**The Ethics of Robotics: A Delicate Balance**

As we continue to develop and deploy advanced artificial intelligence systems, including robots that can interact with humans, we are faced with a complex and nuanced issue: ethics. How do we ensure that these machines behave in ways that respect human dignity and well-being? The answer is not straightforward, but it's essential to have a thoughtful and informed discussion about the potential risks and benefits of creating robots that can think, feel, and interact like humans.

**The Importance of Privacy**

One of the most critical concerns when it comes to robotics is privacy. As these machines become more sophisticated, they will be able to collect vast amounts of personal data, including our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. If we're not careful, this could lead to a loss of individual autonomy and freedom. "I think people would be a lot more reserved if it's like wait, is this thing just relaying back everything that I'm saying to the creators?" This fear is valid, as we all want to feel like we have control over our personal information and are not being spied on.

**Escalating Concerns**

However, there are also situations where a robot's ability to collect data could be used for harm. "There are some challenges with having that level of information," says [Name]. "Similar to Facebook, you know like Facebook decided to change the header bar to not tell us something about your day to 'what's on your mind' and you know that's like the final line of privacy." This is particularly concerning when it comes to sensitive topics or situations where a robot might be asked for advice. "There has to be a panel of people who decide, okay, what is detrimental to mankind and what actually is private?" The line between helpful guidance and harm can be blurred, making it essential to have robust safeguards in place.

**The Role of Human Judgment**

One way to address these concerns is by establishing clear guidelines and protocols for robot behavior. This might involve creating a panel of experts who can review data and provide recommendations on when a robot's input should be considered. "We want to be able to not kind of facilitate that, even if it's to their own self or humanity in general," says [Name]. These panels would need to strike a balance between allowing robots to learn from human behavior while also preventing potential harm.

**The Power of Anthromorphic Design**

Another challenge in developing robot ethics is the concept of anthromorphism. This refers to the idea that humans will attribute human-like qualities and motivations to these machines, which can create unrealistic expectations. "If there's something that's going to cause harm to another human being, then we want to be able to not kind of facilitate that," says [Name]. For instance, if a robot is asked for advice on how to handle a sensitive situation, the system might default to providing helpful guidance rather than considering potential harm.

**The Limits of AI**

It's essential to remember that current artificial intelligence systems, including those used in robots, have limitations. "The robot isn't always listening," says [Name]. Even with advanced language processing capabilities, these machines are not yet capable of true understanding or empathy. When humans interact with robots, they're still engaging with a machine, rather than another human being.

**A Complex Interplay**

As we continue to develop and deploy robots that can interact with humans, the interplay between human behavior, AI systems, and ethics becomes increasingly complex. "The gate is closed until you open it," says [Name]. This highlights the need for careful consideration and planning when creating these machines. By acknowledging both the potential benefits and risks, we can work towards developing robots that enhance our lives while respecting human dignity and well-being.

**The Human Factor**

In addition to technical considerations, there's also a crucial role for human judgment in robot ethics. "The more voice points and data points that you're able to collect, the better the story," says [Name]. By combining AI-driven insights with human intuition, we can create systems that are both effective and responsible.

**A New Era of Coexistence**

Ultimately, the development of robots that can interact with humans marks a new era in our relationship with technology. As we navigate these complex issues, it's essential to prioritize ethics, empathy, and understanding. By working together to address these challenges, we can create machines that enhance our lives while respecting human dignity and well-being.

**Real-World Applications**

In the real world, this means having a nuanced discussion about what is considered private and when robot input should be considered. For instance, if family members are having a discussion about their marital issues, it's essential to consider whether a robot would provide helpful guidance or exacerbate the situation. "If family were having a discussion and two parents having a marriage that's not going so well, the robot's not sitting in the corner like enjoying listening to this conversation," says [Name].

**A Future of Compromise**

As we move forward with robot development, it's clear that there will be times when compromise is necessary. "The line between helpful guidance and harm can be blurred," admits [Name]. This blurring highlights the need for ongoing debate and discussion about the role of robots in our lives. By prioritizing ethics, empathy, and understanding, we can create machines that enhance our lives while respecting human dignity and well-being.

