Shows
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastWhat Does a Humanoid Robot Do? I Asked a Humanoid RobotI am at ICRA – the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, aka 7,000 roboticists from all over the world converging to discuss every robot-related topic on Earth. More posts are coming, but for now, day-of, here is a quick podcast interview (the first with video) with, and about, one of the robots I saw in action today – Ameca, by Engineered Arts.After many an online video, this was my first time interacting with an Ameca robot in the (gray rubber) flesh. It was a different experience than watching a video, in much the same way a co...2025-05-2204 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastThe Work AI Can't Help WithWhy hasn’t workplace artificial intelligence made life easier for everyone? Some surveys see a vast majority of employees saying AI adds to their workload, for a variety of reasons (having to check what the AI does, having bosses who expect increased output). And the extra stress of AI adoption is often worse for women, says leadership consultant Julie Donley. Why? Because AI is often oriented toward things men tend to focus on (like maximizing efficiency at all costs) and not the jobs that fall much more on women (for example, the emotional labor of office politics, an...2025-03-3155 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastHow to Manage AI Therapists, Robot Friends, AI GhostsMost people agree there’s something wrong with an AI pretending to be a human being. And especially wrong about an AI telling you it’s a human therapist. In fact, a California legislator introduced a bill the other day to ban AIs from doing that. It stemmed in part from an incident where a mental health platform had users thinking they were getting counsel from humans when in fact the messages were written by GPT-3.Here’s the thing, though: The patsies (I mean, users) actually rated the responses quite highly – until they learned they were machine...2025-02-1652 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastBefore AI Permeates Our Lives, We Need a New Deal for PrivacyData scientist Wes Chaar was at home a few years ago, working with the tools of his trade, when he had an “aha!” moment. He realized the information he was looking at would let him predict not only what people would buy and how they’d vote, but also how they’d feel about their choices. Those people might not have shared those feelings with anyone, but Chaar could foresee they’d be there. How are people supposed to defend their privacy in the face of that power? All those user agreements we click without reading, and those assu...2025-01-1451 min
Le lunch by Noé – Julien Cohen-SolalLa commémoration des attentats de Charlie Hebdo et de l’Hyper Cacher la jeunesse lutte contre l’antisémitisme.
Dix ans après ces tragiques événements, la jeunesse s’engage pour se souvenir, agir et transmettre.
Nous avons eu le plaisir d’accueillir Sarah Berreby, représentante de judaisme en Mouvement et de Yahad, Etane Hassine, directeur de Tikvatenou, et Lucile Melul, directrice de Netzer Paris.
Nous avons réfléchi ensemble à notre mission d’éveiller la conscience des jeunes face à l’antisémitisme.
Nos chroniqueurs David et Elie étaient également présents pour enrichir cette réflexion.
En deuxième partie, nous avons mis en lumière l’engagement par l’action avec l’appel à projet NOÉ, qui soutient les jeunes porteurs...2025-01-1300 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastSometimes You Just Need a Robot to Scratch That Spot You Can't ReachWe’re an aging society, with a shortage of young-ish people to do the work, paid and unpaid, of helping others get through life. (Immigration crackdowns will make this shortage more acute.) Inevitably, robots are coming to help us in the home.Maybe they’ll be 5-foot, 8-inch tall imitation people, as Elon Musk predicts. But arms, legs and torsos are expensive to build, complex to operate and kind of frightening/creepy. So in the years just ahead home robots will likely be simpler devices. They’ll be designed to do useful jobs in their own ro...2024-11-1358 min
The Economy, StupidThe true cost of AIThere's a seismic change heading our way that will drive up electricity and water usage and it has to do with the uptake of generative AI, including Chat GPT. Giant tech companies are investing in nuclear power for their AI-fuelled race, however data centres also need clean, drinking-quality water. Guests:Ben Geman, energy reporter at Axios.com and the author of the daily Axios Generate newsletter, covering the world of energy business and politics.David Berreby, science writer based in New YorkGordon Noble, Research Director, Institute for Sustainable Fu...2024-10-2428 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastMaking the Robots People Actually NeedRobot-makers often test the limits of the possible and make ingenious new technology. Can we make this? Can we make it do that twice as fast? Robot users, on the other hand, have different concerns, like “is it simple enough for my kid to understand?” or “if it gets knocked over, will it break?” or “how do I tell it not to come so close?” or “what happens if we move the table to the other side of the room?”The difference in those worldviews has sometimes led to robots that looked great in the lab but that, in the out...2024-10-171h 01
