Something You Should Know
Our Strange Relationship With Robots & What is Confidence? - SYSK Choice
31 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
If you like something you should know, you're probably a curious person who enjoys learning about the world. And if you're looking for more places to learn, you should know about a podcast from TED called How to Be a Better Human. The host, Chris Duffy, was recently a guest here talking about why he loves laughter and how you can find more of it in your everyday life.
On How to Be a Better Human, Chris interviews scientists, experts, and TED speakers about fascinating practical topics from... How your dog experiences the world, to how to stop doom-scrolling, to how to find a deeper sense of belonging. You can find How to Be a Better Human wherever you listen to podcasts.
Today on Something You Should Know, a simple job interview question that could really trip you up if you're not prepared. Then, robots. We like them. We relate to them. We sort of can't help ourselves.
Let me put it this way. If you have a robot and it says to you, I love you, you're beautiful, the same parts of your brain light up when you hear those words as they would if your significant other said them.
Also, when was your last eye exam? And confidence. It's attractive. You'd probably like to have more of it. But we actually don't know exactly what it is.
There is no consensus as to what confidence really looks like. If you think about it, it is in the eye of the beholder. So release yourself from the judgment of having everybody love you and everyone think you're confident by just being who you are.
All this today on Something You Should Know.
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Listen to Vulgar History, Regency era, wherever you get podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.
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Chapter 2: What job interview question do most candidates struggle with?
And that is something you should know. As you may have noticed, more and more robots are becoming part of our lives. If you have a Roomba vacuum cleaner or an Alexa, you have a robot. And it's interesting how we humans treat robots. I mean, think about it. If you have an Alexa speaker and Alexa is a robot... Have you ever thanked her?
You know, you ask her the weather forecast or ask her to set a timer, and she does, and you thank her. Lots of people do. But why? She's just a machine. Well, that is part of this problem, as you're about to hear. Human beings are inclined to relate to and treat robots as people. And human beings are likely to defer to robots and assume they're smarter than a human.
I know it sounds weird, which is why you need to listen to Eve Harold. She is an award-winning science writer and consultant in the scientific and medical world, and she's author of a book called Robots and the People Who Love Them, Holding on to Our Humanity in an Age of Social Robots. Hi, Eve. Welcome to Something You Should Know.
Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here.
So I remember always being very interested in robots as a kid. There's something about interacting with a machine in a way that treats them like a human, almost.
And that's because we're wired, we're hardwired to be social creatures. And we have unconscious responses to anything that looks and sounds and moves and seems almost human or almost alive. On top of that, we also have a strong tendency to anthropomorphize anything that we interact with. So, yeah, I mean, it's kind of intrinsic to who we are.
But it does seem weird to some extent to want to talk to a machine as if it were a person. I mean, there are plenty of people to talk to, and yet we're fascinated by this idea of treating some machines like humans. It is fascinating.
Fascinating and sometimes scary, you know, as you're probably aware of the uncanny valley effect where people become very uncomfortable when robots enter a certain zone, you know, and that that is characterized by hyper realism. with glitches and problems that crop up so that something seems almost real, almost human without quite passing that last hurdle of perfection.
And then the wires in our brains get crossed and it makes us, it's a disturbing feeling. It brings up images of things like zombies and undead and other things that have been immortalized in the media. But it's an uncomfortable feeling and it can put us off from dealing with certain robots.
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Chapter 3: Why do we anthropomorphize robots?
I mean, you can – Disabled people will be, you know, the big winners here, elderly people, children. But the problem comes in with the fact that they're connected to the Internet. You know, scientists at MIT not so long ago created a robot that they claim became psychotic because of material that it found on the dark web.
So, you know, while your child is being taught, you know, by a robotic tutor, that tutor, yes, it's getting all kinds of great programs and stuff. And it's, you know, amassing a lot of knowledge and it has a lot of uses. It's also subject to whatever the latest technology.
you know, crazy, you know, mental spasm is out there on the internet that it's just absorbing because these robots and it's the same with generative AI. As you know, generative AI is trained on information from the internet. And not all of that information is benign. Not all of it is true. These bots and these robots don't have the capacity to discern whether something is true or untrue.
And they don't truly understand human nature. language. They seem like they do, they sound like they do, but they're just coming up with patterns and words that fit together. They don't understand what they're actually saying to you, but they're programmed to make it sound realistic and natural.
Are there any other examples you can think of of robots being used that are real robots?
There are some robots in Japan that are doing things like working in museums, and they're working as museum guides. and they're highly lifelike and realistic. They're equipped with all kinds of interesting knowledge about the objects in the museum, and they're very knowledgeable. There are things like that on the horizon.
They're actually, it's happening in some parts of the world, not here quite yet. But, you know, there are uses of these robots that I think are really intriguing and fun and engaging, you know, and offer some valuable services. I also am really looking forward to caregiving robots that get very, very abled. And this is this is close.
This is some close, you know, technology that's coming down the pike soon. You know, robots that can lift a person out of the bed and put them in a wheelchair. and back again that can bathe people, that can feed them, that can do this, that can address some of the shortages we have of caregivers. We have a terrible shortage of caregivers.
I just hope we can be conscious and aware as we go forward on this and try to circumvent some of the problems that are predictable and be able to respond to the ones that are not predictable that suddenly emerge.
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