There’s been discussion on whether people should say please and thank you to their Alexa or Claude, but should Alexa, Claude, and their robot relatives always maintain their level of civility when responding back to us? What is the point of (im)politeness in robotics? Linguist Derek Bousfield (expert on human politeness), computer scientist Blake Jackson (expert on user expectations of robots in terms of politeness), and psychologist Merel Keijsers (expert on robot bullying) discuss the pros and cons of robots that are able to be rude to humans.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

What do you do if somebody else publishes your thesis as a book? This is what happened to Andrew Vonasch. Together, we investigated this new type of scam. We discovered a flood of stolen theses and the thieves’ method to publish them on Amazon and through other resellers. I interviewed Richard Elliott and sought legal advice from Ursula Cheer. We confronted IngramSpark with this scam. They removed the theses from their system but made it practically impossible to prosecute the offenders.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

This episode is a live recording of the Raising the Bar event that took place on 10 September 2024 in Christchurch, New Zealand. I explore the long-standing promise of robots that would handle household tasks and serve as teachers, caregivers, and companions. Despite advancements in social robots, they remain absent from our daily lives. Figures like Elon Musk continue to push the dream of humanoid robots, yet we must first ask what tasks are best left to humans. The rise of human-like robots also challenges us to reflect on our own identity and humanity.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

 Robots are not just machines. We treat them as if they were somewhat like humans, including applying moral standards and expectations to them. Our behavior towards robots matters. The way we treat them reveals much about ourselves. In today’s episode, we will talk about how being nice is not the opposite of being cruel to them. I invited Bob Douglas and Mary Blossom from the AI Research Institute to introduce us to the topic. They agreed to produce a short podcast dialogue to get us started. I then discussed their introduction with Michael-John Turp and Minyi Wang.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

Robots and AI are being portrayed in overly optimistic videos, television shows and advertisements. Tesla’s Optimus robot is a prime example. In this episode Dwain Allan and Christoph Bartneck interview John Petrocelli and Nick Lee on how this puffery, bullshit and lies affect consumers and vulnerable people. Such as Suzanne Barron, who believes that robots are possessed by Satan.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

Humanoid robot companies are promising that humanoids will fast become our friends, colleagues, employees, and the backbone of our workforce. As Elon Musk described it when he first unveiled Tesla’s Optimus: “It will upend our idea of what the economy is… it will be able to do basically anything humans don’t want to do… it’s going to bring an age of abundance.”

But how close are we to this reality? What are the key costs associated with operating a humanoid? Can companies deploy them profitably? Will humanoids take our jobs, and if so, what should we be doing to prepare? To explore these questions, Dwain Allan and I interviewed Will Jackson, Jo Cribb, and Bruce McDonald.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

A new wave of humanoids entered the scene, and their creators promised us a bright future. Atlas, Figure, and Optimus are intended to work in spaces that are designed for humans. They are not only targeted at factories, but also at our homes and families. But what promises can they actually meet? Dwain Allan and I interviewed Will Jackson and Robert Riener on the future of humanoids.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

Artificial Intelligence promise to improve many aspects of our lives. The current hype, in particular around Large Language Model, raises the questions what of these bold visions of the future is science and what is fiction. AI is not new in HRI. For many decades researchers used it to enable robots to better interact with humans. In this episode I talked with Julie Adams and David Kaber about what AI can really do for HRI.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

The peer review process is essential to modern science. Researchers conduct studies and submit their results to a journal. An editor manages a review process involving external experts. But what happens when you study the peer review process itself? How do scientific organisations react when they become the subject of an experiment? Not well, to say the least.

This live recording is from the Nerd Night at the Little Andromeda Theatre in Christchuch, New Zealand.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

Should you use chatGPT for podcasting? I asked chatGPT this question and used Descript’s Overdub feature to voice the response. Generating this episode was quicker than any other I ever created. Is it any good? Probably not. Still, it shows how quickly it is possible to generate superficial content. This might be useful for enabling robots to have superficial conversations with people. Just don’t expect any originality or accuracy.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.