I think for a lot of
people the word robot
conjures up a humanoid robot.
I think that's a
little bit different.
I try to disavow people of
that, because human body--
why does nothing--
why?
Right, we can do that stuff.
We're not some model
of anything, right?
Do better, do a better job.
And different, because when
machines do things that humans
can't do, that's when we
can do things together that
are really, really amazing.
Rather than do just
what a human can do.
But artificial intelligence,
as you know very well,
I think people are
very aware now,
it's having this resurgence
and this new wave
of artificial intelligence with
machine learning at its core
now.
This idea that machines can
look at a million images
and start figuring
out how to label
them and do it
better than humans
because of how
they've been trained.
Once they beat us at chess
and then at "Jeopardy,"
we should just give up.
Right, and go.
Well, we might give
up on those things.
There are a lot of things that
they are nowhere close to.
So we're good.
We're really good.
Really, because after it
beat us in "Jeopardy," I said,
there's nothing left.
We're done.
Let's just move to Mars.
And I'm looking at my photo
sorter on my computer,
and you give it face
recognition, some hints,
and give it a few photos to
train on, one of these photos
found me when I was 11.
Isn't that amazing?
When I was 11.
I bet I could picture--
I didn't have a must--
I could picture
the 11-year-old you.
Yeah, I kind of--
I resembled myself,
of course, but still.
That's pretty amazing.
It says, we think this
is you, please confirm.
It's like, yeah it's me.
It's a fuzzy photo taken
on a Kodak Instamatic.
Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
So that's what this learning
era of AI is really all about.
It's in everything
that we are doing.
So Hod, you're
an AI roboticist.
What is that?
Well, robotics is
this merger of AI
and the physical
world, the mechanics,
the embodiment of a machine.
And so you need to
sort of understand
both the mechanics and the AI to
make a physical, smart system.
So what do you
create in your lab?
I love asking that of
anybody who's got a lab.
What do you create?
[laughs] All right, what's
happening in your lab?
What's happening?
So we're trying to look at
next generation robotics.
We're trying to look
at how can we take this
from programmed machines
to machines that can learn,
that can learn fast,
that can learn things
that we haven't taught them.
And do things that we
normally don't think robots
can do, like self-replicate,
be creative, things like that.
Could-- do they
have self-awareness?
You know, self-awareness
is one of these holy grails,
let's say, of robotics.
It's going to take a while,
but we're on that path.
