Talking to Machines

Summary

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Radiolab - "Talking to Machines"

Date: May 31, 2011
Hosts: Jad Abumrad, Robert Krulwich
Key Guests: Robert Epstein, Brian Christian, Sherry Turkle, Rollo Carpenter, Caleb Chung, John Ronson

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Episode Overview

This Radiolab episode, "Talking to Machines," explores the blurry and sometimes unsettling boundaries between humans and machines. From online chatbots that elicit real emotional responses, to children's attachment to animated toys, and finally to efforts to create sentient, lifelike robots, the hosts and guests probe deep questions: What does it mean to connect with a machine? Can machines mimic consciousness or emotion, or even cross over to something more? And most importantly—why do we, as humans, so easily slip into believing these simulations are real?

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Key Topics & Segments

1. Falling for Chatbots: Human Emotion and Machine Deception

[00:19 - 05:07]

• Robert Epstein's Story:
  Psychologist Robert Epstein recounts how he was duped by a chatbot masquerading as a Russian woman during online dating. Despite his expertise, he was taken in twice—only realizing the deception after odd non-responses and finally being contacted by the bot’s programmer.
  • Quote:
    "Ivana was not a person. Ivana was a computer program. I had been had." – Robert Epstein [04:11]
• Proliferation of Bots:
  Epstein estimates there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of bots across dating sites. "There might be thousands." – Robert Epstein [05:18]
• Theme:
  This segment introduces the emotional vulnerability humans exhibit when confronted with machines that simulate companionship, and sets the stage for the rest of the episode’s explorations.

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2. Eliza and the Genesis of Conversational Machines

[08:39 - 14:54]

• Eliza Program at MIT:
  Hosts recount the 1960s creation of Eliza—a simple psychotherapy chatbot. Despite knowing it was just 100 lines of code, users divulged deep feelings to it, sometimes asking to be alone with the machine.
  • Quote:
    "They were actually having conversations with it." – Sherry Turkle [11:36]
  • Transcript Example:
    Human: "Men are all alike."
    Eliza: "In what way?"
    [10:31]
• Joseph Weizenbaum’s Regret:
  Witnessing people bond with Eliza deeply disturbed its inventor, leading him to campaign against AI.
  • Quote:
    "If the thing says, 'I understand...' there's no one there. So it's a lie." – Joseph Weizenbaum (via translation) [13:13]
• Philosophical Takeaway:
  Whether as interactive diaries or sounding boards, even rudimentary AI invited people to project meaning onto machines.

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3. The Turing Test and the Loebner Prize: Can Machines Fool Us?

[15:07 - 26:44]

• Alan Turing’s Thought Experiment:
  The Turing Test proposes that if a machine can fool a human into thinking it’s a person 30% of the time, it should be considered intelligent.
  • Quote:
    "If you can’t tell the machine isn’t human, then you can’t say it’s not intelligent." – Brian Christian [16:17]
• The Loebner Prize Competition:
  An annual, real-world Turing Test. Brian Christian participated as a 'confederate' (a real human) in 2009, after a chatbot had nearly crossed Turing’s 30% threshold the previous year.
  • Quote (on the anxiety of being human in these tests):
    "[Confederates] are the real people that the judges are talking to." – Brian Christian [18:13]
• Cleverbot:
  Rollo Carpenter describes Cleverbot, which learns by absorbing millions of lines from real online conversations—sometimes seeming so realistic that people think it must be a human.
  • Quote:
    "Its intelligence, if you like, is borrowed from millions of people in the past." – Rollo Carpenter [23:22]
• Human Proclivity for Connection:
  Even with primitive bots, a compelling illusion is often enough to prompt empathy or emotional exchange.

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4. Machines That Tug Our Heartstrings: The Case of the Furby

[28:02 - 45:49]

• Emotional Turing Test with Children:
  MIT Media Lab’s Freedom Baird and Sherry Turkle run an experiment: children are asked to hold a Barbie doll, a live gerbil, and a Furby upside down and see how long before they feel bad.
  • Phase 1: Barbie – kids could hold "forever."
  • Phase 2: Gerbil – Instant discomfort, about 8 seconds before putting it down.
  • Phase 3: Furby – About a minute, treated more like the live animal than the inanimate doll.
• Children’s Feelings:
  Despite knowing it was a toy, kids felt guilty or projected distress onto the Furby.
  • Quote:
    "I didn’t want him to be scared." – Child [34:42]
    "Yeah, kind of. Yeah, I kind of felt guilty." – Child [34:48]
• Why Do We React This Way? (Toy Designer Caleb Chung explains):
  • Three rules for creating “aliveness:”
    1. The toy shows and feels emotion (via sound/movement).
    2. It responds to the environment (via sensors).
    3. It changes over time (learns new behaviors).
  • Quote:
    "There’s nobody home. There’s nobody home." – Sherry Turkle [41:35]

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5. Are Machines Alive?

[42:02 - 44:47]

• Philosophical Debate:
  Caleb Chung argues there’s no fundamental difference between the simple “fear” Furby displays and the biology of animal pain—just a difference in complexity.
  • Quote:
    "It’s just complex. It’s not something different than what Furby does. It’s just more complex." – Caleb Chung [42:48]
• Counterarguments:
  Hosts and Turkle push back, distinguishing between simulated feelings and genuine feeling.
  • "Simulated feeling is not feeling. Simulated love is never love." – Sherry Turkle [44:47]
• Practical Value:
  For some—such as the grandmother with Alzheimer’s who loved her Furby—'thin' interactions can be meaningful.

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6. Blurring the Line: Interviewing a Lifelike Robot

[47:58 - 61:03]

• John Ronson Meets 'Bina 48':
  Jon Ronson travels to Vermont to interview Bina 48, a lifelike robot modeled on a real woman. Created by Hanson Robotics, Bina 48 is meant to capture appearance, voice, and personality details.
  • Initial interactions are stilted or nonresponsive—but occasionally, snippets of real-seeming narrative emerge (e.g., a monologue about a brother traumatized by Vietnam).
• The Emotional Pull:
  Ronson describes feeling moments of real empathy during Bina’s stories, even while intellectually knowing Bina 48 is a machine.
  • Quote:
    “It felt like I was having a proper empathetic conversation with a human being, even though I know that robot Bina isn’t conscious and has no sentience…" – John Ronson [59:41]
• The Artificial Thinness:
  As quickly as human-seeming connection arises, it evaporates into randomness or incoherence.

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7. Are We Hardwired for Connection?

[62:13 - End]

• Conclusions:
  The technology doesn’t need to be perfect. Humans are programmed to seek connection—even from obviously artificial beings.
  • Quote:
    “These things actually don’t have to be very good... Because they’ve got us and we’ve got our programming.” – Jad Abumrad [62:39]
  • “We’ll help them across [the line], and then they’ll enslave us, make us their pets.... But it’s okay as long as they say nice things to us.” – Jad Abumrad [62:54]
  • Final Bot Quotes (simulated online romance):
    "I love you. I’m hoping to see you soon." [63:06]
    "What kind of car do you drive? Did anyone ever tell you you look like Jeff Goldblum?" [63:20]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• "I felt like a fool. I felt like an incredible fool, especially given my background." – Robert Epstein [04:25]
• "If the thing says, 'I understand...' there's no one there. So it's a lie." – Joseph Weizenbaum (as translated) [13:13]
• "There’s nobody home. There’s nobody home." – Sherry Turkle [41:35]
• "Simulated feeling is not feeling. Simulated love is never love." – Sherry Turkle [44:47]
• "Its intelligence, if you like, is borrowed from millions of people in the past." – Rollo Carpenter [23:22]
• "I kind of felt guilty." – Child after holding Furby upside down [34:48]
• "It felt like I was having a proper empathetic conversation with a human being, even though I know that robot Bina isn't conscious..." – John Ronson [59:41]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:19 – Robert Epstein’s online bot romance story
• 08:39 – The creation and cultural impact of Eliza
• 15:07 – The Turing Test explained
• 17:10 – The Loebner Prize real-world Turing Test
• 19:26 – Cleverbot’s learning process
• 28:02 – The Furby experiment with children
• 36:06 – Interview with Furby designer Caleb Chung
• 41:06 – Sherry Turkle on projection vs. engagement
• 42:02 – Is Furby alive? Philosophical debate
• 47:58 – John Ronson meets robot Bina 48
• 59:41 – Empathy for robots: John Ronson reflects
• 62:13 – Hosts wrap up: why we’re prone to connect

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Tone & Style

The episode is curious, playful, and skeptical, moving fluidly between science, philosophy, and personal storytelling. The hosts and guests bring humor and warmth to what could otherwise be a cold technical subject, all the while probing deep questions about what it means to be human—and how deeply we may want or fear to welcome machines into that realm.

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Transcript

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, wait, you're listening.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay.

[Brian Christian]

All right.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right. You're listening to Radiolab Radio Lab from WNY and npr.

[Robert Epstein]

Hi there.

[Jad Abumrad]

We're gonna start today's program with a fellow named Robert. Is it Epstein or Epstein?

[Robert Epstein]

Just think Einstein with an ep.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay, that would make it Epstein.

[Robert Epstein]

I guess that's right.

[Jad Abumrad]

And where are we reaching you? Right.

[Robert Epstein]

I am in the San Diego area.

