Ken Goldberg
speaker
221 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 7 May
Ken Goldberg’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
The goal is that he's going to start doing work here on Earth, but then long term, going to the space station, from the space station to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
Robots are not going to suddenly become the science fiction dream overnight.
But Ken says... For robotics, there's nothing. We don't have anything to start with, right? There's no examples online of robot commands being generated in response to robot inputs.
Okay, all right. Because I don't know if you meant rare as a human being. Rare and special. Rare and special. Okay, I'll take that.
Yes. Okay, I remember that I was in this place also a little intimidated because a lot of A-list people and I was sitting there and- I forget who it was. He was on the stage and you raised a comment and said something about he looked really sharp. Pharrell.
Yeah. I think I said like he was really dazzling. Exactly.
And I just love the way you said that. I thought it was such an unusual thing to say. It was spot on. But it was just the kind of thing that nobody would normally say.
And so I think it was after the lunch or something, I saw you standing over there and I just went over and I said, hey, I love that comment you made. And then we started talking. That's how I remember it. I didn't know anything about you. You must have known Kristen. No. We were just having this fun conversation and you guys were so charming. And then Tiffany came over. Your wife.
Also dazzling and unicorny. Yes. We walked away and she said, you don't know who they were? And I was like, no. And then we had several great conversations at that thing.
Okay, I'm always looking for good. Very comfortable, very playful.
I'm kind of thinking, like, what else was going on?
I'm glad you did, because if you had just not said it, it would have been sort of this lingering presence. Yes.
Did they know if you were really planted? Oh, my God. That is brilliant. The elephant panties in the room. Oh, my God.
So my parents were idealists during the 60s and they were at Penn in Philadelphia and they were going on civil rights marches and things like that. So they wanted to continue that idea of doing things for civil rights. So when they were graduating, they wrote to various people in Africa and they said, we'd love to help.
And so one person who ran a school there, and he's actually quite famous in Nigeria, Ty Shelerin, he invited them to come to his school and work for two years. So they basically got over there and there was no running water and no electricity when they got there. So it was very rough and they lived kind of under these circumstances. My dad taught physics and my mom taught English.
They were graduate students at Penn or undergrad?
Yes, good point. It was starting. Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, has a lot of integration, great history there. And so they were starting there. But that was also around the time of Nigerian independence. There was a real movement across Africa. I was very proud of them. I'm still proud of them for doing that. Were you delivered at a hospital? Yeah.
So I always thought it must have been an accident because like, why would you do that? Who would plan?
And so I never asked because it was like that elephant in the room. I just didn't want to know. But a couple of years ago, my mom said we wanted to have a baby because we had all this time together and we knew it would be a time to focus on you. So I was born in a hospital nearby called Abaddon, which is about an hour from this village. But I have a really big vaccination mark from that.
I think you're right. I don't know what it is, but yes, exactly.
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