Stand-Up – Samuel BerrebyDavid Azencot et Raphaël du Cartel Comedy ClubSTAND UP présenté par Samuel Berreby
Invité : David Azencot
Et Raphaël du Cartel Comedy Club2024-10-0900 min
Working PeopleMicrosoft AI Data Center Comes for Drought-Battered Mexican Town’s Water (w/ Diana Baptista)As the climate crisis intensifies, billions of poor and working people around the world are suffering from lack of regular (or any) access to clean water, but the dawn of “AI” is about to make the problem much worse. In their recent report for Context, “Forget jobs—AI is coming for your water,” Diana Baptista and Fintan McDonnell write, “Artificial intelligence lives on power and water, fed to it in vast quantities by data centres around the world. And those centres are increasingly located in the global south.” In Colón, a municipality in Central Mexico that is home to Microsoft’s...2024-10-0346 min
The Real News PodcastAI data centers are draining water from this drought-stricken Mexican townAs the climate crisis intensifies, billions of poor and working people around the world are suffering from lack of regular (or any) access to clean water, but the dawn of “AI” is about to make the problem much worse. In their recent report for Context, “Forget jobs—AI is coming for your water,” Diana Baptista and Fintan McDonnell write, “Artificial intelligence lives on power and water, fed to it in vast quantities by data centres around the world. And those centres are increasingly located in the global south.” In Colón, a municipality in Central Mexico that is home to Microsoft’s fir...2024-10-0246 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastHow 'Acting Human' Is Like Human ActingPeople often see double when they see a robot. They know it’s just a collection of metal and plastic parts. And they think it might be sad after working so hard all day. Or mad. Or glad. Now that AI can talk, sing, laugh and cry, people are having the same kind of double sight when they talk to their virtual assistants and virtual friends.How can people perceive two beings in one body? One source of insights is to look at other times in life when people “know” two things at once about the same entity...2024-09-2854 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastWhen You Can't Talk to Me, Talk to "Me"Soon, AI companies expect to be selling “agents” — AIs that reserve tickets, cancel subscriptions and take other actions for their users. The companies are also talking up the power of generative AI to hold a natural conversation in real time. And, of course, AIs are also getting better at creating videos of real people. Combine all three, and you get the the new realm of the “digital human avatar” — an AI creation that can represent you, speak for you, take action on your behalf. It looks and sounds and acts as close to you as an AI can make it...2024-09-0849 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastTo Understand Robots, Get a HorseIn Eakta Jain’s urban, engineering-centric New Delhi childhood, the closest she got to intimacy with living things was watering the plants. Even the household pets were robots (both her parents worked in the field). Today, Jain is still into robots — she grew up to be a computer scientist and robotic engineer herself. But she now spends a lot of time with horses. For good robotic reasons.Some years ago, Jain’s interests turned to autonomous vehicles, and the subtle problems of connecting them — physically and psychologically — with their human drivers. What makes a robot vehicle’s actions understandable to a person? W...2024-07-131h 10
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastJust Human-ish Enough for the JobMoxi is a human-sized wheeled robot that’s built to do hospital chores. It’s made by Diligent Robotics to free nurses and other staff to spend more time with patients and their problems (and less time walking down hallways and searching supply closets). More than 100 Moxis are working in hospitals around the U.S.To succeed, Moxi needs to be useful, welcome and easy to work with — a combination of practical and social skills. Practical: Moxi is human-sized because hospital rooms and hallways were built for humans, with a body that has receptacles to accommodate the kind o...2024-06-1151 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastTo Understand a Robot, Teach It to Make ArtHow should we see robots as they roll (or walk, or fly, or swim) into our lives? As animals to train? Children to guide? Loyal servants? Amiable friends? Therapists? Or therapons? Fellow workers? Fellow artists? People are likely to try on all these attitudes. The same person will probably cycle through some of them, maybe in the course of a single day of modern life in 2050. Agnieszcka Pilat is an artist who ponders these questions and makes art that brings people face to face with these questions. She paints portraits of robots and machines, and...2024-05-2452 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastThere Is No Apolitical RobotDecades before Karel Čapek coined the word "robot" in 1920, Americans and Europeans already dreamed of mechanical workers. Actually, they weren’t just dreaming, as Taylor Evans, of UC Riverside has found. The image for today's podcast is from an American patent, granted in 1868, for a man-shaped "steam carriage." Does it matter that, a little more than two years after the end of slavery, the head of the mechanical man in the drawing looks like white people's ideas of an African-American (not just in its features, but in the minstrel-show hat)? Tom Williams, a designer, roboticist and...2024-05-091h 08
