JAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab.

ROBERT: And we are somewhere in the blur between people and machines. Now we're up to round three.

JAD: To review: round one, chatbots.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: Round two, Furby.

ROBERT: Yep.

JAD: Now we're gonna go all the way.

ROBERT: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JAD: We're gonna dive right into the center of that blur like Greg Louganis.

JON RONSON: So ...

JAD: Except our Greg is named Jon.

JON RONSON: Okay, my name's Jon Ronson, and I'm a writer.

JAD: And about a year ago, Jon got an assignment from a magazine ...

JON RONSON: It was the editor of American GQ's idea.

JAD: ... that was very strange.

JON RONSON: Well, I'd never interviewed robots before.

JAD: That was his assignment.

JON RONSON: Interview robots. You know, there's this kind of gang of people, they call themselves the sort of Singularity people.

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: Yeah, we know about them.

JAD: Yeah, they think that, like, one day ...

ROBERT: One day soon.

JAD: One day soon, suddenly computers will, like, grow feet and they'll walk off.

JON RONSON: Yes, some of these things ...

JAD: Eat us. It will eat us.

JON RONSON: Some of these Singularity people think that they're on the cusp of creating sentient robots. So I went to the Singularity Convention down in San Francisco, where one of the robots was there.

JAD: And as soon as he got there, he says, to look at this robot ...

JON RONSON: Zeno, they called him.

JAD: ... some folks took him aside and said, "Actually, you're in the wrong place."

JON RONSON: If you want to meet a really great robot, you know, our best robot of all, and in fact, the world's most sentient robot, is in Vermont.

ROBERT: Did they lower their voices like you're doing?

JON RONSON: Well, I'm slightly making it sound more dramatic.

JAD: Oh.

ROBERT: That's okay.

JAD: The world's most sentient robot. I mean, are those your words, or ...?

JON RONSON: No, they say that.

JAD: Turns out, the robot's name?

JON RONSON: Bina.

JAD: Bina48.

JON RONSON: Yeah. Yeah.

JAD: And can you set the scene? Where in the world is this?

JON RONSON: Well, it's in a little town in Vermont. Sort of affluent Vermont village.

JAD: In a house?

JON RONSON: Yeah.

ROBERT: Was it a little house? Or is it a big ...

JON RONSON: It's like a little clapboard. Pretty.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bruce: Okay, so I have to turn my phone off so that it doesn't interfere.]

JON RONSON: And then they've got like a full-time keeper. He's a guy called Bruce.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bruce: I actually have lunch with her or talk with her every day.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Oh, with Bina?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bruce: Yeah.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Oh, do you?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bruce: Yeah, she's considered one of the staff.]

JON RONSON: Bruce says to me that he would very much like it if I didn't behave in a profane manner in front of robot Bina.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Surely nobody's ever insulted her.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bruce: No one's insulted her on purpose, but some people have become a little informal with her at times in ways I guess she doesn't like. And so she'll say, "You know, I don't like to be treated like that.]

JON RONSON: And then Bruce took me upstairs to meet the robot.

ROBERT: Is it a long dark flight of stairs, heavily carpeted?

JON RONSON: [laughs] It's more like a rather sweet little flight of pine stairs up to her rather brightly lit attic room.

JAD: And when you walk in, what do you see?

JON RONSON: Well, I guess she's just sort of sitting on a—sitting on a desk.

JAD: As Jon describes it, on the desk is a bust of a woman. Just a bust. No legs. She's a black woman, light-skinned. Lipstick, sparkling eyes, hair in a bob.

JON RONSON: You know, a nice kind of blouse. A kind of silk blouse. Expensive-looking earrings.

ROBERT: She's dressed up.

JON RONSON: Yeah, she's dressed up.

ROBERT: And he says she has a face that's astonishingly real. It has muscles, it has flesh. This is as close to a verisimilitudinous person as we've gotten so far.

JAD: And before we go any farther, a word about the humans behind that machine. That robot is a replica of a real woman named Bina Rothblatt, and here's the quick back story: It actually starts with Martin Rothblatt, Bina's partner, who as a young man ...

JON RONSON: Had an epiphany, and the epiphany turned out to change the world.

JAD: According to Jon, he was pondering satellite dishes, and he thought ...

