Stuart Russell

It's much more stable.

If it needs to drive a car, it can fold up two of its legs and so on and so forth.

So I think the arguments for why it has to be exactly humanoid are sort of post hoc justification arguments.

I think there's much more, well, that's what it's like in the movies and that's spooky and cool.

So we need to have them be human.

I don't think it's a good engineering argument.

Yeah, and so could a centaur robot, right?

So in some sense, a centaur robot is... There's something ghastly about the look of those, though.

Is the humanoid... Do you know what I mean?

Your dog is a four-legged monster.

I know, but he's cute.

So I think, actually, I would argue the opposite, that we want a distinct form because they are distinct entities.

And the more humanoid, the worse it is in terms of confusing our subconscious psychological systems.

I mean, there's also what's called the uncanny valley, which is a phrase from computer graphics when they started...

to make characters in computer graphics, they tried to make them look more human.

For example, if you look at Toy Story,

They're not very human looking, right?

If you look at the Incredibles, they're not very human looking.

And so we think of them as cartoon characters.

If you try to make them more human, they actually become repulsive.