1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,310 2 00:00:04,310 --> 00:00:06,060 Thanks for visiting us today. 3 00:00:06,060 --> 00:00:07,910 [INAUDIBLE] introduce yourself? 4 00:00:07,910 --> 00:00:12,710 I'm Manuela Veloso a computer science faculty 5 00:00:12,710 --> 00:00:14,566 of Carnegie Mellon University. 6 00:00:14,566 --> 00:00:15,440 Cool. 7 00:00:15,440 --> 00:00:19,490 So I guess I want to start off with asking you 8 00:00:19,490 --> 00:00:22,610 when you got into the field of AI, and how are got into it? 9 00:00:22,610 --> 00:00:26,660 OK, so I got into the field of the AI 10 00:00:26,660 --> 00:00:28,700 when I became more of a grad student. 11 00:00:28,700 --> 00:00:34,670 So my undergraduate degree is in electrical engineer. 12 00:00:34,670 --> 00:00:39,290 And then I got interested on the information processing. 13 00:00:39,290 --> 00:00:42,380 And I did a master's thesis in databases. 14 00:00:42,380 --> 00:00:46,640 And then my PhD thesis starting in 1986 15 00:00:46,640 --> 00:00:50,930 was on this problem of analogy, so planning by analogy. 16 00:00:50,930 --> 00:00:52,850 And I got very interested on the problem 17 00:00:52,850 --> 00:00:56,360 of actually problem solving in general, and in particular 18 00:00:56,360 --> 00:00:57,120 through analogy. 19 00:00:57,120 --> 00:01:01,460 So I've been working in AI since 1986, I would say. 20 00:01:01,460 --> 00:01:02,120 Good deal. 21 00:01:02,120 --> 00:01:05,420 And you just like the problem solving aspect? 22 00:01:05,420 --> 00:01:09,830 So I was always fascinated by the problem solving aspect. 23 00:01:09,830 --> 00:01:14,810 So even now as of today, I am a person 24 00:01:14,810 --> 00:01:17,420 that likes to research in terms of the integration 25 00:01:17,420 --> 00:01:20,270 of perception, cognition, and action, so 26 00:01:20,270 --> 00:01:23,720 the actual understanding of the world, 27 00:01:23,720 --> 00:01:26,390 but all the way to really solving problems, 28 00:01:26,390 --> 00:01:27,870 to actually doing. 29 00:01:27,870 --> 00:01:32,050 So not just labeling where you are, but actually take action. 30 00:01:32,050 --> 00:01:37,070 So I think that I still have that in my background. 31 00:01:37,070 --> 00:01:38,390 It's very interesting. 32 00:01:38,390 --> 00:01:40,200 So when you-- 33 00:01:40,200 --> 00:01:43,110 I guess you did your thesis at Carnegie Mellon. 34 00:01:43,110 --> 00:01:43,610 Yes. 35 00:01:43,610 --> 00:01:46,338 And you still work there. 36 00:01:46,338 --> 00:01:46,880 That's right. 37 00:01:46,880 --> 00:01:50,900 I guess when you first entered in the field as a PhD student, 38 00:01:50,900 --> 00:01:52,790 what else was going on at Carnegie Mellon? 39 00:01:52,790 --> 00:01:57,410 Well, it was a very, very interesting and rich period 40 00:01:57,410 --> 00:01:59,150 of the field of AI. 41 00:01:59,150 --> 00:02:02,360 So at Carnegie Mellon in the late '80s, 42 00:02:02,360 --> 00:02:10,889 there were like these giants of AI, Herb Simon, Allen Newell, 43 00:02:10,889 --> 00:02:18,560 [INAUDIBLE],, Tom Mitchell, Jeff Hinton, Mark [INAUDIBLE],, Scott 44 00:02:18,560 --> 00:02:19,515 [INAUDIBLE]. 45 00:02:19,515 --> 00:02:22,490 46 00:02:22,490 --> 00:02:29,030 And there were many people that were all very enthusiastically 47 00:02:29,030 --> 00:02:31,430 pushing the field of AI forward. 48 00:02:31,430 --> 00:02:34,070 I find myself to be a real product 49 00:02:34,070 --> 00:02:40,700 of those days in which problem solving was really underlying 50 00:02:40,700 --> 00:02:43,580 a lot of the research there. 51 00:02:43,580 --> 00:02:50,360 And I learned a lot from Herb Simon and Alan on this idea 52 00:02:50,360 --> 00:02:55,700 that indeed systems could learn from experience. 