Rodney Brooks on the Future of Robots

Posted 18 Aug 2008 at 23:26 UTC by steve

It's been a while since we've seen a Rodney Brooks interview, so we thought you'd enjoy reading Newsweek's recent interview. He talks about the importance of gaze direction in making robots socially interact with humans. He answers the question of what the most interesting robots are that he's seen lately. He talks about the Uncanny Valley and human-looking robots. He says that the popular conception of robots as different from humans is an artificial distinction since we're both machines, just of different types. But he notes, "Whether we humans are smart enough to build such machines is a different question. Maybe we're just not smart enough. That pisses off the scientists when I say that.".