In 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 robot gripper that uses physics (not complex sensors) to hold objects gently but securely. Also one of the world’s first tele-operated robots, back in the 1990s. It let users operate a robot arm over the Web in order to tend a garden, and with more than 100,000 people taking part, it may still be the robot with the most remote human operators ever.
In AI, Goldberg has worked on data visualizations and analysis tools, one of which powers Jester, a system that will recommend jokes tailored to its user.
As you might expect, Goldberg and I spoke about a lot of topics. Why it’s so hard for robots to grip and grasp things. The advances made possible by “cloud robotics” and “fog robotics.” How he and his colleagues trained an AI that can figure out how to pick up and hold an object it has never encountered before. Why he and a colleague created a tribute to American workers that danced by a human and a robot arm. Why progress in AI is neither a steady predictable climb through the years nor an accelerating explosive inevitable boom.
I’m not really doing justice here to a conversation that ranged from the humble suction cup to the value of art, from ChatGPT to the nearest warehouse. Give it a listen!
Kenneth Y. Goldberg: artist, engineer, inventor, entrepreneur & AI researcher