53 00:02:55,700 --> 00:02:58,070 But they could organize their problem-solving 54 00:02:58,070 --> 00:03:01,790 through this concept of what's the state of the world, what 55 00:03:01,790 --> 00:03:04,160 are all the possible actions you can take? 56 00:03:04,160 --> 00:03:08,810 And you faced this decision making 57 00:03:08,810 --> 00:03:11,190 challenge of making choices. 58 00:03:11,190 --> 00:03:14,060 So you are going always to face this problem of, OK, I 59 00:03:14,060 --> 00:03:18,290 could do one out of n things, and how do you choose? 60 00:03:18,290 --> 00:03:20,960 And whatever you do choosing, you 61 00:03:20,960 --> 00:03:24,590 may find sooner or later in your research, in your choosing, 62 00:03:24,590 --> 00:03:26,580 that it was not the right thing. 63 00:03:26,580 --> 00:03:28,360 And so the question becomes in AI, 64 00:03:28,360 --> 00:03:31,940 if you are doing the choice management 65 00:03:31,940 --> 00:03:35,870 and when you find it's not the right thing, what 66 00:03:35,870 --> 00:03:38,260 do you do about that? 67 00:03:38,260 --> 00:03:40,338 And one of the things that Allen Newell and Herb 68 00:03:40,338 --> 00:03:42,380 Simon were pushing in those days was this concept 69 00:03:42,380 --> 00:03:46,100 of chunking, this concept of, OK, get that impasse 70 00:03:46,100 --> 00:03:49,430 and save that, and we learn that up there, 71 00:03:49,430 --> 00:03:50,970 when you had to do that choice, that 72 00:03:50,970 --> 00:03:52,670 doesn't work in this situation. 73 00:03:52,670 --> 00:03:57,150 And I tried to build upon that trying to use that by analogy. 74 00:03:57,150 --> 00:03:59,720 So you would save some experience 75 00:03:59,720 --> 00:04:01,550 of the choice you've made, and you 76 00:04:01,550 --> 00:04:04,760 tried to transfer it to new problems 77 00:04:04,760 --> 00:04:07,070 and reproduce the same successful choices. 78 00:04:07,070 --> 00:04:09,770 That's-- wow, OK. 79 00:04:09,770 --> 00:04:14,830 So I guess, this might be too technical, 80 00:04:14,830 --> 00:04:18,829 but what were the most challenging parts of not just 81 00:04:18,829 --> 00:04:22,640 your work, but the general work in problem solving, that part 82 00:04:22,640 --> 00:04:23,630 of the field? 83 00:04:23,630 --> 00:04:28,820 So just to reiterate a little bit, so in those days, 84 00:04:28,820 --> 00:04:35,960 there was this problem solving fever going on at CMU. 85 00:04:35,960 --> 00:04:39,980 And there was a little bit of the beginning 86 00:04:39,980 --> 00:04:44,660 of the neural net paradigms at CMU, all the non-symbolic kind 87 00:04:44,660 --> 00:04:46,550 of reasoning, all the statistical, 88 00:04:46,550 --> 00:04:52,020 the speech recognisers being highly based on statistics. 89 00:04:52,020 --> 00:04:56,660 So there has been from those days these, well 90 00:04:56,660 --> 00:05:02,010 how much do you put a symbolic knowledge into a system, 91 00:05:02,010 --> 00:05:05,490 or how much you just look at a large amount of data 92 00:05:05,490 --> 00:05:08,740 and gather statistical information and just use that. 93 00:05:08,740 --> 00:05:11,580 So it's interesting that I don't think 94 00:05:11,580 --> 00:05:21,970 we reached a solution to these two ways of approaching. 95 00:05:21,970 --> 00:05:25,060 But those started in those days, that discussion. 96 00:05:25,060 --> 00:05:29,560 And all of that is from the mid-80s, late '80s. 97 00:05:29,560 --> 00:05:31,420 And we are still trying to resolve 98 00:05:31,420 --> 00:05:33,010 how to put this all together. 