525: Some Sort of Metal

Dr. Tom Williams spoke with us about robots, ethics, teaching, and books. Then we talked about mines, umpires, water, and more books.

Tom is the author of Degrees of Freedom: On Robotics and Social Justice (free at MIT Press: Degrees of Freedom: On Robotics and Social Justice!).

As part of the discussion, we talked about some other books and media:

Nonfiction:

Sex, Race, and Robots: How to Be Human in the Age of AI by Ayanna Howard (Embedded episodes 367: Data of Our Lives and 207: I Love My Robot Monkey Head)

Embodied AI Safety: Reimagining safety engineering for artificial intelligence in physical systems by Philip Koopman (related Embedded episode 514: Just Turn Off All the Computers)

Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence by Kate Crawford

Waki Kamino's research on robot umpires: Beyond Accuracy: Rethinking the Value of AI in Decision-Making Through Baseball's Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) System (or see the summary in the Cornell Chronicle: AI on deck: assessing impact of MLB's new ball-strike system)

Fiction:

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chalmers

Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries Book 8) by Martha Wells (Embedded episode 432: Robot Bechdel Test)

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor