Ken Goldberg (roboticist)

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Umbrella

Tv & Film, Music, Comedy

4.6 • 68.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2025

⏱️ 122 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ken Goldberg (Why Don’t We Have Better Robots Yet?) is an award-winning artist, roboticist, and engineering professor. Ken joins the Armchair Expert to discuss being born in Nigeria, growing up in rough and tumble City of Brotherly Love, and on how that taught him how to not take things lying down. Ken and Dax address the elephant panties in the room, how a course he took in 1981 began his trajectory in robotics and AI, and the tragic archetype of Pygmalion and the hubris of falling in love with your creation. Ken explains the Czechoslovakian etymology of the word “robot,” why don’t we have better robots yet, and how he stays optimistic doing a job predicated on failure.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.
0:06.5	Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:10.0	Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.
0:13.7	Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert.
0:16.7	My friend is here today.
0:19.2	Ken Goldberg, you'll hear our origin story, but I met him somewhere.
0:23.3	I was judgmental of them.
0:24.6	Then, of course, I fell in love with him.
0:25.9	And now I'm just smitten with this gentleman.
0:28.8	Ken Goldberg is the Williams S. Floyd distinguished chair in engineering at UC Berkeley
0:34.7	and an award-winning roboticist, filmmaker, artists, and public speaker on AI and robotics.
0:41.5	Now, really quick, I've read a couple comments that people are over AI.
0:45.8	I get it.
0:47.3	People feel a little inundated, and I get it.
0:49.4	It's the topic of the day.
0:50.7	A, this isn't very heavy in AI talk.
0:53.6	And then B, this is a million times more playful
0:56.8	than you could ever imagine robotics could be. I'll also add that he has an art exhibit that is
1:01.8	going until March. Don't wait till then, go now at Skirball, if you live in L.A. or visiting
1:07.6	Skirball Cultural Center in L.A. And it's called Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology.
1:13.4	Trees, time, and technology.
1:14.7	Very, very cool art project with these tree rings that are gorgeous and very creative.
	...

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