99 00:05:33,010 --> 00:05:35,740 And, for example, I've been doing 100 00:05:35,740 --> 00:05:39,770 a lot of robot work, a lot of robot soccer work. 101 00:05:39,770 --> 00:05:42,220 And from a technical point of view, indeed. 102 00:05:42,220 --> 00:05:47,140 Because these robots need to solve a concrete problem, 103 00:05:47,140 --> 00:05:51,100 like these scoring goals into a goal, working as a teammate. 104 00:05:51,100 --> 00:05:54,970 There has always to be some symbolic knowledge, 105 00:05:54,970 --> 00:05:56,740 but over the task. 106 00:05:56,740 --> 00:05:59,980 On the other hand, they do have to intersect moving balls 107 00:05:59,980 --> 00:06:05,000 and to process pixels of images, and to actuate their motors. 108 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:07,900 And, therefore, they have a lot, a lot, 109 00:06:07,900 --> 00:06:12,430 of low level processing needed to be done. 110 00:06:12,430 --> 00:06:14,020 So from a technical point of view, 111 00:06:14,020 --> 00:06:17,740 the challenges become how-- in my problem solving view-- 112 00:06:17,740 --> 00:06:21,040 how do you combine all that low level processing 113 00:06:21,040 --> 00:06:22,990 that needs to be done at a perceptual level, 114 00:06:22,990 --> 00:06:26,270 at the atuator level with, indeed, a lot of the task 115 00:06:26,270 --> 00:06:31,180 knowledge that is highly symbolic or highly abstract, 116 00:06:31,180 --> 00:06:33,610 even to model what the others are doing 117 00:06:33,610 --> 00:06:35,140 to come up with some teamwork. 118 00:06:35,140 --> 00:06:38,980 So though it's not maybe-- 119 00:06:38,980 --> 00:06:41,230 that's the technical challenges of problem 120 00:06:41,230 --> 00:06:43,540 solving from my point of view. 121 00:06:43,540 --> 00:06:46,210 This problem solving is not done by a single creature, 122 00:06:46,210 --> 00:06:47,860 it's a teamwork aspect. 123 00:06:47,860 --> 00:06:50,590 Problem solving really involves going all the way down 124 00:06:50,590 --> 00:06:54,460 to an execute, therefore the low level challenges of processing 125 00:06:54,460 --> 00:06:58,000 and actuating very low level information with actually 126 00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:02,650 solving the problem, which involves the high level aspect. 127 00:07:02,650 --> 00:07:03,390 That makes sense. 128 00:07:03,390 --> 00:07:03,890 OK. 129 00:07:03,890 --> 00:07:04,810 Nice. 130 00:07:04,810 --> 00:07:06,190 Do you have any-- 131 00:07:06,190 --> 00:07:09,010 I guess some people have talked to us 132 00:07:09,010 --> 00:07:11,710 of a lot of favorite stories or anecdotes 133 00:07:11,710 --> 00:07:13,540 that took place when they were-- 134 00:07:13,540 --> 00:07:18,140 --I can tell you one that was very striking to me. 135 00:07:18,140 --> 00:07:25,210 So in 1998 we were doing robot soccer in Paris. 136 00:07:25,210 --> 00:07:28,720 And with the first AIBO robots, which 137 00:07:28,720 --> 00:07:32,170 were these four legged robots built by Sony. 138 00:07:32,170 --> 00:07:38,020 And the robots had all on board, like a camera, a computer, 139 00:07:38,020 --> 00:07:41,030 and they actually actuate their legs. 140 00:07:41,030 --> 00:07:46,550 And so they were playing in a field that had landmarks so 141 00:07:46,550 --> 00:07:47,940 that they knew where they were. 142 00:07:47,940 --> 00:07:52,180 And so we solved the localization problem 143 00:07:52,180 --> 00:07:58,390 by actually using a Bayesian model of the map and then 144 00:07:58,390 --> 00:08:00,730 their sensors to predict where they were on the field, 145 00:08:00,730 --> 00:08:02,020 it doesn't matter. 