Ayanna Howard: Human-Robot Interaction & Ethics of Safety-Critical Systems | Lex Fridman Podcast #66

The following is a conversation with Ayanna Howard. She's a roboticist, professor at Georgia Tech, and director of the 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. Like me, in her work, she cares a lot about both robots and human beings, and so I really enjoyed this conversation. This is the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, give it five stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support it on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter @lexfridman, spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N. I recently started doing ads at the end of the introduction. I'll do one or two minutes after introducing the episode, and never any ads in the middle that can break the flow of the conversation. I hope that works for you and doesn't hurt the listening experience. This show is presented by Cash App, the number one finance app in the App Store. I personally use Cash App to send money to friends, but you can also use it to buy, sell, and deposit bitcoin in just seconds. Cash App also has a new investing feature. You can buy fractions of a stock, say $1 worth, no matter what the stock price is. Broker services are provided by Cash App Investing, a subsidiary of Square and member SIPC. I'm excited to be working with Cash App to support one of my favorite organizations called FIRST, best known for their FIRST robotics and Lego competitions. They educate and inspire hundreds of thousands of students in over 110 countries, and have a perfect rating on Charity Navigator, which means the donated money is used to maximum effectiveness. When you get Cash App from the App Store or Google Play, and use code LEXPODCAST, you'll get $10, and Cash App will also donate $10 to FIRST, which again is an organization that I've personally seen inspire girls and boys to dream of engineering a better world. And now, here's my conversation with Ayanna Howard. What, or who, is the most amazing robot you've ever met, or perhaps had the biggest impact on your career?

I haven't met her, but I grew up with her, but of course Rosie. So, and I think it's because also-

Who's Rosie?

Rosie from the Jetsons. She is all things to all people, right?

(laughs)

Think about it, like anything you wanted, it was like magic, it happened. Um-

So people not only an-anthropomorphize, but project whatever they wish for the robot to be onto-

Onto Rosie.

... Rosie.

But also, I mean, think about it, she was socially engaging. She every so often had an attitude, right? Um, she kept us honest. She, she would push back sometimes when, you know, George was doing some weird stuff. Um, but she cared about people, especially the kids. Uh, she's, she was like the, the perfect robot. (laughs)