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastTo Design Better Robots, You Have to Imagine a Better WorldWhen robots were simpler it might have been reasonable to talk about them with generalizations about "people," "needs" and "experiences." But now robots are increasingly involved in day-to-day life, where these broad terms can’t capture all the variety of human experience with the machines. You have to ask: which people? whose needs? whose experiences? When they didn’t ask those kinds of questions, they got (to name a few examples) robots that didn't recognize Black faces, robots that looked like stereotypically female for no functional reason, and robots that don't work for people in wheelchairs. Katie Wink...2024-04-2559 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastThe Best Robot? One You Don't NoticeHow do you make a robot that people will actually want to use? That is, a robot that they understand without having to take a three-day training course, that they put to real work, that doesn’t give them the willies? One answer is, give it the shape of a person, with arms and legs and a head. Let it slip right in to a world made for people. That’s the humanoid-robot idea, which has been getting a lot of press this year, including here. Leila Takayama takes a different approach: Robots don’t need t...2024-04-1156 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastLevatas' Chris Nielsen on ChatGPT in Robots, Measuring Trees from Orbit, Robot Hype Cycles and Much MoreNot long after ChatGPT was unleashed on the public, engineers at Levatas started tinkering with ways to incorporate it into the robots they furnish to big companies.Levatas supplies ways to automate industrial inspections. Their software guides robots that move through oil platforms, factories, power plants, breweries and other places that need constant monitoring to catch problems before they turn into crises.Using off-the-shelf components — ChatGPT, voice recognition software, text-to-speech and speech-to-text — Levatas engineers cobbled together a system that makes robots more intelligible to workers, and those workers more intelligible to the robots. Niel...2024-03-3156 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastKenneth Y. Goldberg: artist, engineer, inventor, entrepreneur & AI researcherIn his younger days Ken Goldberg had two versions of his CV: One for his wide-ranging work in robotics and artificial intelligence, another for his equally broad interest in making art. Nowadays it’s fair to say he has combined all his different passions into a single whirlwind of invention and exploration.His projects include the startups Ambi Robotics (whose robots are sorting a million packages a week) and Jacobi Robotics, which offers a fast and reliable way to program a robot arm. Also a number of films and many other artworks. Also a patent on a ro...2024-03-1359 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastElectric Sheep's Naganand MurtyMost robots do badly in unpredictable situations. I’ve seen a dexterous robot stop its assembly work because a piece of plastic didn’t land precisely flat. A human worker would have nudged the thing into place without a thought. The robot halted and flashed a red light — bat signal for a human to come save the day.If robots are to live and work with people outside of assembly lines, they’re going to have to be more flexible. That’s why I spoke with Naganand Murty, co-founder and CEO of Electric Sheep. Electric Sheep (yes, the Philip...2024-03-0142 min
Robots for the Rest of Us PodcastJonathan Hurst of Agility RoboticsFor the past century, humans have imagined people-like robots but used robots that didn’t look like people at all. Only science-fiction people have robot butlers vacuuming the floor. Real-life people have Roombas.But things are changing. In 2024, real-life humanoid robots are working in factories and warehouses, for BMW and Amazon. Several well-funded companies are about to planning to soon churn out humanoids by the hundreds, and then thousands. Why is it finally possible to build (and sell) imitation-human robots? What are they good for? How do they fit into people’s lives? How can they...2024-02-1548 min
No Stupid Questions180. What Makes Some Objects Feel Special?Where does sentimental value come from? Why did Angela throw out her childhood journals? And would Mike wear Hitler’s sweater? SOURCES:Jeffrey Galak, professor of marketing at Carnegie Mellon University.John Irving, author.Marie Kondo, professional organizer and consultant.Paul Rozin, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.Yang Yang, research scientist at the Institute of Behavioral Research at Texas Christian University. RESOURCES:"Experiences Endure," by Angela Duckworth (Character Lab, 2022)."Study Finds That THESE Are the Most Valued Family Heirlooms," by SWNS Staff (SWNS, 2021)."Micro Wave: How 'Bout Dem Apple...Seeds," by Thoma...2024-01-2838 min
Stand-Up – Samuel BerrebyDavid AzriaSTAND UP, émission présentée par Samuel Berreby avec deux chroniqueurs Leo Filipeti et Emma Goldwings.