146 00:08:02,020 --> 00:08:05,050 But I remember all the map that had been done til then 147 00:08:05,050 --> 00:08:08,920 to the localization assuming that the robot either moved-- 148 00:08:08,920 --> 00:08:12,340 so only moved by itself and sensed the wall. 149 00:08:12,340 --> 00:08:15,610 We were in Paris, and in the middle of a game 150 00:08:15,610 --> 00:08:18,910 the robots started getting all entangled on each other. 151 00:08:18,910 --> 00:08:21,820 And the referees picked up a robot 152 00:08:21,820 --> 00:08:24,190 and put it somewhere else. 153 00:08:24,190 --> 00:08:31,810 And at that moment, the robot was all lost because it was 154 00:08:31,810 --> 00:08:35,530 believing that it was somewhere else, seeing something, 155 00:08:35,530 --> 00:08:41,409 its map would say, I cannot see a yellow marker from down there 156 00:08:41,409 --> 00:08:42,090 in the field. 157 00:08:42,090 --> 00:08:44,410 So these yellow marker needs to be noise. 158 00:08:44,410 --> 00:08:48,550 So his model was completely destroyed 159 00:08:48,550 --> 00:08:50,530 because there was this pick up. 160 00:08:50,530 --> 00:08:53,020 And I remember looking at the game 161 00:08:53,020 --> 00:08:56,530 with my student [INAUDIBLE],, screaming and shouting, 162 00:08:56,530 --> 00:09:00,280 do not touch our robots, because in some sense, 163 00:09:00,280 --> 00:09:04,180 we knew that that lift up and put somewhere else 164 00:09:04,180 --> 00:09:07,330 was not modeled, was absolutely not 165 00:09:07,330 --> 00:09:11,560 part of the assumptions that were underlying 166 00:09:11,560 --> 00:09:14,410 the whole problem solving. 167 00:09:14,410 --> 00:09:19,210 So it was a panic, because reality 168 00:09:19,210 --> 00:09:24,460 was so obviously defeating the model that we were using. 169 00:09:24,460 --> 00:09:27,010 But that was-- I mean, that was a big lesson for me. 170 00:09:27,010 --> 00:09:29,620 Because from then on, I will always 171 00:09:29,620 --> 00:09:34,360 push this idea that no matter what model you come up with, 172 00:09:34,360 --> 00:09:38,170 it might be defeated by reality. 173 00:09:38,170 --> 00:09:40,980 So an executor, a problem solver has always 174 00:09:40,980 --> 00:09:46,540 to hypothesize not only that information gathered is noisy 175 00:09:46,540 --> 00:09:48,040 and you might not know how to solve, 176 00:09:48,040 --> 00:09:51,100 but that it's model might be incorrect. 177 00:09:51,100 --> 00:09:53,620 And that led in several pieces, and so forth. 178 00:09:53,620 --> 00:09:56,920 Because this is still something I am very-- 179 00:09:56,920 --> 00:10:01,090 I still relate back to 1998 panic 180 00:10:01,090 --> 00:10:03,280 when I saw this robot being picked up. 181 00:10:03,280 --> 00:10:07,390 So many things came out of that, pick up the robot. 182 00:10:07,390 --> 00:10:09,940 But anyway. 183 00:10:09,940 --> 00:10:17,320 So switching gears a bit I guess given the real world computers, 184 00:10:17,320 --> 00:10:20,950 they're related by get noisy data, 185 00:10:20,950 --> 00:10:24,420 computer models are almost always more simple 186 00:10:24,420 --> 00:10:27,420 than reality is, how can computers 187 00:10:27,420 --> 00:10:28,940 help humans solve problems? 188 00:10:28,940 --> 00:10:30,030 That is a very good one. 189 00:10:30,030 --> 00:10:33,360 So I've been working a lot on autonomous, 190 00:10:33,360 --> 00:10:35,640 like computers all by itself. 191 00:10:35,640 --> 00:10:37,680 But a lot of the research now is, indeed, 192 00:10:37,680 --> 00:10:40,830 towards more of these interaction, human robot 193 00:10:40,830 --> 00:10:43,620 interaction, human computer interaction, 194 00:10:43,620 --> 00:10:50,250 and have the computer or the robot be more of an assistant. 