Whitney Cummings: Compassion Toward Robots | AI Podcast Clips
00:00:00.000 | I have never seen such compassion from a lot of people in my life toward any human, animal,
00:00:13.440 | child as I have a lot of people in the way they interact with the robot.
00:00:17.000 | Compassion.
00:00:18.000 | I think there's something of, I mean I was on the robot owners chat boards for a good
00:00:25.200 | eight months and the main emotional benefit is she's never going to cheat on you, she's
00:00:30.920 | never going to hurt you, she's never going to lie to you, she doesn't judge you.
00:00:36.160 | I think that robots help people and this is part of the work I do with animals, like I
00:00:41.160 | do equine therapy and train dogs and stuff because there is this safe space to be authentic.
00:00:46.520 | You're with this being that doesn't care what you do for a living, doesn't care how much
00:00:49.620 | money you have, doesn't care who you're dating, doesn't care what you look like, doesn't care
00:00:52.920 | if you have cellulite, whatever, you feel safe to be able to truly be present without
00:00:58.320 | being defensive and worrying about eye contact and being triggered by needing to be perfect
00:01:03.000 | and fear of judgment and all that.
00:01:05.560 | Robots really can't judge you yet, but they can't judge you and I think it really puts
00:01:10.480 | people at ease and at their most authentic.
00:01:16.640 | Do you think you can have a deep connection with a robot that's not judging or do you
00:01:23.920 | think you can really have a relationship with a robot or a human being that's a safe space
00:01:30.040 | or is attention, mystery, danger necessary for a deep connection?
00:01:36.120 | I'm going to speak for myself and say that I grew up in Alcoa, Colombo.
00:01:40.280 | I identify as a codependent, talked about this stuff before, but for me it's very hard
00:01:44.880 | to be in a relationship with a human being without feeling like I need to perform in
00:01:48.760 | some way or deliver in some way.
00:01:51.080 | I don't know if that's just the people I've been in a relationship with or me or my brokenness,
00:01:56.880 | but I do think this is going to sound really negative and pessimistic, but I do think a
00:02:05.320 | lot of our relationships are projection and a lot of our relationships are performance
00:02:10.240 | and I don't think I really understood that until I worked with horses and most communications
00:02:16.720 | human is nonverbal, right?
00:02:18.240 | I can say like, "I love you," but you don't think I love you, right?
00:02:22.320 | Whereas with animals, it's very direct.
00:02:24.620 | It's all physical.
00:02:25.620 | It's all energy.
00:02:27.000 | I feel like that with robots too.
00:02:28.800 | It feels very, how I say something doesn't matter.
00:02:35.520 | My inflection doesn't really matter.
00:02:37.240 | When you thinking that my tone is disrespectful, like you're not filtering it through all of
00:02:42.560 | the bad relationships you've been in.
00:02:43.960 | You're not filtering it through the way your mom talked to you.
00:02:46.160 | You're not getting triggered.
00:02:47.940 | I find that for the most part, people don't always receive things the way that you intend
00:02:52.480 | them to or the way intended and that makes relationships really murky.
00:02:55.920 | [silence]
00:03:05.920 | [silence]