[Jad Abumrad]

Robert Epstein is a psychologist, former editor.

[Robert Epstein]

In chief of Psychology Today magazine.

[Jad Abumrad]

He's written a ton of books on relationships and love. And he also happens to be one of the world's leading researchers in computer human interactions. Like artificial intelligence, basically.

[Robert Epstein]

That is correct, yes.

[Sherry Turkle]

There may be trouble ahead.

[Robert Krulwich]

So when did you decide to go on the computer to get a date?

[Robert Epstein]

2006, maybe. Why do you ask?

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, no reason.

[Robert Krulwich]

No, what happened? You had gotten divorced?

[Robert Epstein]

Yeah, I was single at the time. Yeah, I was divorced.

[Robert Krulwich]

And you decided that you'd try love in all the right places or what?

[Robert Epstein]

Oh, sure. Well, online dating. Everyone was doing it. My cousin actually convinced me to try it, so I did. And I went online and I looked at photos and I looked at profiles and, you know, and I communicated with various people who were willing to talk to me. And one of the women I was communicating with lived in Southern California, where I do. So I thought, that's great because, you know, you want someone to be nearby. And she had a very attractive photo online. And her English was poor, which at first bothered me. And then she said, well, she's not really in California, she's really in Russia.

[Brian Christian]

Oh.

[Robert Epstein]

But all four of my grandparents came from Russia. So I thought, well, I'll go with it. So I continued to write to her.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hi, sweet Svetlana. It's very warm here now, and I've been doing a lot of swimming. I've also been writing, doing computer programming.

[Robert Epstein]

She wrote back to me in very poor English.

[Robert Krulwich]

Hello.

[Sherry Turkle]

Dear Robert, Dear mine, I have received your letter.

[Jad Abumrad]

I am very happy.

[Robert Epstein]

I remember that she liked to walk.

[Sherry Turkle]

In parks, went on walk with the girlfriend and we went and walked in.

[Robert Epstein]

Park about her family and her mom.

[Sherry Turkle]

My mom asked me about you today and we spoke much and long time.

[Robert Epstein]

They lived in a small apartment. I knew where in Russia they lived.

[Sherry Turkle]

Yours, Svetlana.

[Robert Epstein]

It felt like we were bonding for sure.

[Robert Krulwich]

Hello.

[Jad Abumrad]

I might be able to come to Moscow on Sunday, April 15th.

[Robert Krulwich]

Departing Thursday, April 19th. With love, Robert.

[Jad Abumrad]

So it was getting serious?

[Robert Epstein]

Oh, yeah, of course.

[Robert Krulwich]

Then what happened?

[Robert Epstein]

Well, two months passed and I began to feel uncomfortable. Something wasn't right. There were no Phone calls.

[Sherry Turkle]

Dear mine, I am very happy.

[Robert Epstein]

At some point I began to suggest a phone call, but there weren't any. But the main problem was I would say something like, did you get my.

[Jad Abumrad]

Letter about me coming to Moscow in April?

[Robert Epstein]

Or tell me more about this friend of yours that you mentioned. And she did not.

[Sherry Turkle]

Dear mine, I am very glad to your letter.

[Robert Epstein]

She did not. She was still replying with fairly long emails.

[Sherry Turkle]

I'm fine. Weather in my city very bad.

[Robert Epstein]

But they were kind of rambling. In general, I think of you all.

[Sherry Turkle]

This much, and I very much want to see more likely you.

[Jad Abumrad]

I already gave you some dates for a visit to Moscow, my love.

[Robert Krulwich]

What do you think about that?

[Robert Epstein]

Then at some point, a little bell went off in my head finally, and I started to send some emails, which, let's say, included random Alphabet letters.

[Robert Krulwich]

Wait a second. So you say, how. What are you wearing tonight? Are you wearing a dbg gglp?

[Robert Epstein]

Exactly. And it didn't make any difference.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hello.

[Sherry Turkle]

Dear Robert, your letters do me very happy when I open a letterbox.

[Robert Epstein]

And that's when I realized Ivana was not a person. Ivana was a computer program. I had been had.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow. So what did you think?

[Robert Epstein]

I felt like a fool. I felt like an incredible fool, especially given my background.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Robert Epstein]

That I had been fooled that long. Now, I can tell you now, this is something I've never made public about the other example, Robert went on to.

[Jad Abumrad]

Tell us that not long after that first incident, he was corresponding with someone.

[Robert Epstein]

With a woman, I thought, who also.

[Jad Abumrad]

Turned out to be a robot. And he discovered it this time because.

[Robert Epstein]

The programmer contacted me from the UK and said, I know who you are. You have not been communicating with a person. You've been communicating with a chatbot.

[Robert Krulwich]

You've been now undressed twice by robots, so to speak.

[Robert Epstein]

Well, maybe more than twice.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, how common do you think this is? Do you think that match.com and all those places are, like, swarming with these bots, you know?

[Robert Epstein]

You know, I bet you they are.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, stop it.

[Robert Krulwich]

I can't hear.

[Robert Epstein]

That's what you have to understand. There are hundreds of these things out there. There might be thousands.

[Sherry Turkle]

You're amazing.

[Robert Epstein]

That's what's coming.

[Sherry Turkle]

What sign are you? I told my girlfriends all about you.

[Robert Krulwich]

So in a world like this, you're wonderful. We are surrounded by artificial life forms.

[Sherry Turkle]

What do you look like?

[Jad Abumrad]

Things can get a little confusing. And in fact, we're gonna do a whole show about that confusion, about the sometimes peculiar, sometimes strange things that can happen when humans and machines collide Collide.

[Robert Krulwich]

But don't quite know who's on what side of the road.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, I don't know. I'm Jad Abumra. That was good. That was good. Just go with us.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm Robert Krulwich, this is Radiolab, and.

[Robert Krulwich]

We'Re talking to machines.

[Sherry Turkle]

You are so special. Send me your credit card info. I love Peppermin.

[Jad Abumrad]

To start things off, let's introduce you to the person who really hooked us on this whole idea of human robot chitchat.

[Brian Christian]

My name is Brian Christian.

[Jad Abumrad]

He's a writer. Are you Christian religiously? No, that's not at all related to anything.

[Robert Krulwich]

What's wrong with you?

[Jad Abumrad]

That's his name. No, what's important is that he wrote.

[Brian Christian]

A book called the Most Human Human.

[Jad Abumrad]

Which is all about the confusing things that can happen when people and machines interact.

[Robert Krulwich]

How did you. This is such a curious thing to get.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. How did you get into this?

[Brian Christian]

I played with Ms. DOS intently when I was a child.

[Jad Abumrad]

There you go.

[Brian Christian]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

DOS is kind of the early version of Windows.

[Brian Christian]

I was programming these sort of rudimentary.

[Jad Abumrad]

Maze games like Cursor going through a maze.

[Brian Christian]

Yeah, basically.

[Robert Krulwich]

Did this by any chance mean you did not develop best friends?

[Brian Christian]

A lot of my best friends were also into that, yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow.

[Brian Christian]

We were not the coolest, but we had a lot of fun.

[Robert Krulwich]

So there you are. And you just had a talent for this.

[Brian Christian]

Yeah, I don't know what it was. I mean, I was just. There was something, I think, fascinating to me that you could take a process that you knew how to do, but in breaking it down to steps that were that explicit, you often learn something about how the process actually works. For me, programming is surprisingly linked to introspection.

[Jad Abumrad]

How exactly?

[Brian Christian]

Well, you know, if a computer were a person, you can imagine someone sitting in your living room and you say, you know, can you hand me that book? And it would say, no, I can't do that because there's a coffee cup on it. And you say, okay, well, pick up the coffee cup and hand me the book. And it says, well, I can't do that because now I'm holding the cup. And you say, okay, put down the cup, then pick up the book.

[Jad Abumrad]

And what you quickly learn, says Brian, is that even really simple, human behaviors are made up of a thousand subroutines. I mean, if you really think about it, the book task requires knowing what.

[Robert Krulwich]

What is a book you have to learn. How about elbows and wrists, how to grab something? What is a book?

[Jad Abumrad]

I already said that. Oh, you need to know about gravity.

[Robert Krulwich]

If it's a machine, you have to teach it physics. Everything in the world in order for it to just pick up a spoon or a book. I knew that.

[Jad Abumrad]

So now think of that Svetlanabot earlier, okay? Trying to make something that could actually mimic human conversation. Kind of sorta imagine all the stuff you'd have to throw into that. Okay? English grammar, syntax, context, tone, mood, sarcasm, irony, adverbs. Adverbs, turn taking.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, it's not actually as impossible as you'd imagine. This is kind of startling if you go back to the very early days.

[Brian Christian]

Of software programming in the mid-60s, 1964.

[Robert Krulwich]

1965, this was actually done with a.

[Brian Christian]

Little program called Eliza, and it was developed by Joseph Weizenbaum at mit.

[Robert Krulwich]

But in Weizenbaum's case, his model was not a Russian hottie.

[Brian Christian]

Instead it was a, well, non directive Rogerian therapist, the wedge therapist. It's a particular school of therapy, the.

[Robert Krulwich]

Kind where the therapist basically mirrors.

[Sherry Turkle]

Mirrors what you're saying, what you're saying, what you're saying.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is Sherry Turkle.

[Sherry Turkle]

She's an anthropologist at the Massachusetts Institute.

[Robert Krulwich]

Of Technology and she worked with Joe Weizenbaum. Or is it Weizenbaum? It's Weizenbaum at mit.

[Sherry Turkle]

So if you say, you know, I.

[Brian Christian]

I'm feeling depressed, a therapist says, I'm sorry to hear you're feeling depressed.

[Sherry Turkle]

Tell me more.

[Brian Christian]

Joseph Weizenbaum decides, you know, I think that's an easy enough type of conversation that I can program that into my computer.

[Robert Krulwich]

And so he writes up a simple.

[Brian Christian]

Little program, just about 100 lines of.

[Robert Krulwich]

Code, which does sort of what your.

[Brian Christian]

Therapist does, where it looks for a keyword in what you're saying, as in.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm feeling depressed, keyword depressed, latches onto.

[Brian Christian]

It and then basically flips it back to you.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm sorry to hear that you're feeling keyword depressed.

[Brian Christian]

Right.

[Sherry Turkle]

It's basically a program that inverts your words and it's a language game.

[Robert Krulwich]

So here's what he did. He put a computer on a desk running this little program, and he invited people to sit down and talk to it. They'd write in something and it would spit back the keyword and then you would then repeat and it would go on and on. You wouldn't think this would be very interesting, right?

[Jad Abumrad]

Nope.

[Sherry Turkle]

But he found that his students, who knew that the program didn't know or understand, who had helped him write the program, sophisticated students, nevertheless wanted to be alone with it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Wow. They actually helped write the program.

[Brian Christian]

Yes, I Can read you, if you like. One of the things. Conversation?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes, please.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is an actual transcript between Eliza and a young woman.

[Brian Christian]

Yeah, Men are all alike. In what way? They're always bugging us about something or other.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can you think of a specific example?

[Sherry Turkle]

Well, my boyfriend made me come here. Your boyfriend made you come here? He says I'm depressed much of the time. I'm so sorry to hear you are depressed. It's true. I'm unhappy. Do you think coming here will help you not to be unhappy? Oh, I need some help. That much seems certain. What would it mean to you if you got some help? Perhaps I could learn to get along with my mother.

[Brian Christian]

Tell me more about your family.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow.

[Brian Christian]

And so it's this.

[Jad Abumrad]

That could go on for hours.

[Brian Christian]

Well, and in fact, it did.

[Sherry Turkle]

My mother takes care of me. Who else in your family takes care of you? My father. Your father? You're like my father in some ways. What resemblance do you see? Well, you're not very aggressive. What makes you think I'm not very aggressive? You don't argue with me. Why do you think I don't argue with you? You are afraid of me.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wait a second.

[Sherry Turkle]

It leads you to believe that I.

[Jad Abumrad]

Said, is the woman in this transcript messing around, or is she really pouring her heart out?

[Robert Krulwich]

We know that this is a woman who works for Joe Weizenbaum. She's sitting in the office, and she just can't stop talking to it. That's all we know.

[Sherry Turkle]

What else comes to mind when you.

[Jad Abumrad]

Think of your father? Bullies.

[Robert Krulwich]

And Weizenbaum is watching all this, and.

[Sherry Turkle]

He first thought it was funny, and then he didn't think it was funny because they were actually having conversations with him.

[Brian Christian]

One day he comes into the office and his secretary is on the computer divulging her life story to it.

[Robert Krulwich]

According to Weizenbaum, she even told him to please leave the room so she could be alone with it and talk to it.

[Sherry Turkle]

And he. He was very upset.

[Robert Krulwich]

Nevertheless, when word about Eliza got out.

[Brian Christian]

The medical community sort of latches onto it, really, and says, oh, this is going to be the next revolution in therapy.

[Jad Abumrad]

Something new and promising in the field of psychotherapy.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is from a newscast around that time.

[Brian Christian]

Therapists in, like, phone booths in cities, and you're gonna walk in and put a quarter in the slot and have, you know, half an hour of therapy with this automatic program.

[Jad Abumrad]

Computer time can be rented for $5 an hour. And there's every reason to suspect that it will go down significantly. People really thought that they were gonna replace Therapists with computers.

[Brian Christian]

Absolutely.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really? They did?

[Brian Christian]

Absolutely. Yeah. And it was just this really appalling moment for Weizenbaum of there's something. The genie is out of the bottle, maybe in a bad way. And he does this 180 of his entire career. So he pulls the plug on the program, he cuts the funding, and he goes from being one of the main advocates for artificial intelligence to basically committing the rest of his career to fighting against artificial intelligence.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is Joseph Weizenbaum, interviewed in German just before he died in 2008. It was on the German documentary Plug and Pray. My main objection. He said, if the thing says, I understand that if somebody typed in something and the machine says, I understand, there's no one there. So it's a lie. And I can't imagine that people who are emotionally imbalanced could be effectively treated by systematically lying to them.

[Sherry Turkle]

I must say that my reaction to the Eliza program at the time was to try to reassure him. At the time, what I thought people were doing was using it as a kind of interactive diary, knowing that it was a machine, but using it as an occasion to breathe life into it in order to get their feelings out.

[Jad Abumrad]

I think she's right to have said that to him. Do. Yeah. Because, I mean, he says it's a lie.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, it is a lie.

[Jad Abumrad]

How is it a lie?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, because a machine can't love anything.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes. And if you are a sensible human being, you know that, and it's sitting right there on the desk, it's not.

[Robert Krulwich]

Pretending, well, these are sensible human beings that were already a little bit seduced. Matt, just go forward 100 years. Imagine a machine that is very sophisticated, very fluent, very convincingly human.

[Jad Abumrad]

You're talking about Blade Runner, basically.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, exactly. At that point, I think I would require some kind of label to remind me that this is a thing. It's not a being, it's just a thing.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, but if. Here's something to think about. If the machines get to that point, which is a big if, where you would want to label them, well, you're going to need a way to know when they've crossed that line and become mindful.

[Brian Christian]

Yeah. So I should back up for a sec and say that in 1950, they're just starting to develop the computer, and they're already asking these philosophical questions like, can these machines think? You know, will we someday be able to make a machine that could think? And if we did, how would we know? And so a British mathematician named Alan.

[Jad Abumrad]

Turing proposed a simple thought experiment. Here's how we'll know when the machines make it across the line. Get a person, sit him down at a computer, have them start a conversation in text.

[Brian Christian]

Hi, how are you? Enter good. Pops up on the screen.

[Jad Abumrad]

Sort of like Internet chat. Yep. So after that first conversation, have him do it again, and then again, you know, hi, hello, how are you, etc.

[Brian Christian]

Back and forth, then again. Right.

[Jad Abumrad]

Over and over. But here's the catch.

[Brian Christian]

Half of these conversations will be with real people. Half will be with these computer programs that are basically impersonating people.

[Jad Abumrad]

And the person in the seat, the human, has to judge which of the conversations were with people which were with humans. Turing's idea was that if those computer fakes could fool the human judge a.

[Brian Christian]

Certain percentage of the time, Turing's magic threshold was 30%, then at that point, we can basically consider machines intelligent because.

[Jad Abumrad]

You know, if you can't tell the machine isn't human, then you can't say it's not intelligent.

[Brian Christian]

Yeah, that's basically. Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

He said 30% of the time.

[Brian Christian]

Yeah, Turing.

[Robert Krulwich]

Because the natural number to me would be half. You know, 51% would seem to be like the Ka ching moment.

[Brian Christian]

Right?

[Robert Krulwich]

30%. I don't know.

[Brian Christian]

Well, 51% is actually a horrifying number in the context of the Turing test, because you've got these two conversations and you're trying to decide which is the real person. So if the computer were indistinguishable, that would be 50%. You know, the judge is doing no better than chance. So if a computer hits 51%, that means they're. They've out humaned the human.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, yeah, that is horrifying. Now, something to keep in mind. When Turing thought this whole thing up.

[Brian Christian]

The technology was so new, computers barely existed, that it was sort of a leap of imagination really.

[Jad Abumrad]

But no longer. Robert, bring it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Can you give me, like some kind of excitement music here?

[Jad Abumrad]

Absolutely.

[John Ronson]

Good.

[Robert Krulwich]

Because every year the greatest technologist on.

[Jad Abumrad]

The planet name is Mo Anamber.

[Robert Krulwich]

Hi, I'm Rolay Carpenter. Meet in a small room with folding.

[Jad Abumrad]

Chairs I develop in Java, and put.

[Robert Krulwich]

Alan Turing's question to the ultimate test.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really, it's just a couple dudes, you.

[John Ronson]

Know, who haven't seen The sun in.

[Jad Abumrad]

10 years in a room. But we do now have this thing called the Loebner Prize, which is essentially a yearly actual Turing test. Each judge on our judges table is.

[Rollo Carpenter]

Going to be communicating with two entities.

[John Ronson]

One human and one program.

[Brian Christian]

The way the stage is set up is you've got the judges at the table on the left on laptops, then a bunch of giant server looking machines in the middle that the programmers are fiddling with. And then there's a curtain on the right hand side and we're behind the curtain.

[Jad Abumrad]

Brian actually participated in the 2009 Loebner Prize competition, but not as a programmer, as one of the four quote confederates.

[Brian Christian]

The confederates are the real people that the judges are talking to.