195 00:10:50,250 --> 00:10:55,320 I think it's a much better way of looking at, eventually, 196 00:10:55,320 --> 00:10:58,740 the future, when we have robots moving around. 197 00:10:58,740 --> 00:11:03,810 Because there is a kind of a hope 198 00:11:03,810 --> 00:11:07,390 that capabilities will be complementary. 199 00:11:07,390 --> 00:11:12,660 So that like in humans, I mean, I might play squash better 200 00:11:12,660 --> 00:11:13,410 than someone else. 201 00:11:13,410 --> 00:11:16,770 But that person maybe plays basketball much better. 202 00:11:16,770 --> 00:11:22,260 Or I might be a very good a cook and you might 203 00:11:22,260 --> 00:11:24,630 be a very good poem writer. 204 00:11:24,630 --> 00:11:28,710 So there is not a real human that's 205 00:11:28,710 --> 00:11:30,940 omnipotent, in some sense. 206 00:11:30,940 --> 00:11:34,140 So when we create the robot, we create a robot 207 00:11:34,140 --> 00:11:37,800 or an AI creature that has its limitations 208 00:11:37,800 --> 00:11:40,740 and can be complemented either by humans or by other AI 209 00:11:40,740 --> 00:11:42,150 creatures. 210 00:11:42,150 --> 00:11:45,110 I really think that that's a very nice way to go. 211 00:11:45,110 --> 00:11:47,130 So indeed computers and robots can 212 00:11:47,130 --> 00:11:50,790 assist people, both on their physical limitations 213 00:11:50,790 --> 00:11:53,160 but also on their known limitations 214 00:11:53,160 --> 00:11:56,350 or their execution limitations. 215 00:11:56,350 --> 00:12:00,890 So it's a very, very healthy way of looking at AI 216 00:12:00,890 --> 00:12:03,930 as more creatures in the world that will have limitations 217 00:12:03,930 --> 00:12:05,020 like humans do. 218 00:12:05,020 --> 00:12:07,230 So they're not-- they don't necessarily 219 00:12:07,230 --> 00:12:09,180 need to be the ones that beat everyone 220 00:12:09,180 --> 00:12:12,240 and be the best chess player, the best robot soccer 221 00:12:12,240 --> 00:12:14,160 player, or this or that. 222 00:12:14,160 --> 00:12:17,250 But they can be more of like a co-- they just 223 00:12:17,250 --> 00:12:19,200 coexist with humans in the same way 224 00:12:19,200 --> 00:12:21,480 that we all coexist with each other. 225 00:12:21,480 --> 00:12:22,300 Look at my accent. 226 00:12:22,300 --> 00:12:24,592 I mean, it's a limitation that other people don't have. 227 00:12:24,592 --> 00:12:27,330 But I speak many languages, too, which other people might not. 228 00:12:27,330 --> 00:12:30,550 So it's like we all complement each other. 229 00:12:30,550 --> 00:12:31,710 And that's very nice. 230 00:12:31,710 --> 00:12:34,920 So sort of give a robot or computer 231 00:12:34,920 --> 00:12:37,360 a specific context within which it 232 00:12:37,360 --> 00:12:38,830 can assist in problem solving. 233 00:12:38,830 --> 00:12:39,390 Exactly. 234 00:12:39,390 --> 00:12:40,348 Yeah, that makes sense. 235 00:12:40,348 --> 00:12:43,710 And it will-- again, the system will grow. 236 00:12:43,710 --> 00:12:45,450 I mean, we have this feeling that we all 237 00:12:45,450 --> 00:12:46,800 learn from each other. 238 00:12:46,800 --> 00:12:48,720 And these robots or these computers 239 00:12:48,720 --> 00:12:50,940 need also to have that ability to not 240 00:12:50,940 --> 00:12:53,640 be static in terms of what they've done, 241 00:12:53,640 --> 00:12:57,090 but evolve with their interaction with either humans 242 00:12:57,090 --> 00:12:59,160 and with the environment. 243 00:12:59,160 --> 00:13:02,580 So they should be able to change their parameters, 244 00:13:02,580 --> 00:13:04,560 their weights, their knowledge, whatever 245 00:13:04,560 --> 00:13:07,320 they have inside, their databases, their access 246 00:13:07,320 --> 00:13:08,440 functions. 