Translator: Aliaksandr Autayeu Reviewer: Kinga Skorupska
When I was 10, I dreamt about having a robot
that could clean my room or wash the dishes,
so I could go play outside and ride my bike.
A lot of time passed, but my dream never went away, so I made it real.
When I started to work on my first robot,
I realized that robots can do more than just routine actions,
much more than just cleaning the house.
Over time, my dream transformed from a child’s dream to an adult’s dream.
I realized that robots can make us happier,
each and every of us,
be it a kid, an adult or a senior.
I realized that when people communicate with robots,
something magical happens. It never happens with a smartphone,
or a notebook –
it is something completely new.
It’s not like relationships among people, but it’s something similar.
And I had a dream to create a robot
which could indeed help people be happier.
There was a survey in which 348 children from six countries
were asked a question:
“Are you ready
to live around robots?”
64% of kids were ready to perceive robots
just like other members of society.
64% of kids ages 8 to 12 are ready today
to think of robots as members of our society.
This is already saying something.
And while it seems there are no robots yet,
in fact, we have robots of various kinds
in our daily lives, I’ll talk about that later.
Now, 38% of kids would like to learn together with robots,
study history, learn in an interactive way,
play with robots and grow and develop together.
I have a personal story to share. About a year ago I was in an orphanage
and I started talking to this kid.
His name is Sasha, he’s twelve.
Our conversation flagged,
so I told him what we worked on,
that we created robots.
And he asked: “Can I somehow talk to a robot?”
I had a smartphone on me with an access to our robot’s intelligence.
And I said: “Sure!”
This in fact was an accidental picture, when someone saw how he took
my smartphone and started talking to the robot.
For the next three hours I lost my smartphone,
he wouldn’t give it back to me.
When we tested our robot with grown-ups
we would tell them to talk to the robot.
And they could only come up with standard phrases like:
“Hi, how are you?” “What’s the weather like?”
And the communication would stop there.
People didn’t know what to say to a robot.
But this kid knew. He asked the robot about everything.
“Would it rain tomorrow?” “How old is Tony Stark?”
And the robot said: “I don’t know yet, but I’ll try to find out
and think about it, I’ll tell you next time.”
In half an hour, after talking to the robot about all kinds of things,
he comes back to his question: “Did you find out how old Tony Stark is?”
meaning that he thought the robot would go and find out,
read about it.
He perceived it the same way he would perceive me.
I believe, even as a more interesting person to talk to.
Just imagine that in 2050 the population of our planet
will be 9 billion people,
and out of them 1.5 billion
will be people over 65 years old.
What does it mean? It means that for the first time
in the human history there will be more people aged 65 and above,
than people under 20.
Imagine that? There will be 1.5 billion of them –
it’s 16% of the total population,
and they will need care.
It’s interesting that most people in this audience
by that year will be more than 65 years old.
Are you ready to accept pills from a robot?
What kind of a robot should it be
that you could accept a pill from it? What should it do?
What should it say?
67% of urban population
ages 30 to 45 suffer from stress,
a stressful flow of information.
We don’t have time to read our Facebook newsfeed,
reply to emails, or to return calls from our friends.
We receive a huge flow of information,
we often miss wonderful events like TEDx,
because we didn’t know about them, didn’t have time, didn’t hear about them.
In the search for happiness, we download new apps on our smartphones
which remind us in the morning
that we wanted to go to the gym.
We undergo training to understand how to make our lives work.
We go to Thailand,
to stay there and realize what is happiness.
And, nevertheless, under the storm of new tasks
we don’t have time to do all that.
And when my smartphone asks me again:
“Am I happy?”
– there is an app that does it -
I don’t reply, because I’m busy right now,
I’m talking to another person.
I realized it’s not enough for a robot to be a tool,
a function.
I won’t get any emotions from a slave or a function, similar to a smartphone,
I’ll stay indifferent,
I won’t feel anything.
I realized a robot should have a personality.
What is a personality? Let’s talk about it.
It’s not a person.
It doesn’t have its own intent,
but it has a distinct line of behavior,
that is, a sense of humor, preferences, its own story.
When I came to Moscow to work on robots
three years ago I bought Roomba –
this is a robotic vacuum cleaner,
have you heard about it? I brought it home,
set it up to clean on Wednesdays and Fridays
when I’m not at home.
I did it on Tuesday, so I actually forgot about it
on the next day.
I came home Wednesday night, and saw my slippers scattered in the hall.
I don’t get it at all, no one could come to my place.
I walk into the room, see a cord lying on the floor
and my first thought is:
Was my place broken into? I see my robot Roomba
lying in the living room, tangled in the power cord,
it lies there with an error blinking.
You know, it may not have a personality,
but I felt sympathy towards it.
I thought it was my pet.
Last time I had this feeling was
when I was 7 years old and had a dog.
And this is amazing.
Something was created between me and this robot…
A dish rolling around and vacuum cleaning…
A sort of a feeling.
In the US they madea robotic nutritionist. It had a very simple function.
Every day you had to put in
the number of calories you ate,
and whether you worked out.
This robot… They tested the robot.
They gave a nutritionist’s diary to a group of three people.
In the first case it was a special diary, a notebook,
into which they put in the calories.
In the other case it was a software which first asked the question,
and after that they had to put in the calories.
In the last case it was a robot.
What’s interesting, is that there was more interaction in a robot.
I mean all testers who had the robot,
and not 3 people, there were about 30 people tested.
And there was 50% more interaction with the robot, than the diary.
You know, how often we decide to work out starting from Monday,
and somehow by Wednesday we realize that we are too busy today,
so no way, next time.
And then in a month we start learning English.
And in another month we start something else.
But how often do we finish what we start?
And how often does taking notes, or a smartphone app help us do it?
So, this experiment conducted at MIT in Boston
demonstrates that a robot allows…
A robot becomes a sort of a buddy, a partner for people.
The most interesting is when a person enters the number of calories
and the robot would look at this and give comments.
Not fully interactive,
as with people when we talk with a voice,
information would be typed on a keyboard, yet the robot would interact with you:
look at you, praise you if you ate fewer calories today, for example, and so on.
There would be more trust to a robot than to a diary or a laptop.
Just imagine, the word is “trust”.
This word, trust, how often do we use it in our life?
Do you trust yourself? Your friends?
People trust a robot more than they trust a diary,
they trust a diary more than a computer.
Do you know that if you ask a programmer:
“What is the most reliable way to store information?”
The answer would be: “Paper”.
Most people think so too, yet they rely more on robots.
When we were building our robot,
we had similar experiments.
I want to show a video with our robot
and I’ll tell you about the experiments after it.
Human: Cubic, wake up! (Blip sound)
H: What’s the weather like?
Cubic: Today it is plus four degrees Celsius, one degree at night,
cloudy, no rain is expected. (Blip sound)
H: Where can I go tonight?
C: Android movie is on in the movie theaters,
shall I tell you more about it? (Blip sound)
H: Thank you
C: No problem.
H: Cubic, wake up.
H: Turn on the light.
C: Turning on a device – light.
H: Thank you!
C: You are welcome.
YB: A simple “thank you” tells a lot about a very deep thing…
A person feels grateful to a device
and says “thank you”.
this is interesting, when kids play with toys
they too say thank you,
call them by their names, make up their stories.
When we grow up, leave our toys behind and buy, for example, a car,
we too ask it “Why won’t you turn on?”
We tend to animate stories around us,
and this is interesting.
There was another fun moment.
We build robots in a place called HackSpace,
where many other different projects work too
and often our developers and linguists who test
and build Cubic talk to it and ask:
“What’s the weather like?” And when Cubic replies they would say “Shut up!”,
so not to participate further in the dialogue,
because they need to test other functions.
And people who walk by and see
that the robot is told to shut up will ask: “Why are you so rude with it?”
(Laughter) Just imagine. And that didn’t happen once.
I remember this happening at least ten times.
A girl came up to Cubic to pet it saying “So, so, that’s okay”. (Laughter)
It’s amazing.
In their first interaction with a robot
74% of people greet it,
they say "Hi".
People do say hi – this is interesting.
Why on earth would they start saying hi to a talking device?
The most popular question is “How are you?”
I don’t know why, but people indeed want to know how the robot is.
65% of users say “Hi”. I’ve already said this.
It’s a reflex. It’s just a word of gratitude
I say to my colleague who handed over to me a pen or something else.
It’s interesting that people perceive robots as partners.
Why?
Coming back to this thought, what is a robot with a personality?
If one would ask a robot, how it is doing, it would reply that it’s good.
If you say thank you to it, it says “No problem”.
It interacts, it not just provides information.
It has its own storyline,
and people buy it.
Can a robot like this be a partner
in terms of reaching certain goals? Why not.
It depends on the level of the technology,
but it’s possible for this robot to ask me
whether I studied English today.
And if I say no for three days in a row,
it may say “Well, not a good job.
I’m going to post it on Facebook”.
We are on the verge of a new world.
It rapidly bursts into our space.
I think in 10 years the number of robots around us,
different robots, not necessarily human-like robots,
anthropomorphic with two arms and two legs.
They can vary a lot, they could be
an assistant in a smartphone, an assistant
built into a car or a watch. There can be various options.
But in 10 years there will be as many robots as there are smartphones.
And the question is: what those robots will be like?
I believe those will be robots with a personality.
Let the robots into your space. Thank you.
(Applause)