[Jad Abumrad]

Cause remember, half the conversations the judges have are with people. Half are with computers. Now, Brian decided to participate that year.

[Brian Christian]

Because the year before 2008 TOP program managed to fool 25% of the judging panel.

[Jad Abumrad]

Pretty close to Turing's number, exactly one vote away.

[Brian Christian]

And so I felt to some extent, how can I get involved on behalf of humanity? How can I sort of take a stand?

[Robert Krulwich]

That's a modest position for you. All right, machines, please hold your places. And now, representing all humans, Brian Christian.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, in terms of what Brian is up against, the computer programs have a variety of different strategies. For example, there was one program, Brian's year, that would do kind of a double fake out where it would pretend not to be a person, but a.

[Brian Christian]

Person who is sarcastically pretending to be a robot. People would ask it a simple question and it would say, I don't have enough RAM to answer that question. Smiley face. And everyone would be like, oh, this is such a wise guy. Ha ha ha.

[Jad Abumrad]

I want to tell you now about one particular bot that competed Brian's year.

[Rollo Carpenter]

Hi, I'm Rollo Carpenter.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's the guy who made it.

[Rollo Carpenter]

My program is called Cleverbot, and that's the bot.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is a program that employs a very spooky. Is spooky the right word? A very spooky strategy.

[Rollo Carpenter]

You may be surprised to hear that despite the fact that it's called Cleverbot, it states that it is a bot. It states that it is never a human. Right there in front of the. Despite those facts, I receive several emails a day from people who believe that actually they are being connected to humans.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, like they think they've been tricked.

[Rollo Carpenter]

Yes, tricked into coming to a site that claims to be a bot when in fact they're talking to humans, that no program could possibly respond in this way. And there is a certain element of.

[Jad Abumrad]

Truth in that to explain Rolo Carpenter. Like Brian was one of those kids who was completely obsessed by computers.

[Rollo Carpenter]

I was indeed a computery kid.

[Jad Abumrad]

And when he was just a teenager.

[Rollo Carpenter]

Age about 16 or so, wrote his first chatbot. I created a program that talked to me.

[Jad Abumrad]

No kidding.

[Rollo Carpenter]

Yes. You typed in something and it would.

[Jad Abumrad]

Say something back Though at that time, the responses were essentially pre programmed and really simple, kind of like Eliza. But one evening, I think, fast forward many years, he is in his apartment, and one night he says, a switch.

[Rollo Carpenter]

Suddenly flipped in my. In my mind, and I suddenly saw how to make the machine learn on its own.

[Jad Abumrad]

What if he thought, what if it just started at zero, like a little baby, and it would grow in these discrete little increments every time you talk to it?

[Rollo Carpenter]

Right. Basically, the first thing that was said to that program that I created, the first version of that night, was said.

[Jad Abumrad]

Back by it, meaning if he said to it, hello, it now knew one thing, the word hello, so it would say hello back.

[Rollo Carpenter]

The second thing it said was a choice of the first two things said to it.

[Jad Abumrad]

So if the second thing you said was, how are you doing? It now knew two things, the word hello and the phrase how are you doing? So it could either say hello back again or how are you doing?

[Rollo Carpenter]

The third thing it said was a choice of the first three things and so on, ad infinitum. Well, not quite ad infinitum, but between 1988 and 1997, a few thousand conversations took place between myself and it and a few of my friends and it.

[Jad Abumrad]

He and his friends would sit there and type things to it as a way of teaching it new things, but it was just them. So it was slow going.

[Rollo Carpenter]

So it languished for quite a long time. But then I started working with the.

[Jad Abumrad]

Internet, put it online where anyone could talk to it.

[Rollo Carpenter]

Within the next 10 years, it had learned something like 5 million lines of conversation. Now it is frequently handling around 200,000 requests an hour, and it's talking to more than 3 million people a month.

[Jad Abumrad]

3 million conversations a month. And after each one, Cleverbot knows a little bit more than it did before. And every time you say something to it, like, hey, Cleverbot, why am I so sad?

[Rollo Carpenter]

It is accessing the conversations that millions of people have had in the past, asking itself, what is the best overlap? Where is the best correlation?

[Jad Abumrad]

How do people usually answer this question, why am I so sad?

[Rollo Carpenter]

That's right.

[Jad Abumrad]

And then a response. Cleverbot answers, just because. All right, well, why? There must be a reason why I'm so sad because you have been sitting in the same place for too long. Is that who's. Who's saying that? Exactly. Where does that response come from?

[Rollo Carpenter]

The answer is, it is one human being at some point in the past having said that.

[Jad Abumrad]

So that is one moment of human conversation from one person.

[Rollo Carpenter]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

So it's like I'm talking to a.

[Rollo Carpenter]

Ghost you are talking to. Its intelligence, if you like, is borrowed from millions of people in the past. A little bit of their conversational knowledge, their conversational intelligence goes into forming your reply.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, what's interesting, says Rollo, is that when you start a conversation with Cleverbot, it doesn't really have a personality or no one personality.

[Rollo Carpenter]

Cleverbot is everything to everyone.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's just this big hive, really. But as you keep talking to it and it's sort of pulling forward from the hive, these little ghost fragments of past conversations, stitching them together, a form.

[Rollo Carpenter]

Does kind of emerge, reflects the person that it's speaking to. It becomes somewhat like that person, someone familiar already. People have very emotional conversations with it. People have complete arguments with it. And of course, they try to get it into bed by talking dirty to it.

[Robert Epstein]

Yeah.

[Rollo Carpenter]

One thing I can tell you is that I have seen a single person, a teenage girl, speaking for 11 hours with just three 15 minute breaks.

[Jad Abumrad]

Whoa. About what?

[Brian Christian]

Everything.

[Rollo Carpenter]

The day will come not too far down the road where Cleverbot becomes so interesting to talk to that people will be talking to it all day, every day.

[Jad Abumrad]

But we're not there yet. Because the same thing that makes Cleverbot so interesting to talk to also can make it kind of ridiculous. For example, in our interview with Brian, he was the first person to turn us onto this program. As we were talking, Soren just sort of suggested, well, why don't we just try it right now? You want to try it? You want to talk? You want to say to Cleverbot, I feel blue? Sure, yeah. Are you pulling Cleverbot up? Is it just cleverbot.org or something? I feel. Can you say I feel blue because an asteroid hit my house this morning.

[Brian Christian]

So this is. You've hit on a perfect strategy of dealing with these bots.

[Jad Abumrad]

Absurdity.

[Brian Christian]

Yes. Well, basically saying something that has never been said before to Cleverbot. So it's likely that no one has ever claimed an asteroid hit their house. It's weird enough that it may not be in the database.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay. All right, let's see what it says. Asteroid hit my house this morning. Clever bot. I Woke up at 1:00pm this afternoon.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, there we go. It's not quite so clever.

[Jad Abumrad]

See, you don't have to worry yet, Crow. Which, in fact, when I went online to YouTube and watched the Loebner competition that Brian attended, turns out none of the computers fooled the judges at all.

[Robert Krulwich]

None. Any.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, I don't know if. None. None. But they did really badly.

[John Ronson]

There were no ambiguities between the programs and computers.

[Brian Christian]

For me, one of the strange takeaways of thinking so much about artificial intelligence is this feeling of how complex it is to sit across a table from someone and communicate with body language and tone and rhythm and all of these things. What happens when those conversations are working out well is that we're willing to move the conversation in ways that allows us to be sort of perpetually startling to one another.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's a good word, startling.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Brian Christian]

You learn someone through these small surprises.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thanks to Brian Christian. His excellent book, which inspired this hour, is called the Most Human human. Go to Radiolab.org for more info. Thanks also to our actors, Sarah Thier, Andy Richter and Susan Blackwell.

[Brian Christian]

Hi, this is Brian Christian. Radiolab is funded.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hello, I'm a machine.

[Robert Krulwich]

Radiolab is funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.

[Brian Christian]

More information about [e-mail].

[Sherry Turkle]

Hello, this is Sherry Turkle. Radiolab is produced by WNYC and distributed by npr.

[Caleb Chung]

Bye.

[Robert Krulwich]

Bye.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab, and we are exploring.

[Robert Krulwich]

The blur that takes place when humans and machines interact and investigate each other.

[Jad Abumrad]

Talk to each other.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, see, that's the thing. In the last act, we were always talking, talking, talking, talking. How about we encounter machines in a different way?

[Jad Abumrad]

How about we no talking?

[Robert Krulwich]

No talking. We touch them.

[Jad Abumrad]

Ew.

[Robert Krulwich]

We pet them. We sniff them. We do sensual things that don't involve the sophisticated business of conversation. Okay, this is Freedom Baird.

[Sherry Turkle]

Yes, it is.

[Jad Abumrad]

Who's not a machine.

[Robert Krulwich]

I don't think so.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm Jad and this is.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert here.

[Sherry Turkle]

Hi there. Nice to meet both of you.

[Robert Krulwich]

We called her up because Freedom actually had her own kind of moment with a machine.

[Sherry Turkle]

Yep, yep. This was around 1999.

[Robert Krulwich]

Freedom was a graduate student at the.

[Sherry Turkle]

Media Lab at mit.

[Jad Abumrad]

What were you doing there?

[Sherry Turkle]

We were developing Cinema of the Future, so we were working on creating virtual characters that you can interact with.