247 00:13:08,440 --> 00:13:10,680 So that the whole thing has to be flexible. 248 00:13:10,680 --> 00:13:16,050 Not as we would have thought that it was going to converge, 249 00:13:16,050 --> 00:13:18,685 but as a function of the interaction with other people, 250 00:13:18,685 --> 00:13:19,560 with the environment. 251 00:13:19,560 --> 00:13:22,590 And they just have to be built with the ability 252 00:13:22,590 --> 00:13:24,450 to have these things being changed 253 00:13:24,450 --> 00:13:27,370 as a function of the interaction. 254 00:13:27,370 --> 00:13:29,340 Very interesting. 255 00:13:29,340 --> 00:13:33,487 So I guess people usually don't like it 256 00:13:33,487 --> 00:13:35,070 when you ask these kinds of questions, 257 00:13:35,070 --> 00:13:39,180 but where do you see us going, concretely? 258 00:13:39,180 --> 00:13:41,860 Well, I am not very good at handwaving, that's true. 259 00:13:41,860 --> 00:13:44,940 But on the other hand, I do believe that we are 260 00:13:44,940 --> 00:13:47,815 going in the right direction. 261 00:13:47,815 --> 00:13:49,440 And I tell you there are two directions 262 00:13:49,440 --> 00:13:50,460 in which we are going. 263 00:13:50,460 --> 00:13:53,580 One, which is like addressing more challenging problems. 264 00:13:53,580 --> 00:13:55,950 Look at the DARPA challenge in the desert, the Urban 265 00:13:55,950 --> 00:14:00,490 Challenge, the RoboCub challenge, a lot of challenges, 266 00:14:00,490 --> 00:14:00,990 problems. 267 00:14:00,990 --> 00:14:05,020 I mean, the understanding language technology, 268 00:14:05,020 --> 00:14:05,830 it's a challenge. 269 00:14:05,830 --> 00:14:09,640 And then the other direction is like the developing 270 00:14:09,640 --> 00:14:13,290 more and more sophisticated tools to address this problem, 271 00:14:13,290 --> 00:14:16,650 and understanding how the math of some control theory, 272 00:14:16,650 --> 00:14:18,960 or how the statistics of some approach, 273 00:14:18,960 --> 00:14:21,750 or how the psychology models of something. 274 00:14:21,750 --> 00:14:26,220 So how do these other sciences contribute 275 00:14:26,220 --> 00:14:32,520 for these very high level goal of creating these human level 276 00:14:32,520 --> 00:14:33,150 intelligence? 277 00:14:33,150 --> 00:14:38,285 So that we kind of understand that we 278 00:14:38,285 --> 00:14:40,410 have to learn the lessons of physics from the math, 279 00:14:40,410 --> 00:14:43,050 from here, from there, from there, from the psychology, 280 00:14:43,050 --> 00:14:45,550 from who knows, from all the medicine. 281 00:14:45,550 --> 00:14:48,480 So this is all these people that-- 282 00:14:48,480 --> 00:14:50,620 all these research on. 283 00:14:50,620 --> 00:14:52,290 So we are going to pursue this research 284 00:14:52,290 --> 00:14:55,530 on building the tools, the really core tools. 285 00:14:55,530 --> 00:14:58,800 But then there's also the problem to challenges. 286 00:14:58,800 --> 00:15:02,560 And, yes, so that's the directions I think will happen. 287 00:15:02,560 --> 00:15:08,370 And you are always going to towards problems. 288 00:15:08,370 --> 00:15:09,480 Tools to build tools. 289 00:15:09,480 --> 00:15:11,680 To build to the-- yeah, exactly. 290 00:15:11,680 --> 00:15:12,850 Interesting. 291 00:15:12,850 --> 00:15:14,410 OK. 292 00:15:14,410 --> 00:15:17,110 I guess that'd probably do it for now. 293 00:15:17,110 --> 00:15:18,148 OK, thanks. 294 00:15:18,148 --> 00:15:19,690 Thanks very much for talking with us. 295 00:15:19,690 --> 00:15:20,350 You are welcome. 296 00:15:20,350 --> 00:15:22,100 OK, thanks for putting this together very. 297 00:15:22,100 --> 00:15:24,130 Nice good.