your robots to wash the dishes or fold clean laundry. Are you using this idea of just mimicking how humans do it? Yes, to some degree. It's been given different names over the years. I think it was originally called, and even now it's called, behavioral cloning. It takes back quite a while. I mean, the first self-driving car was a neural network, a simple neural network, all the way back in 1986. A student for their PhD thesis trained a van to self-drive on their university grounds. And they did it by driving the van themselves.

28:50And the AI was able to then drive the car and replicate that. That slowly evolved into self-driving technology that we see today. And all the chatbots are based on this. You just give them the entire internet, Britannica, and they're possibly memorizing it to some degree, which raises the question, if you show the robot or the model, the AI model, some activity, some physical activity, can it generalize to related activities or to other environments, doing the same activity in other environments? Is this type of teaching going to lead to that? So say you've come up with a laundry robot. If I was to fold my laundry for the robot and the robot observes me folding my laundry, does it mimic it like that?