Ayanna Howard: Human-Robot Interaction and Ethics of Safety-Critical Systems

Ayanna Howard is a roboticist and professor at Georgia Tech, director of Human-Automation Systems lab, with research interests in human-robot interaction, assistive robots in the home, therapy gaming apps, and remote robotic exploration of extreme environments.

This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on ApplePodcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon.

This episode is presented by Cash App. Download it (AppStore, Google Play), use code “LexPodcast”. 

Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

00:00– Introduction
02:09– Favorite robot
05:05– Autonomous vehicles
08:43– Tesla Autopilot
20:03– Ethical responsibility of safety-critical algorithms
28:11– Bias in robotics
38:20– AI in politics and law
40:35– Solutions to bias in algorithms
47:44– HAL 9000
49:57– Memories from working at NASA
51:53– SpotMini and Bionic Woman
54:27– Future of robots in space
57:11– Human-robot interaction
1:02:38– Trust
1:09:26– AI in education
1:15:06– Andrew Yang, automation, and job loss
1:17:17– Love, AI, and the movie Her
1:25:01– Why do so many robotics companies fail?
1:32:22– Fear of robots
1:34:17– Existential threats of AI
1:35:57– Matrix
1:37:37– Hang out for a day with a robot