In today’s podcast we interviewed Scott Roy, a Senior Staff Engineer at Google who specializes in artificial intelligence.  He also happens to be my brother-in-law (Lloyd’s son-in-law).  One of Scott’s most recent projects at Google is to improve the way machines communicate with people in diverse human languages—last week he was working on communicating in Bengali.

Scroll down to listen to the podcast with Scott Roy.

Scott believes that one day machines may have the sophistication and human-like qualities of Commander Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation.  He says there is a good chance machines will be able to feel emotions like love or the joy of watching baseball, and people will be able to teach them ethics.  Although he recognizes the risks of possible harm to humans by super intelligent machines, his work is motivated by his vision of a relationship in which machines enable people to thrive.

Question: Are you more excited or afraid of super intelligent machines?