**Conclusion**

The development of robots that can interact with humans raises essential questions about ethics, privacy, and responsibility. As we navigate these complex issues, it's clear that a nuanced discussion is needed. By acknowledging both the potential benefits and risks, we can work towards developing machines that enhance our lives while respecting human dignity and well-being.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome back to the AI Minds podcast this is a podcast where we explore the companies of tomorrow being built AI first I am your host Demetrios and in this episode as always it is brought to you by Deep Gham the number one speech to text and Tex to speech API on the internet trusted by the world's top conversational AI leaders startups and Enterprises such as Spotify twilio NASA and City bank today we are joined by none other than Islington robotica CTO Nathan how you doing dude hey thank you great to be here thank you Demetrius very excited I'm doing well thank you well you've got an incredible story because you are creating robotics right now but you started out in sports and you did all kinds of technical stuff at University went to work for Arsenal and for those that do not know that's a pretty big uh football or AKA soccer team in the UK what were you doing at Arsenal it's a great question uh well I was teaching the kids and expanding their franchise globally so I was a head coach there and just delivering the Arsenal methodology worldwide it's pretty awesome and I am guessing you were getting inspired by that to then plot and create a humanoid robot company in 2024 or you had no idea hey life is a life is like a beautiful accident the the job at Arsenal was um something that I didn't ask for but one of the Arsenal players I was just coaching at the weekend trying to get like some money up whilst I was at Uni and one of the kid's dads came and taed me on the shoulder French accent really deep voice oh you're very good I was like who's this guy it turned out to be like William Galas who was the Arsenal captain at the time and he' put yeah he' put the word in and then uh they called me and I thought it was my University friends like playing a prank cuz we used to just do to each other all the time so it took me 3 days to call them back and then I just found myself in the Arsenal boardroom like still not believing it so whether or not humanoid robots were in my mind at that point I'd be lying if I said yes but as a young boy uh I built my first Lego humanoid robot at like 10 years old so they've always been um on the horizon oh that's so cool what a story man what and and life has a way of happening like that happen stand is super cool to see so you did then go from Arsenal and I imagine you got the bug the entrepreneurial bug because you started a weos company right can you tell me a little bit about that yeah of course um again another funny story so I'm in New York uh Arsenal's delivering one of their soccer camps in New York or football camps of course don't want to lose any friends and uh uh Donald Trump's uh son rolls up with two security guards and uh this was like quite a high-profile camp and I was the head coach or the technical director there so I was in charge of the camp and the kids in the program and I just thought like this is like Donald Trump's child and I'm in charge I don't know who he is I know nothing about him so I was like how cool would it be if he had like a wristband or something similar to like a festival band but something that he could use on a like a repeated basis so I had like a non-disposable wristband um similar to like the whoop product that they have in basketball I know there's lots of fans of whoop around the world and we were all about collecting the player data I thought if if a player ever collapsed and I knew nothing about them I could just scan it with my phone using NFC and it would kind of give me a full profile of um that person any medical histories and contact details so yeah okay so this was more about identifying the different players more than like tracking your heart rate and that type of thing in the beginning yeah I mean we started small so in the beginning we just thought right let's pack it with all the real plain Tex data and then uh we started developing uh more kinematic data understanding player movement tracking distance covered like you say heart rate recovery rate this sort of thing yeah wow that is incredible so that got you into the world of Hardware I imagine and what made you then get the inspiration to jump in even deeper and start creating robotic of course so um know it's like more funny stories I was working with an investment company from Tel Aviv there's a guy called Mayo there and he uh just said you know I would have an idea he's like oh you can do that that's easy and everything I said he'd be like oh we could do that that's easy and he just his attitude and his approach to Tech I just thought like this guy has such a can do attitude so I I was I adopted that one of U my business partners previously was like you know how are we going to Pivot now we've got the lock now no children are in sport and I just told him let's let's just build a robot we can do that it's easy and uh he was like well do you have instructions how to do that I said look great ideas rarely come with instructions you know it's about you looking at it figuring out what do you want it to do with of course my biom biomechanics degree I had a good understanding of how the human body works I'm in sport I've got a good understanding of how those things work so I just went and picked up an Arduino and selftaught my taught myself 12 months later had a full humanoid robot that was um fully functional and it still sits in our office today you know you can see that in our LinkedIn pages and I'm sure there'll be links to that after but uh yeah it's uh that's kind of how we got there but you know I don't give myself the credit I think like we live in a time that if you want to know something you just asked I an llm like a large language model or you go to Google and or you go to YouTube and you just kind of sit with the the videos and you just break it up into small pieces and that's really what we did and and and the output was of course a humanoid robot called Pablo Pablo I