Invité : David Azria2023-11-1300 min
RD TalksWelcome, RobotsDevices designed to 'live' and work among us are steadily entering our daily lives. Are we ready for them? First published June 2021. Written by David Berreby from National Geographic. Read by Zoë Meunier.2021-05-2613 min
L'impertinente - L'émission de l’UEJFL'impertinente - émission du 18 janvier 2021Lundi 18 janvier
Retrouvez l'Impertinente avec Elsa Pariente, les interviews de Noemie Madar et David Benaym, journaliste à New York, spécialiste des Etats-Unis, et les chroniques de Samuel Lejoyeux, Anna Berreby, Noam Meghira et Elina Huneman.2021-01-2650 min
L’impertinente – Elsa ParientéL’impertinente – 08Impertinente – Emission de l’UEJF – présentée par Elsa Pariente qui reçoit :
David Benaym, journaliste à New York, spécialiste des Etats-Unis
Noémie Madar, Présidente de l’UEJF
Samuel Lejoyeux, Vice-Président / Trésorier de l’UEJF
Noam Meghira, conseil en communication et marketing digital
Elina Huneman, étudiante aux Beaux-Arts
Anna Berreby, conseil en communication et relations publiques2021-01-1800 min
Boston Basic Income129 — Workers vs ConsumersHenry Ford famously insisted on paying his workers enough money to be able to buy the very cars they were producing. But to what extent does that make sense? When is it useful to think of workers and consumers as the same people? Does basic income create a disconnect between these two roles? Is that a problem?
We have two optional readings this week. The first is a 2011 blog post by former labor secretary Robert Reich entitled "Stock Tip: Be Worried. Workers are Consumers"
The second is a 2012 article on...2020-11-261h 40
Working ScientistHow to craft and communicate a simple science storyDitch jargon, keep sentences short, stay topical. Pakinam Amer shares the secrets of good science writing for books and magazines.In the final episode of this six-part series about science communication, three experts describe how they learned to craft stories about research for newspaper, magazine and book readers.David Kaiser, a physicist and science historian at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the 2012 book How the Hippies Saved Physics, tells Amer how he first transitioned from academic writing to journalism. “This kind of writing is different from the kinds of communication I had...2020-07-1720 min
Shine18. Creating Incentive Systems For a Just and Thriving World with Raman FreyRaman Frey, is first and foremost an amazing human and my dear friend. Raman is the founder of Good People Dinners, a Bay Area community focused on meaningful conversations that bring together professional chefs and thoughtful speakers on a variety of topics. Raman is an incredible speaker, moderator, interviewer, and author. His writing has appeared in many publications, including Harvard Business Review. Raman has written a book on how we might design and deploy new incentive systems to create a more just and thriving world. This is the topic of this Shine podcast interview. Key Takeaways: [:01] Carley...2020-02-121h 12
gabby cabby aka peter franklin podcastsdavid berrebydavid berreby will teach you how to kayak in brooklyn which is right on the atlantic ocean.2018-12-1009 min
WHAT COMES NOWUS VERSUS THEM: Why We Categorize People as OtherRosie von Lila and Raman Frey take a deep dive into the science of why we categorize ourselves into in-crowds and out-crowds. Explore David Berreby's excellent 2004 book: Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind. Raman Frey is the founder of Good People Dinners -- a San Francisco based community that fosters trust and friendship through food, drink and conversation. Over one hundred-fifty gatherings, dinners, overnights and retreats, have occurred. You can read his work on Medium.com.2018-09-061h 18