Interview - John Markoff on Machines of Loving Grace, The Search for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots

Listen Now to John Markoff

As senior science correspondent for the New York Times, John has had access to the top people and the latest research in many fields of scientific endeavor.  In pursuing his own interests, he has recently completed a book on the intersection of artificial intelligence and robotics called “Machines of Loving Grace, The Search for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots.”

We are a point in time where the evolution of robotics and artificial intelligence is extremely fertile, creating new advances poised to radically transform our lives.  Inventions like self-driving cars, elder care robots, personal flying machines, cybernetic soldiers and surgical assistants.  Will these advances help create a more exalted humanity or delegate our species to the dust bin of history? 

The Richard Brautigan poem from which the title of the book is based, envisions a world where cybernetics has advanced to a stage where it allows a return to the balance of nature and an elimination of the need for human labor. 

  I like to think
       (it has to be!)
   of a cybernetic ecology
   where we are free of our labors
   and joined back to nature,
   returned to our mammal
   brothers and sisters,
   and all watched over
   by machines of loving grace

Join us this week with John Markoff as we explore this most profound chapter in human evolution.