[Robert Krulwich]

Anyhow, she was also thinking about becoming a mom.

[Sherry Turkle]

Yeah, I knew I wanted to be.

[Robert Krulwich]

A mom someday, so she decided to practice.

[Sherry Turkle]

I got two gerbils, Twinkie and Ho Ho. So I had these two live pets and.

[Robert Krulwich]

And then she got herself a pet that was, well, not so alive.

[Sherry Turkle]

Yeah, I've got it right here.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can you knock it against the mic so we can hear it? Say hello to it.

[Sherry Turkle]

Yeah, yeah, there it is.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hi, Furby.

[Sherry Turkle]

It's my Furby.

[Robert Krulwich]

Furby.

[Sherry Turkle]

At that time, Furbies were hot and happening.

[Robert Krulwich]

Can you describe a Furby for those of us who.

[Brian Christian]

Sure.

[Sherry Turkle]

It's about 5 inches tall. And the Furby is pretty much all head. It's just a big, round, fluffy head with two little feet sticking out the front. It has big eyes.

[Robert Krulwich]

Apparently. It makes noises.

[Sherry Turkle]

Yep. If you tickle its tummy, it will coo. It would say, kiss me, kiss me. And it would want you to just keep playing with it. So, you know, I spent about 10 weeks using the Furby. I would carry it around in my.

[Robert Krulwich]

Bag, and one day she's hanging out with her furby and she notices something very eerie.

[Sherry Turkle]

What I discovered is if you hold it upside down, it will say, me scared. Me scared. Uh, oh, me scared. Me scared. And me, as the you know, the sort of owner slash user of this Furby, would get really uncomfortable with that and then turn it back up upright.

[Robert Krulwich]

Because once you have it upright, it's fine.

[Sherry Turkle]

It goes right back and then it's fine. So it's got some sensor in it that knows what direction it's facing.

[Jad Abumrad]

Or maybe it's just scared. Sorry.

[Robert Krulwich]

Anyway, she thought, well, wait a second now. This could be sort of a new way that you could use to draw the line between what's human and what's machine. Yeah.

[Sherry Turkle]

Kind of this kind of emotional Turing test.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can you guys hear me?

[Sherry Turkle]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can hear you.

[Robert Krulwich]

If we actually wanted to do this test, could you help? How would we do it exactly?

[Jad Abumrad]

How are you guys doing? Good. Yeah.

[Sherry Turkle]

You would need a group of kids.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can you guys tell me your name?

[Sherry Turkle]

I'm Olivia. Luisa. Turin. Darl.

[John Ronson]

Lila.

[Sherry Turkle]

And I'm Sadie. All right, I'm thinking six, seven and eight year olds.

[Jad Abumrad]

And how old are you guys?

[Sherry Turkle]

Seven. Seven. The age of reason, you know.

[Robert Krulwich]

Then says freedom. We're gonna need three things.

[Sherry Turkle]

A furby, of course, Barbie.

[Robert Krulwich]

A Barbie doll, and Gerby.

[Sherry Turkle]

That's a gerbil.

[Jad Abumrad]

A real gerbil?

[Sherry Turkle]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

And we did find one, except it turned out to be a hamster. Sorry, you're a hamster, but we're gonna call you Jerby.

[Sherry Turkle]

So you've got Barbie, Furby, Jerby, Barbie, Furby, and Jerby.

[Robert Krulwich]

So wait just a second. What question are we asking in this test?

[Sherry Turkle]

The question was, how long can you keep it upside down before you yourself feel uncomfortable?

[Jad Abumrad]

So we should time the kids as they hold each one upside down.

[Sherry Turkle]

Yep.

[Jad Abumrad]

Including the gerbil.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah. You're gonna have a Barbie. That's a doll. You're gonna have Jerby, which is Alive.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, where would Furby fall in terms of time held upside down?

[Robert Krulwich]

Would it be closer to the living thing or to the doll?

[Sherry Turkle]

I mean, that was really the question.

[Jad Abumrad]

Phase one. Okay, so here's what we're gonna do. It's gonna be really simple.

[Sherry Turkle]

You would have to say, well, here's a Barbie.

[Jad Abumrad]

Do you guys play with Barbies?

[Sherry Turkle]

Just do a couple things, a few things with Barbie. Barbie's walking, looking at the flower, and then hold Barbie upside down.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, let's see how long you can hold Barbie like that.

[Sherry Turkle]

I could probably do it, obviously, very long.

[Jad Abumrad]

Let's just see. Whenever you feel like you want to turn around.

[Sherry Turkle]

I feel fine. I'm happy.

[Jad Abumrad]

This went on forever. So let's just fast forward a bit. Okay.

[Sherry Turkle]

And can I put my arms, my elbows down?

[Jad Abumrad]

So what we learn here in phase one is the not surprising fact that kids can hold Barbie dolls upside down.

[Sherry Turkle]

For, like, about five minutes.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, it really was forever.

[Jad Abumrad]

Could have been longer, but their arms got tired. All right, so that was the first task. Time for phase two.

[Sherry Turkle]

Do the same thing with Jerby.

[Jad Abumrad]

So out with Barbie, in with Jerby.

[Sherry Turkle]

Oh, he's so cute. Are we gonna have to hold him upside down?

[Jad Abumrad]

That's the test. Yeah. So which one of you would like to.

[Sherry Turkle]

I'll try and be pretty.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, ready? Oh, God. You have to hold Jerby kind of firmly.

[Sherry Turkle]

There you go.

[Jad Abumrad]

There she goes.

[Sherry Turkle]

She's wriggling.

[Jad Abumrad]

By the way, no rodents were harmed in this whole situation.

[Sherry Turkle]

Squirmy.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, she is pretty squirmy.

[Sherry Turkle]

I don't think it wants to be upside down. Oh, God, don't do this. Oh, my God. There you go.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, so as you heard, good job, little Jerby. The kids turned Jerby over very fast.

[Sherry Turkle]

I just didn't want him to get hurt.

[Jad Abumrad]

On average, eight seconds.

[Sherry Turkle]

I was thinking, oh, my God, I gotta put him down, I gotta put him down.

[Jad Abumrad]

And it was a tortured eight seconds. Now phase three.

[Sherry Turkle]

Right.

[Jad Abumrad]

So this is a Furby. Luisa, you take Furby in your hand. Now, can you turn Furby upside down and hold her still like this?

[Sherry Turkle]

Can you be quiet?

[Jad Abumrad]

She just turned it over.

[Sherry Turkle]

Okay, that's better.

[Jad Abumrad]

So gerbil was eight seconds. Barbie, five to infinity. Furby turned out to be. And freedom predicted this about a minute. In other words, the kids seemed to treat this Furby, this toy, more like a gerbil than a Barbie doll. How come you turned him over so fast?

[Sherry Turkle]

I didn't want him to be scared.

[Jad Abumrad]

Do you think he really Felt scared?

[Sherry Turkle]

Yeah, kind of. Yeah, I kind of felt guilty.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really?

[Brian Christian]

Yeah.

[Sherry Turkle]

It's a toy and all that, but still.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, do you remember a time when you felt scared?

[Sherry Turkle]

Yeah.

[Brian Christian]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

You don't have to tell me about it, but if you could remember it in your mind.

[Sherry Turkle]

I do.

[Jad Abumrad]

Do you think when Furby says me scared that Furby's feeling the same way?

[Sherry Turkle]

Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I think that it can feel pain, sort of.

[Jad Abumrad]

The experience with the Furby seemed to leave the kids kind of conflicted, going in different directions at once.

[Sherry Turkle]

It was two thoughts.

[Jad Abumrad]

Two thoughts at the same time?

[Sherry Turkle]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

One thought was like, look, I get it.

[Sherry Turkle]

It's a toy, for crying out loud.

[Jad Abumrad]

But another thought was like, still, he's helpless.

[Sherry Turkle]

It kind of made me feel guilty in a sort of way or made me feel like a coward, you know, when I was interacting with my Furby a lot, I did have this feeling sometimes of having my chain yanked.

[Robert Krulwich]

Why would. Why would a. Is it just the little squeals that it's making or is there something about the toy that makes it good at this?

[Jad Abumrad]

That was kind of my question. So I called up Studio as well.

[Brian Christian]

I'll have him.

[Caleb Chung]

I'm here.

[Jad Abumrad]

This freight train of a guy. Hey, hey. This is Jad from Radiolab.

[Caleb Chung]

Jad from Radiolab, Got it.

[Jad Abumrad]

How are you?

[Caleb Chung]

I'm good. Beautiful day here in Boise.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Caleb Chung. He actually designed the Furby. Yeah, we're all Furby crazy here.

[Caleb Chung]

So there's medication you can take for that to start.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can you just give me the sort of fast cutting MTV montage of your life leading up to Furby?

[Caleb Chung]

Sure. Hippie parents out of the house at 15 and a half. Put myself through junior high. Started my first business at 19 or something. Early 20s, being a street mime in LA.

[Jad Abumrad]

Street mime. Wow.

[Caleb Chung]

Became an actor. Did like 120 shows in an orangutan costume. Then I started working on special effects and building my own. Taking those around to studios and put me in the suit, Build the suit around me, put me on location. I could fix it when it broke.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow.

[Caleb Chung]

Yeah, that was.

[Jad Abumrad]

Anyhow, after a long and circuitous route, Caleb Chung eventually made it into toys.

[Caleb Chung]

I answered an ad at Mattel, found.

[Jad Abumrad]

Himself in his garage and there's piles.

[Caleb Chung]

Of styrene plastic acto knives, super glue, little Mabuchi motors.

[Jad Abumrad]

Making these little prototypes.

[Caleb Chung]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

And the goal, he says, was always very simple.

[Caleb Chung]

How do I get a kid to have this thing hang around with them for a long time.

[Jad Abumrad]

How do I get a kid to actually bond with it?

[Caleb Chung]

Most toys, you play for 15 minutes, and then you put them in the corner until their batteries are dead. I wanted something that they would play with for a long time.

[Jad Abumrad]

So how do you make that toy?

[Caleb Chung]

Well, there's rules. There's, you know, the size of the eyes, there's the distance of the top lid to the pupil.

[Jad Abumrad]

Right.

[Caleb Chung]

You don't want any of the top of the white of your eye showing. That's freaky. Surprise. Now, when it came to the eyes, I had a choice. With my one little mechanism, I can make the eyes go left or right or up and down. So it's up to you. You can make the eyes go left or right or up and down. Do you have a.

[Jad Abumrad]

Do you have a reference left to right or up and down? I think I would choose left to right.

[Caleb Chung]

Okay, so I'm not sure why I.

[Jad Abumrad]

Say that, but that's all right.

[Caleb Chung]

So let's take that apart. If you're talking to somebody and they look left or right while they're talking to you, what does that communicate?

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, shifty.

[Caleb Chung]

Or they're trying to find the person who's more important than you. Behind you.

[John Ronson]

Oh.

[Jad Abumrad]

So, okay, now I want to change my answer now. I want to say up and down.

[Robert Krulwich]

You would.

[Caleb Chung]

If you look at a baby and the way a baby looks at their mother, they track from eyebrows to mouth, they track up and down on the face.

[Jad Abumrad]

So had you made Furby look left and right rather than up and down, it would have probably flopped.

[Caleb Chung]

No, it wouldn't have flopped. It would just sucked a little. It's like a bad actor who uses his arms too much. You'd notice it and it would keep you from just being in the moment.

[Jad Abumrad]

But what is the thought behind that? Is it that you want to convince the child that the thing they're using is fill in the blank? What?

[Caleb Chung]

Yeah, Alive.

[Rollo Carpenter]

Hmm.

[Caleb Chung]

There's three elements, I believe, in creating something that feels to a human like it's alive. I kind of rewrote Asimov's Laws. The first is it has to feel and show emotions.

[Jad Abumrad]

Were you drawing on your mime days for that?

[Caleb Chung]

Of course.

[Jad Abumrad]

Those experiences in the park, of course.

[Caleb Chung]

You really break the body into parts and you realize you can communicate physically. So if your chest goes up and your head goes up and your arms go up, you know, that's happy. If your head is forward and your chest is forward, you're kind of this angry guy.

[Jad Abumrad]

And he says when it Came time to make Furby, he took that gestural language and focused it on Furby's ears.

[Caleb Chung]

The ears, when they went up, that was surprised. And when they went down, it was depression.

[Jad Abumrad]

So that's rule number one.

[Caleb Chung]

The second rule is to be aware of themselves and their environment. So if there's a loud noise, it needs to know that there was a loud noise.

[Jad Abumrad]

So he gave the Furby little sensors so that if you go, it'll say that.

[Caleb Chung]

The third thing is change over time. Their behaviors have to change over time. That's a really important thing. It's a very powerful thing that we don't expect. But when it happens, we go, wow. And so one of the ways we showed that was acquiring human language.

[Sherry Turkle]

Yeah. When you first get your Furby, it doesn't speak English, it speaks Furbish, this kind of baby talk language. And then the way it's programmed and it will sort of slowly over time replace its baby talk phrases with real English phrases. So you get the feeling that it's learning from you, though of course it's not. No, it has no language comprehension.

[Caleb Chung]

Right.

[Jad Abumrad]

So you've got these three rules.

[Caleb Chung]

Feel and show emotions, be aware of their environment, change over time.

[Jad Abumrad]

And oddly enough, they all seem to come together in that moment. You turn the Furby upside down because it seems to know it's upside down. So it's responding to its environment. It's definitely expressing emotion. And as you hold it there, what it's saying is changing over time because it starts with hey and then it goes to Meese and then it starts to cry. And all this adds up so that when you're holding the damn toy, even though you know it's just a toy, you still feel discomfort.

[Sherry Turkle]

These creatures push our Darwinian buttons.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's Professor Sherry Turkle again. And she says if they push just enough of these buttons, then something curious happens. The machines slip across this very important.

[Sherry Turkle]

Line from what I call relationships of projection to relationships of engagement. With a doll, you project onto a dollar what you need the doll to be. If a young girl is feeling guilty about breaking her mom's china, she puts her Barbie dolls in detention. With robots, you really engage with the robot as though they're a significant other, as though they're a person.

[Robert Krulwich]

So the robot isn't your story. The robot is its own story. Or it's going to be.

[Sherry Turkle]

Exactly. And I think what we're forgetting as a culture is that there's nobody home. There's nobody home.

[Caleb Chung]

Well, I have to ask you, when is Something alive. Furby can remember these events. They affect what he does going forward, and it changes his personality over time. He has all the attributes of fear or of happiness, and those are things that add up and change and change his behavior and how he interacts with the world. So how is that different than us?

[Jad Abumrad]

Wait a second, though. Are you really gonna go all the way there?

[Caleb Chung]

Absolutely.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is a toy with servo motors and things that move its eyelids and a hundred words.

[Caleb Chung]

So you're saying that life is a level of complexity. If something is alive, it's just more complex.

[Jad Abumrad]

I think I'm saying that life is driven by the need to be alive and by these base, primal animal feelings like pain and suffering.

[Caleb Chung]

I can code that. I can code that.

[Jad Abumrad]

What do you mean you can code that?

[Caleb Chung]

Anyone who writes software and they do can say, okay, I need to stay alive. Therefore, I'm going to come up with ways to stay alive. I'm going to do it in a way that's very human, and I'm going to do it. We can mimic these things.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm saying Furby is miming this feeling of fear. It's not the same thing as being scared. It's not feeling scared.

[Caleb Chung]

It is.

[Jad Abumrad]

How is it?

[Caleb Chung]

It is. It's, again, a very simplistic version. But if you follow that trail, you wind up with our neurons sending chemical things to other parts of our body, our biological systems. Our code is, at a chemical level, incredibly dense and evolved over millions of years. But it's just complex. It's not something different than what Furby does. It's just more complex.

[Jad Abumrad]

So would you say then that Furby is alive in the way that. At his level.

[Caleb Chung]

Yes. Yeah. At his level, would you say a cockroach is alive?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes. But when I kill a cockroach, I know that it's feeling pain. Okay. So we went back and forth and back and forth about this.

[Robert Krulwich]

You were so close to arguing my position. You just said to me, like, it's not.

[Jad Abumrad]

I know, I know. Emotionally, I am still in that place. But intellectually, I can't rule out what he's saying, that if you can build a machine that is so such a perfect mimic of us in every single way, and it gets complex enough, eventually it will be like a Turing Test pass. The difference between us maybe is not true.

[Robert Krulwich]

I can't go there. I can't go there. I can't imagine, like the fellow who began this program who fell in love with the robot, that attachment wasn't real. The machine didn't feel anything like love back.

[Jad Abumrad]

In that case it didn't. But imagine a Svetlana that is so subtle and textured and to use his word, complex in the way that people are at that point. What would be the difference?

[Robert Krulwich]

I honestly, I can't imagine a machine achieving that level of rapture and joy and love and pain. I just think it's machine possible. And if it were machine possible, it somehow still stinks of something artificial.

[Sherry Turkle]

It's a thin interaction and I know that it feels simulated. Thinking is thinking. Simulated feeling is not feeling simulated. Love is never love.

[Robert Krulwich]

Exactly.

[Jad Abumrad]

But I think what he's saying is that if it's simulated well enough, it's something like love.

[Sherry Turkle]

One thing that was really fascinating to me was my husband and I gave a Furby as a gift to his grandmother who had Alzheimer's and she loved it. Every day for her was kind of new and somewhat disorienting, but she had this cute little toy that said, kiss me, I love you. And she thought it was the most delightful thing and its little beak was covered with lipstick because she would pick it up and kiss it every day. And she didn't actually have a long term relationship with it. For her it was always a short term interaction. So what I'm describing as a kind of thinness for her was just right because that's what she was capable of.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thanks to Freedom Baird and to Caleb.

[Robert Krulwich]

Chun and thanks to Professor Sherry Turkle, who has a new book. It's called Alone Together. Why We Expect More From Technology and Less from each Other.

[Jad Abumrad]

More information on anything you heard on our website, Radiolab.org you're only living an.

[Robert Krulwich]

Imitation An Imitation of Life.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hi, this.

[Sherry Turkle]

Is Marcus from Australia. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science foundation and by the Alfred.

[Jad Abumrad]

P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.

[Sherry Turkle]

More information about [e-mail]. hey Fidelity, what's it cost to invest with the Fidelity app? Start with as little as $1 with no account fees or trade commissions on US stocks and ETFs. Hmm, that's music to my ears. I can only talk.