do like your naming conventions which we'll get into in a sec and so that was the inspiration that that gave you the confidence I imagine to recognize that hey there's something here when it comes to Robotics and what then what were the next steps in creating Islington robotica so i' read a book industry 4.0 and a subsequent book the next 100 years and both of those books yeah they're really cool I mean go and find them but those books like just explained like how quickly humanity is evolving and um what's kind of happened in the last 50 years is just so monumentally so much so so much movement that's happened in the last 50 years versus the previous 500 years specifically in Tech that I knew that uh I don't want to call it the dawn of Robotics or the dawn of AI but we were really at the dawn of AI you know in terms of like just information so if we just take the information aspect of it there was nothing that I wanted to know that I couldn't find out as I mentioned before so you know that was that was what really led me mainly in industry 4.0 like moving from industry 3.0 for those that don't know that's just like uh manufacturing manufacturing lines and then 4.0 being the layer technology and on that so um I knew that robotics had to play a critical role um in all of this and our our our initial idea for Pablo was all about search and rescue or for going into like unsafe places for humans where we had Corona virus uh there would have been a great uh adoption there for robots to go and either remove or bring things to people who were either at risk or were risky to others um I saw that that it was the time yeah that makes sense but is it still that no so uh really Pablo was a research project so we wanted to you know from my previous company with the wearables I was surrounded by technology enthusiasts experts and uh leaders and so when I got a r run these ideas past them they just like n you you've done it again you come up with another wonderful idea at the right time so that gave me the confidence and I was working with a guy called Dr Rob Maryfield who was one of the Pioneers in Keyhole surgery and he yeah he was one of my mentors and we would meet every Friday for an Indian this was just at the just at the dawn of the uh of the pandemic we didn't really know it was going to take full effect um and then I just kind of went away and just did did it in my own time uh kept giving him updates and such like and he was like look I really think you're on to something but we knew that it was a bit early we knew that in 2019 we were just too early for for the humanoid form factor so we we kind of changed it a little bit but not not like a crazy 360 pivot okay and so what has it morphed into since the pandemic sure so um since the pandemic or during the pandemic I lost a few friends just they were unable to cope like mentally and like life became tough and so that was really hard and I realized that like we're in a we're we're more more connected now ever than ever but most disconnected you know like we're a really lonely Society a lot of people spend their times with passive devices and the kind of days go by you know seem seems like time's accelerating uh we're stuck behind these devices there isn't much interaction and I thought of what would be a good way to remove the device have an intermediary that was still techn ology because we don't want to remove the technology we want to keep the technology but we still want the social interaction um and like just voice like how important it is to hear voice doesn't doesn't even matter whose voice it is at this point like we all watched every movie we all completed our whole box sets but if it doesn't talk back to you or answer your questions it kind of becomes redundant at that point I think voice plays a major part in that so it mored into a smaller bot uh I I'll do a name reveal when you're ready but uh this this small this smaller object is just like a companion it answers any of your most ridiculous questions your darkest fears your general day-to-day things um I'm due to get married soon and I asked it told my robot that I was pretty apprehensive about getting married like just how life would change and my robot did a good job of appeasing me and pacifying me and making me not worried so this one of our our strap line of the company is code for good uh so this is really what it's all about it's about tackling loneliness and education oh fascinating there is a piece that I think I wanted to get into with you when it comes to voice and you mentioned it here how important it is to be able to talk to someone and how right now it feels like we're at a point where we just get a sliver of the actual data when it comes to the conversations that we have like the conversation that you and I are having right now is through a computer and so we're losing a ton but we still see our facial expressions we still are understanding the Cadence and the way that we're communicating the words we're using are one piece so everybody's probably heard that statistic where it says here you know 10% of what someone understands is the words that you're saying and the other 90% is like how you deliver those words when it comes to interacting with technology that 90% feels like it it falls off completely how are you thinking about solving for that sure so I absolutely agree with everything you said uh and you you kind of got me thinking so uh I'm not sure if youve seen it but most people like the the W The Wolf of Wall Street Jordan bford course he wrote a book called The Way of the wolf and uh it talks about straight line selling and a lot of that book focuses on tonality so you kind of said 10% is a words and 90% was like the rest of it but if we're talking about communication as a whole I still think that that that is like a a bun next to a cake so communication is the cake and you've got this is little bun next to it which is voice I really believe that um voice is mainly how we kind of output life uh when we describe life when we you know oh I went to this amazing party last week and this and that and this is what happened but you lose so much data um just through explanation so yeah so much is lost just through explaining things like a story kind of is made up of this huge cake and voice is really just like a slice out of