Rodney Brooks

March-April 2008

Rodney Brooks is the former director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and CTO of iRobot.

Futurist: What would you say is the principle obstacle before general AI?

Brooks: It's nice to think of it in terms of being a single technical hurdle. But, I don't believe that's the case. There's a whole raft of things we don't understand yet. We don't understand how to organize it, we don't understand what its purpose is. We don't understand how to connect to perception, we don't understand how to connect it to action. We've made lots of progress in AI. We've got lots of AI systems out there that affect our everyday lives all the time. But general AI, its early days, early early days.

Futurist: Looking ten to twenty years in the future or earlier, give me a headline. What's the big AI development that's going to change the way people think about the field.

Brooks: If you went back to 1985 and you told people they would have lots computers in their house, twenty years from now. They would have thought that was crazy. Where would we put those big boxes with the spinning discs? That was the conception of computers at that time. I think what people are going to see in their houses in fifteen or twenty years are robots, many robots. There's already more than two million people in the U.S. that have cleaning robots....

Futurist: Well thanks to you..

Brooks: They're simple little things. I think we're going to see lots, lots more robots. There are so many big companies involved in robots now that, twenty years from now, we'll look back and say, oh, yea, we've got robots.

Futurist: So you think the most visible and obvious manifestation of AI will be in the form of beings that operate in physical space.

Brooks: I think the biggest manifestation that people will associate with AI is going to be robots but the reality is people who use Google are using a big AI system all the time. You book an airline flight online, the airline's routing is written by an AI lab, an AI lab at MIT is writing such things. So, already, in people's everyday lives, they're using AI systems all the time, but they don't think of them as AI systems, they think of them as a web application, a cell phone, a map, but they're AI systems.

Futurist: Do you see any negative consequences from the way we use AI right now? You mentioned Google, many people use Google to access information, but you could make the argument that it has a negative affect on research skills, on critical thinking ability.

Brooks: When I was a boy, in elementary school, there was a big fuss about using ball point pens, even fountain pens. We had to know to use a nib and ink because, they said, 'if we lost that skill later in life, we would not be able to get along.' People keep saying, there losing that skill and this. They're gaining other skills and their adapting to modern life. I just don't buy it. People can become fantastic at using Google and getting information. Maybe a different set of people were fantastic at using other skills, but it's a set of survival skills and people that are better at it will prosper.

Futurist: What sort of stock do you put in the notion of runaway AI?

Brooks: I don't think we're going to have runaway AI in any sort of intentional form. I think there may well be accidents along the way where systems fail in horrible ways because of a virus, bug or something, but I don't believe that AI with malicious intent makes sense. People using systems as a vehicle may have malicious intent, but I don't think malicious intent from the AI itself is something that I'm going to lose sleep over in my lifetime. Now, 500 years from now, maybe. But I don't think in my lifetime it's going to be anything like an issue.

Futurist: Obviously we would hope that any artificially intelligent entity would reflect our values, but we're still in a process of deciding those values. Isn't that a key issue?

Brooks: We are the ones who are going to be building these systems so we are unlikely to be building ones we don't like. We could build really dangerous trains, but we don't. We just don't do it.

Futurist: How would you frame this issue for a general audience, what do you think is the big message that a lot of people aren't getting.

Brooks: You have to understand that technology will change the world around you, will change your life. Every so often, I go to the world economic forum in Davos in January. The industry and government leaders bring some of us technology leaders as entertainment, on the side. My argument is, 'we're the ones who are going to change the world you're going to have to deal with. You're struggling with digital rights management and copyright, that's because of technology.' But they don't want to hear about the technology even though technology is going to change the world.

Futurist: If you could give any advice to the young people who are going to be living in this world that you're creating, what you tell them? What advice, similarly, would you give to old people who aren't so used to change?

Brooks: Well the first thing I would say to the young people is that there's been a very unfortunate impression cast that jobs in IT are being exported overseas. In fact we're facing a tremendous shortage of skilled, Information Technology workers. The smartest thing you can do is major in computer science in college and you are guaranteed employment for life. I keep having parents come up to me saying, 'I heard all the jobs are going to India.' Not true, so, young people, go into computer science. You will be well served. Second thing is, one can be scared of technology changes, or one can think of change as opportunity. I like to think of change as opportunity. How can I do things more interesting? How can I do them better?

This interview was conducted by Patrick Tucker