Rodney Brooks Quotes

Much to the surprise of the builders of the first digital computers, programs written for them usually did not work.

Artificial intelligence is a tool, not a threat

When I look out in the future, I can't imagine a world, 500 years from now, where we don't have robots everywhere.

I think it's very easy for people who are not deep in the technology itself to make generalizations, which may be a little dangerous. And we've certainly seen that recently with Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, all saying AI is just taking off and it's going to take over the world very quickly. And the thing that they share is none of them work in this technological field.

Two big questions that people ask me are: if we make these robots more and more human-like, will we accept them - will they need rights eventually? And the other question people ask me is, will they want to take over?

Each of the essays in this volume ranges widely across technical and philosophical domains. They examine both familiar automatons from throughout history and delight us with yet more that will likely be unfamiliar to most readers. But the real treat of the essays is how they will make Artificial Life researchers squirm as they recognize their own intellectual sleights of hand exposed for all to see. Those researchers and the Genesis Redux contributors are all ultimately interested in what it is that truly distinguishes us beings from other lumps of matter.

If you're doing something radically new, you need a team that's willing to go on a ride that's very different from anything they've encountered before.

I begin by looking for megatrends, changes in the world that will create major new demands. My goal is to create a company that can be there to meet those demands.

When people lose faith in the idea, you have to let them go, because they start to undermine it for everyone else.

If we are machines, then in principle at least, we should be able to build machines out of other stuff, which are just as alive as we are.

So robots are good at very simple things like cleaning the floor, like doing a repetitive task. Our robots have a little tiny bit of common sense. Our robots know that if they've got something in their hand and they drop it, it's gone. They shouldn't go and try and put it down.

My talent is getting things to work that people think are many decades in the future. I say we can make them happen now.

I'd rather have half of my idea change the world than my whole idea be a few papers in a journal.

I always tell people, it's never too late to start saving for retirement. It's not that important how much you have already saved. What's important is that you start saving. And save as much as you can. You will be amazed at how quickly it will build up.

Well, I think we are seeing some shifts in manufacturing. China, when you go in and you talk to the big manufacturers there, the biggest problems in mainland China are recruiting and retention. There isn't an endless supply of cheap labor anymore in China. And it's now true that the labor rates in Mexico are lower than in China.