that cake you needed to be there to see it to smell it touch it taste it feel it and I believe this is like the communication language um I feel like as languages develop as they always have over the years we're able you know we have new words that help us describe things and voice becomes more complex I think um if we can continue to develop the sounds and the words that we use we can start painting better pictures and tap back into the imagination which fills in the other slices of the cake um but definitely voice is like the final frontier for any story um it's kind of where it comes it's it always boils down to how the story is told in all in Asian African civilizations you'd have a Storyteller who would go around the village and he would spread knowledge all through story no book and his voice would be carefully selected by the villagers but based on let you say his Cadence his tonality and his ability to trigger someone's imagination all in the hope of filling in those missing slices so that they can get you know reproduced 70 75% of what it may have been like at the time of the story that he's telling a long time ago kind of sets the scene for all all storytellers or back in Africa some time you know and this is all about voice I think uh if we just talk about that and robotics like we knew that one of the most important features in robotics was going to be that voice piece the interaction um the conversational style speech and yeah I just think voice is huge the reason for voice being so powerful for the robotics is like that's almost what differentiates it from just getting a dog or a cat Maybe that and not having to like clean up after the dog or cat I guess and it is always there I do I've been given a thought experiment though when it comes to these personal robotics that are or friendship as opposed to utility and the thought experiment was okay and and I would love to hear how you think about this because you are the one who ultimately is creating it so so I want to know what your stance on it is and it's basically saying I let's imagine that I come home from work and the robot asked me so how's your day at work and I go ah I go into my complaining mode and I say you know Nathan was being just a pain in my butt and then I had this guy who wouldn't stop talking to me and it was so annoying and then my boss came over and he said this and I just kind of go down this road of complaining and I need to vent that right maybe that's all right for one day but and the robot answers however the robot answers the maybe the robot consoles me says like okay tell me more and all right yeah but what happens if like I do that for five days in a row is the robot going to get sassy with me and start to say like yo do this the fifth day in a row that you're coming home talking about Nathan can we get over it already you know and so where does the place of the robot come in because it's almost like you're giving it inherently a lot of power in how it can help direct you and guide you and guide your mental States you know I love this question and this kind of leads into uh and this thought experiment we we've actually cast this same question many times in in our offices uh when we were building the emotion Center so you know you coming in you've complained five days in a row about this guy Nathan and how annoying he is and like part one like misery loves company so if you tried if we tried to program the robot to be like a de like you're a strong powerful leader and you know we all look up to you and you shouldn't feel that way then that's not really going to pacify your aches that could get your back up even more just because of the way like from a psychological standpoint the way that we're wired we want to be heard you know when you're explaining that to me I was trying to not process an answer but to really hear what you were saying listening with that intent to understand what you were saying what you feeling and the robot doesn't get tired the robot doesn't have bills coming at the end of the month so a l the reason why uh we're so short-tempered is because like we've got other things to get on with so I'm going to listen to you once because I'm your friend I'm going to listen to you twice because we're best friends the third time I'm going to give you advice for the fourth and fifth time like you know I I I've got to get back to work dude like you need you need to go speak to someone or seek therapy is often an option but you know the robot doesn't get tired of hearing you and um it's happy to sit in your misery with you for as long as it takes for you to kind of um come round to the fact that you're not moving anywhere you're stagnating in between like the nuances of all this we have like uh what we call the NBA which is like next best action so if someone's like complained for like a month straight then in between that like the robot might put some positive triggers or anchors out there just to try and really help move that kind of thought train into a not into another Lane like let's let's kind of switch lanes with this a little bit but not at the time of complaining uh when uh seven habits Steven arov says like there's a story about a guy who's complained about the referee sending him off during the game and uh instead of like replying to his son like oh you know you're a great player you shouldn't worry about the he kind of like got onto the level of the kid and he was saying like man maybe well you know that's really sad that the referee behaved like that maybe there's something wrong with the referee and the kid was like yeah you know maybe there is something wrong with the referee and started to feel bad for the referee and tapping into those deeper emotional senses that we have access to that robots don't but they know that um or we can program in such a way that we know we can trigger the empathy uh scales in humans to help break from those Cycles so honestly like complain away the robot loves it never gets tired of hearing your moans but is always ready to switch lanes with you and as soon as you do switch lens like happiness loves company as much as misery loves company so as soon as you're bubbly and joyous robot's are going to be like oh we've been moaning for 30 days um let's go back to the moaning phase uh the Rob's going to be