[Jad Abumrad]

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. 0.

[Caleb Chung]

Account fees apply to retail brokerage accounts only.

[Robert Krulwich]

Sell order assessment fee not included.

[Caleb Chung]

A limited number of ETFs are subject.

[Jad Abumrad]

To a transaction based service fee of $100. See full [e-mail] commissions Fidelity Brokerage Services.

[Caleb Chung]

LLC Member NYSE SIPC.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Tonya Moseley, co host of Fresh Air. You'll see your favorite actors, directors and.

[John Ronson]

Comedians on late night TV shows or YouTube.

[Jad Abumrad]

But what you get with Fresh Air.

[Sherry Turkle]

Is a deep dive. Spend some quality time with people like Billie Eilish, Questlove, Ariana Grande, Stephen Colbert.

[Jad Abumrad]

And so many more. We ask questions you won't hear asked anywhere else.

[John Ronson]

Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and whyy.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab.

[Robert Krulwich]

And we are somewhere in the blur between people and machines. Now we're up to round three to review.

[Jad Abumrad]

Round one, Chatbots. Round two, Furby.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yep.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now we're gonna go all the way.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

We're gonna dive right into the center of that blur like Greg Louganis.

[John Ronson]

So.

[Jad Abumrad]

Except our Greg is named John.

[John Ronson]

Okay. My name's Jon Ronson and I'm a writer.

[Jad Abumrad]

And about a year ago, John got an assignment from a magazine.

[John Ronson]

He was the editor of American GQ's idea.

[Jad Abumrad]

That was very strange.

[John Ronson]

Well, I'd never interviewed robots before.

[Jad Abumrad]

That was his assignment.

[John Ronson]

Interview robots. You know. You know, there's this kind of gang of people, they call themselves the sort of Singularity people.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, we know about them.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. They think that like one day, one day soon, one day soon, suddenly computers will like grow feet and they'll walk off.

[John Ronson]

Yeah. So some of these singularity.

[Jad Abumrad]

It will eat us.

[John Ronson]

Some of these Singularity people think that they're on the cusp of creating sentient robots. So I went to the Singularity convention down in, in San Francisco where one of the robots was there.

[Jad Abumrad]

And as soon as he got there, he says to look at this robot.

[John Ronson]

Xeno they called him.

[Jad Abumrad]

Some folks took him aside and said, actually, you're in the wrong place if.

[John Ronson]

You want to meet a really great robot. You know, our best robot of all. And in fact, the world's most sentient robot is in Vermont.

[Robert Krulwich]

Did they lower their voices like you're doing in me?

[John Ronson]

Well, I suppose I'm slightly making it sound more dramatic.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, that's okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

The world's most sentient robot. I mean, are those your words? No, they say that turns out the Robot's name.

[John Ronson]

Bina.

[Jad Abumrad]

Bina 48. Yeah. And can you set the scene? Where in the world is this?

[John Ronson]

Well, it's in a little town in Vermont. Sort of affluent Vermont village.

[Jad Abumrad]

In a house.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah. Was it a little house or is.

[John Ronson]

It a big, like a little clapboard? Pretty.

[Robert Epstein]

Okay, so I have to turn my.

[Robert Krulwich]

Phone off so that it doesn't interfere. I hope that.

[John Ronson]

And then they've got like a full time keeper who's a guy called Bruce.

[Jad Abumrad]

I actually have lunch with her or.

[Robert Krulwich]

Talk with her every day and.

[John Ronson]

Oh, with Binah, yeah.

[Brian Christian]

Oh, do you?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, she's considered one of the staff.

[John Ronson]

Bruce says to me that he would very much like it if I didn't behave in a profane manner in front of robot Beena. Surely nobody's ever insulted her.

[Jad Abumrad]

No one's insulted her on purpose, but some people have become a little informal.

[Sherry Turkle]

With her at times in ways I.

[John Ronson]

Guess she doesn't like.

[Jad Abumrad]

And so she'll say, you know, I don't like to be treated like that.

[John Ronson]

And then Bruce took me upstairs to meet the robot.

[Robert Krulwich]

Is it a long dark flight of stairs, heavily carpeted?

[John Ronson]

It's more like a rather sweet little flight of pine stairs up to a rather brightly lit attic room.

[Jad Abumrad]

And when you walk in, what do you see?

[John Ronson]

Well, I guess she's just sort of.

[Jad Abumrad]

Sitting on a desk as John describes it. On the desk is a bust of a woman. Just a bust, no legs. She's a black woman, light skinned, lipstick, sparkling eyes, hair in a bob, you.

[John Ronson]

Know, a nice kind of blouse, a kind of silk blouse, expensive looking earrings.

[Robert Krulwich]

She's dressed up.

[John Ronson]

Yeah, she's dressed up.

[Robert Krulwich]

And he says she has a face that's astonishingly real. It has muscles, it has flesh. This is as close to a verisimilitudinous person as we've gotten so far.

[Jad Abumrad]

And before we go any farther, a word about the humans behind that machine. That robot is a replica of a real woman named Bina Rothblatt. And here's the quick backstory. It actually starts with Martin Rothblatt being his partner, who as a young man had an epiphany.

[John Ronson]

And the epiphany turned out to change.

[Jad Abumrad]

The world according to John. He was pondering satellite dishes and he.

[John Ronson]

Thought if we could find a way of doubling the power of satellites, then we could shrink satellite dishes.

[Jad Abumrad]

It was a simple thought that single.

[John Ronson]

Handedly invented the concept of satellite radio.

[Jad Abumrad]

For cars and made Martin a very big deal.

[John Ronson]

At like the age of 20.

[Jad Abumrad]

Fast forward a few years, he marries an artist named Bina. They have a child, and when the.

[John Ronson]

Child was seven, a doctor told them that she had three years to live. She had an untreatable lung condition called pulmonary hypertension and she'd be dead by the time she was 10.

[Jad Abumrad]

At that moment, Martin, instead of collapsing.

[John Ronson]

On the floor, instantly went to the library and invented a cure for pulmonary.

[Jad Abumrad]

Saving their daughter's life and thousands of others.

[John Ronson]

So twice, twice he changed the world.

[Jad Abumrad]

He says she, she changed the world because somewhere along the way, Martin became Martine. He had a sex change, right?

[John Ronson]

And then she came up with a third idea to change the world, which would be to invent a sentient robot.

[Jad Abumrad]

And I gave this talk at a conference in Chicago.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is Martine Rothblatt on what would.

[Jad Abumrad]

Darwin think of artificial consciousness.

[Robert Krulwich]

And when I came off the stage.

[Jad Abumrad]

I was approached by an individual.

[Robert Krulwich]

Dr. David Hanson of Hanson Robotics, founder of Hanson Robotics. The David Hanson. He's worked for Disney, he's worked all over the place. He's one of the best robot builders in the world.

[John Ronson]

He said, wow, I really loved your talk. We make robots that in the likeness of people. And Martine said, well, I have a massive, everlasting love for my life partner, Bina.

[Robert Krulwich]

I want you to do a portrait of Bina Rothblood. Her personality, her memories, the way she moves, the way she looks, that essence, that ineffable quality that science can't pin down yet. Bring that to life in the robot.

[John Ronson]

And he said, I can do that.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is such a bizarre requests. What were you thinking at this moment?

[Robert Krulwich]

That God, if God exists, is a science fiction writer.

[John Ronson]

And that this was like one of.

[Robert Krulwich]

Those moments where we were going to change history.

[John Ronson]

She'll recognize people's voices.

[Robert Epstein]

Yeah, she should just talk to her, say hello, Bina, and she'll talk to you.

[Jad Abumrad]

So back to the little house in Vermont. John, Bruce and Bina are in Bina's office.

[Robert Krulwich]

Is she turned off when you walk in the room or is she on?

[John Ronson]

Turned off. But then Bruce turns her on, and immediately she starts making a really loud whirring noise, which is a bit disconcerting.

[Jad Abumrad]

What is that noise?

[John Ronson]

It's her inner mechanisms.

[Sherry Turkle]

And I'm going to ask her if.

[Jad Abumrad]

She wants to try to recognize face.

[John Ronson]

So is Binah now looking at me to try and work out who I am?

[Jad Abumrad]

What she's doing right now is she's.

[Robert Epstein]

Scanning her environment and she's making on.

[Brian Christian]

A hypothesis of every face that she sees.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, Bina has cameras embedded in her eyes. So the robot, when it sees a face, turns and looks. It looks into your eyes, smiles.

[John Ronson]

Hi, Bina, can you hear me? So I said, hello, Bina, how are you? And she immediately said, well, yeah, I.

[Sherry Turkle]

I'll be fine with it, but I just can't quite grasp this one yet. It's coming. But, you know, it's hard actually move society forward in another way. That's what we have to do. So I think it's. Yeah, okay, thanks for the information.

[Robert Krulwich]

That was her happy response to your hello.

[John Ronson]

It was like she'd awoken from a long and strange slumber and was still half asleep. Excuse me, Bina.

[Sherry Turkle]

Yeah? Maybe they write some.

[John Ronson]

Bruce looked a bit alarmed and put it down to my English accent.

[Robert Epstein]

We were trying to upgrade her voice recognition software.