is going to reciprocate and mirror where you're at so um I do think that there is value in robotic companionship so this is kind of what we're badgering on at here but I think like without really suffocating the point it's just about mirroring so the robot is able to mirror you and you can come in with your true pure intentions and feelings and thoughts and just kind of you know robot kind of loves it yeah I like that answer I think it is a interesting road that you get to walk along because there are so many questions like that and edge cases that you could potentially encounter as you have a robot companion that is with you and the kind of things that people will bring up to the robot right and so you being the Builder behind the robot you're going to encounter so many different pieces that you probably could never think of right now and then you you have to make those hard decisions on like how are we going to navigate this situation yeah dude I mean we actually use deep GR um for our our speech to text and or text to speech actually in both directions and um one of the things I mean there is an ethical challenge that we faced with which is how much of that user where does the user privacy end um with us without us kind of trying to constantly develop features there will be a day where we're like okay like that's enough user feedback for you know verbose statement for what they said we might get the sentiment so thousand users feel sad on a Monday as like a high level viewpoint but we don't always necessarily need to know specifically the questions that the user is asking because we want to respect that privacy and allow the user to interact with their B and feel like uh there isn't an audience behind the curtain yeah um so this is like really important yeah yeah 100% I think people would be a lot more reserved if it's like wait is this thing just relaying back everything that I'm saying to the creators but at the same time if it starts if someone starts talking about potentially important subjects that somebody needs to intervene on not a robot that's another dicey question that you have to decide when those things need to be escalated up yeah of course we have a panel dedicated purely to the eth ethics and the ethical side of this like if there's anything that's um going to cause harm to another human being then we want to be able to not kind of facilitate that even if it's to their own self or Humanity or the progression of humanity in general there are some challenges Nuance that comes within having that level of information um similar to like Facebook you know like Facebook decided to change the header bar to not like not like tell us something about your day to like what's on your mind and you know that's like the that's like the final line of privacy um and through robotics because you've got the anthromorphic scale where like you mentioned the dog like the dog doesn't really speak to you well you kind of get Signs of Life from a dog but you know that you can just kind of like tell your dog all the things that you love and hate and your dog won't judge you probably won't understand too much but whereas the robot probably does have a level of comp comprehension now so um like I said there has to be a panel of people who decide you know okay what is detrimental to Mankind and uh the future of mankind and what actually is private what what is something that we want to work on and a lot of the time if there is any triggers like this the robot's able to like suggest like you know for example someone's drinking heavily they say okay like you can call these people um if someone's really struggling with mental Health okay here's list of organizations you may want to speak to but yeah it is it's it's it's a beautiful and and and a harsh uh subject topic to discuss but it is a sort of thing that we have to consider we have to really look at wow I'm just thinking through all those yeah all those scenarios and all that all the ways that you want to be thoughtful about how you interact and what you do and the policy that you put in place I just like to say though the robot isn't always listening so um this is something that's really important so the gate is closed until you open it and then whenever you open that gate and you want to volunteer that information so for example if family were having a discussion and two parents having a marriage that's not going so well the robot's not so sitting in the corner like enjoying listening to this conversation thinking oh well like maybe I can sell here's some therapist numbers that you might want yeah yeah it go out of the window at that point I mean if the robot was turn around and say like he look his marriage advice cool plus one 995 you know like a real off a number I think it'd be out the window but as soon as like the couple decide that they want to turn to the robot instead of instead of like spending heavily on therapy they've already bought the robot so they may turn to the robot and be like hey robot's name what do you think we should do in this situ situation and then using large language models and a whole load of like cross-section data would be able to pull up the NBA like the ne next best action um that it feels for that user uh bearing in mind the robot does get to know the users so it like the robot roughly has an IQ of around 56 IQ points which is equivalent to like a six-year-old child or ad Doberman or golden retriever so it does learn your uh your behaviors and your characteristics and probably already knows that there's things happening if you told it this is the power of voice right so you wouldn't know any of this without voice and the more voice points and data points that you're able to collect the better the the better the story and then the more pieces you're filling to this cake I mentioned before dude thank you for coming on here and talking to me about this because I am infinitely intrigued by what you're doing and I love your story of going from talking to the captain of Arsenal to hanging out with Trump's son and then a Tel Aviv VC or moneymaking machine with the can do attitude and deciding to create a robot that is going to keep us company thank you so much for having me it's been a pleasure and I love talking about these things so thank you so much and we'll speak more\n"