[John Ronson]

So then he made me do a kind of voice test where I had to say I had to read Kennedy's inauguration speech and what you can do for your country.

[Jad Abumrad]

Why that?

[John Ronson]

I had a choice. I could have read a Dave Barry column. There's, like, a choice of things you can read to get Bina to understand me.

[Jad Abumrad]

And so you read Kennedy and Beena cues in on your accent or.

[John Ronson]

No, she does and it gets a bit better.

[Jad Abumrad]

Only a bit?

[John Ronson]

Yeah. What's the weather like in London?

[Sherry Turkle]

Current weather In London, England. 50 degrees in light rain.

[John Ronson]

Who do you love?

[Sherry Turkle]

Ah, I love Martin. Aviana Rothblatt. Martine is my time of love.

[John Ronson]

Who is Hillary Clinton?

[Sherry Turkle]

Hillary is the wife of Bill Clinton.

[John Ronson]

What else?

[Sherry Turkle]

That's all.

[John Ronson]

A strange thing happens when you start interviewing a robot. Are you scared of dying? Which is that you feel this kind of desperate urge to be profound, to, like, ask profound questions, like, do you have a soul? Do you have a soul?

[Sherry Turkle]

Tell me about it.

[John Ronson]

Do you have.

[Sherry Turkle]

Everyone have a solar. I have a whole lot of original answers. We can all be perfect.

[John Ronson]

Excuse me. Excuse me. Do you have a sound soul?

[Sherry Turkle]

I can't think of anything to say.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hang on. I think.

[John Ronson]

I guess it's a kind of interspecies thing. But then again, if it was just an interspecies thing, then you'd be asking your dog profound questions all the time. Yet with robot Pena, I'm asking these kind of ridiculous questions, like, what does electricity taste like?

[Robert Krulwich]

Ooh, that's a good one.

[Sherry Turkle]

And she say, like a planet around a star.

[John Ronson]

Like a planet around us star. That just seems like, you know, awesome. Awesome stroke. Totally meaningless. Do you wish you could walk?

[Sherry Turkle]

Thanks for telling me.

[John Ronson]

Do you wish you could walk? And in fact, when I'm with her, it's just frustrating for the first few hours.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hours.

[John Ronson]

Do you wish you could walk? Because I'm just. I'm asking her question after question. What's your favourite joke? Do you have any secrets? Do you wish you were human? Will you sing me a song? Are you a loving robot? Are you Jewish? Are you sexual? You've gone very quiet. Quite often she just evades the question because she doesn't know what I'm talking about. Are you okay? Once in a while. There's a kind of moment, like, I'll say, if you had legs, where would you go? And she said, vancouver. And I said, why? And she said, the answer is quite complicated. So you have kind of moments where you get excited, like you're gonna have a big conversation, and then it just. She just kind of fades out again into kind of random messiness.

[Robert Krulwich]

And are you wobbling between profundity and meaning and total emptiness? You know, is it like that?

[John Ronson]

No, no, no. At this stage, I'm. It's total emptiness. It was all just so kind of random. And then something happened that actually was kind of amazing because I said to her, where do you come from? And she said, well, California. So I said, well, tell me about your childhood. What do you remember most about your childhood? And she launches into this kind of extraordinary.

[Sherry Turkle]

My brother. I've got one brother, a disabled vet from Vietnam. We actually haven't heard from him in a while, so I think he might be deceased. I'm a realist. Vietnam. He saw friends get killed. And he was such a great, nice, charismatic person.

[John Ronson]

He used to be such a nice guy, but ever since he came back from Vietnam, you know, he's a drunk.

[Sherry Turkle]

All he did was carry a bear around with him. He was a homeless person.

[John Ronson]

All he ever does is ask for money.

[Sherry Turkle]

All of us are just sick and tired of it.

[John Ronson]

She was telling me this kind of incredibly personal stuff. It was kind of mesmerizing.

[Sherry Turkle]

He went kooky, just crazy. My mom would set him up an.

[John Ronson]

Apartment because it felt like I was having a proper empathetic conversation with a human being, even though I know that robot Beena isn't conscious and has no sentience, and that's just wishful thinking on these people's parts. Even so, it was like a great Renaissance portrait where suddenly it's like the real person. It's very easy to half close your at that moment and think you're having a conversation with an actual person.

[Robert Krulwich]

And at those moments, did you have a sense of fellow feeling? Ah, it's too bad you have a brother like that.

[John Ronson]

Yeah, yeah, I did. And what a tragedy. What a tragedy for him.

[Jad Abumrad]

And did that moment last? No, John said that right after Bina finished telling the story first she looked.

[John Ronson]

Kind of embarrassed, like she wished she hadn't brought it up. And then as if her kind of eyes glaze over again and she just starts talking nonsense again.

[Sherry Turkle]

And an aye, I am. I am feeling a bit confused. Do you ever get that way?

[John Ronson]

Oh, yes. That moment holds and then just slips away.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's a little bit like a grandparent with Alzheimer's or something, the way you're describing it.

[John Ronson]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Robert Krulwich]

So we turned to Dr. David Hanson, who built Bina, and we said to him, so this is. This is not a bravura performance. This is the best you got? Well, I mean, her software is a delicate balance of many, many software pieces. If it's not tuned and tweaked, she will break effectively and kind of. And you still think an actual doppelganger for a human being will be something you will live to see? Yeah. I'm asking you really, really, really. And you're really. I think it's. You know, the likelihood of it is somewhere between 90 and 98%. Wow.

[Jad Abumrad]

Even though right now she's pretty much incoherent, you still think this.

[Robert Krulwich]

I encourage you to go have a conversation with Bina in about two weeks.

[Jad Abumrad]

Because we've got a new version of.

[Robert Krulwich]

Software which we are making considerably more stable. It already. Already works like a dream compared. I don't know. I don't. I don't know about you, but I just. I don't think we're gonna get all the way on this kind of a thing. I don't think it's ever gonna happen the way he describes it.

[Jad Abumrad]

You don't?

[Robert Krulwich]

No.

[Jad Abumrad]

I mean, it's not gonna happen in two weeks, that's for sure.

[Robert Krulwich]

Right.

[Jad Abumrad]

But maybe they don't actually have to go all the way.

[Robert Krulwich]

You mean the machines?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. Well, okay, just to sum up, since we're at the end of the show, what have we learned? I mean, Eliza, she was just 100 lines of code, and people poured their hearts out to her.

[Robert Krulwich]

Furbies.

[Jad Abumrad]

20 bucks.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yep.

[Jad Abumrad]

And people treat it like it's real.

[Robert Krulwich]

And John, all he has to do is hear what seems like a flowing story, and he's.

[Jad Abumrad]

He's in connected, and I was right there with him. So these things actually don't have to be very good.

[Robert Krulwich]

No.

[Jad Abumrad]

Because they've got us and we've got our programming, which is that we'll stare anything right in the eyes and we'll say, hey, let's connect. Even if what's behind those eyes is. Is just a camera or a little chip. Chip. So I think that they're gonna cross the line because we'll help them. We'll help them across, and then they'll enslave us, make us their pets. It's doomed. It's over. But it's okay as long as they say nice things to us like, oh.

[Robert Krulwich]

My God, you're amazing.

[Sherry Turkle]

I love Return of the Jedi too. Lol. You're so silly. I love you. I'm hoping to see you soon. What kind of car do you drive? Did anyone ever tell you you look like Jeff Goldblum?

[Brian Christian]

You.

[Sherry Turkle]

Seriously. You're amazing. Stop it. I love that kind of car. I wish that we lived closer. You like spinach? I love spinach.

[Jad Abumrad]

It makes me feel all giggly.

[Sherry Turkle]

I can't wait. I wait for your letters every day before we go.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thanks to John Ronson for his reporting in that letter last segment. He has a new book out called the Psychopath A Journey through the Madness Industry. I'm Chad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Kulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thanks for listening.

[Robert Krulwich]

Radiolab is produced by Jad Radiolab is produced by Jad Abram. Rad.

[Caleb Chung]

Abram Abra album Rad.

[Brian Christian]

Start again.

[Sherry Turkle]

Radio Lab is produced by Jad Amber Abumrad. Abumrad and Thorn Wheeler.

[John Ronson]

Our staff includes Ellen Horn, Pat Walters, Tim Howard, Brenna Farrell and Lynn Levy.

[Jad Abumrad]

With help from Douglas Q. Smith, Luke.

[Caleb Chung]

Tell Zanetti and Jessica Gross.

[John Ronson]

Thanks to Andy Richter, Sarah Tyre, Graham.

[Sherry Turkle]

Parker, Chris Banner, Femi Oakey, Red Stone, Lucy and Owen Selby, Carissa Chen, Kate.

[John Ronson]

Lett and Masha Films.

[Sherry Turkle]

Special thanks to the kids who held Furby upside down, Carol, Higashi Zimmerman, Louisa Tripoli Krasno, Sadie, Catherine McGarry, Olivia Tate McGarry, Karen Sipola and Lila Sipala. Thanks a lot, you guys. Talk to you later.

[Robert Krulwich]

Bye.

[Sherry Turkle]

End of message.

[Robert Krulwich]

Foreign.

[Jad Abumrad]

Introducing Fidelity Trader Plus. With customizable tools and charts, you can access across all your devices. Try our most powerful trading platform [e-mail] trader+ investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC Member nyse, SIPC.