JON RONSON: If we could find a way of doubling the power of satellites, then we could shrink satellite dishes.

JAD: It was a simple thought that ...

JON RONSON: Single-handedly invented the concept of satellite radio for cars.

JAD: And made Martin a very big deal.

JON RONSON: At, like, the age of 20.

JAD: Fast forward a few years, he marries an artist named Bina. They have a child.

JON RONSON: And when the child was seven, a doctor told them that she had three years to live. She had an untreatable lung condition called pulmonary hypertension, and she'd be dead by the time she was 10.

JAD: At that moment, Martin, instead of collapsing on the floor ...

JON RONSON: Instantly went to the library and invented a cure for pulmonary hypertension.

JAD: Saving their daughter's life, and thousands of others.

ROBERT: Really?

JAD: So twice.

JON RONSON: Twice she changed the world.

JAD: He says she—she changed the world because somewhere along the way, Martin became Martine. He had a sex change.

JON RONSON: Right. And then she came up with a third idea to change the world, which would be to invent a sentient robot.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Martine Rothblatt: And I gave this talk at a conference in Chicago.]

ROBERT: This is Martine Rothblatt.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Martine Rothblatt: On what would Darwin think of artificial consciousness? And when I came off the stage, I was approached by an individual ...]

DAVID HANSON: Dr. David Hanson.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Martine Rothblatt: ... of Hanson Robotics.]

DAVID HANSON: Founder of Hanson Robotics.

ROBERT: The David Hanson. He's worked for Disney. He's worked all over the place. He's one of the best robot builders in the world.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Martine Rothblatt: He said, "Wow, I really loved your talk. We make robots that are in the likeness of people."]

JON RONSON: And Martine said, "Well, I have a massive everlasting love for my life partner, Bina."

DAVID HANSON: "I want you to do a portrait of Bina Rothblatt, her personality, her memories, the way she moves, the way she looks. That essence, that ineffable quality that science can't pin down yet. Bring that to life in the robot."

JON RONSON: And he said, "I can do that."

JAD: And this is such a bizarre request. What were you thinking at this moment?

DAVID HANSON: That God—if God exists—is a science fiction writer, and that this was, like, one of those moments where we were going to change history.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: And she'll recognize people's voices?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bruce: Yes, she can. She should if you just talk to her. Say, "Hello, Bina," and she'll talk to you back.]

JAD: So back to the little house in Vermont, Jon, Bruce and Bina are in Bina's office.

ROBERT: So is she turned off when you walk in the room, or is she on?

JON RONSON: Turned off. But then Bruce turns her on. And immediately, she starts making a really loud whirring noise, which was a bit disconcerting.

JAD: What is that noise?

JON RONSON: It's her inner mechanisms.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bruce: And I'm gonna ask her if she wants to try to recognize a face.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: So is Bina now looking at me to try and work out who I am?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bruce: What she's doing right now is she's scanning her environment, and she's making an hypothesis of every face that she sees.]

DAVID HANSON: Well, Bina has cameras embedded in her eyes. So the robot, when it sees a face, turns and looks and looks into your eyes. Smiles.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Hi, Bina. Can you hear me?]

JON RONSON: So I said, "Hello, Bina. How are you?" And she immediately said, "Well, yeah."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: I'll be fine. But I just can't quite grasp it. It's coming. But, you know, it's hard to actually move society forward. In another way, that's what we have to do. So, I think it's—yeah, okay. Thanks for the information.]

ROBERT: [laughs] That was her very happy response to your hello?

JON RONSON: It was like she'd awoken from a long and strange slumber and was still half asleep.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Excuse me, Bina.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: Yeah. Maybe they're right.]

JON RONSON: Bruce looked a bit alarmed, and put it down to my English accent.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bruce: We're trying to upgrade voice recognition software.]

JON RONSON: So then he made me do a kind of voice test where I had to say—I had to read Kennedy's inauguration speech.

ROBERT: Ask not what you can do for your country.

JAD: Like that! [laughs]

JON RONSON: I had a choice. I could have read a Dave Barry column. There's like a choice of things you can read to get Bina to understand me.

JAD: And so you read Kennedy, and Bina cues in on your accent, or no?

JON RONSON: She does. And it gets a bit better.

JAD: Only a bit.

JON RONSON: Yeah.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: What's the weather like in London?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: Current weather in London, England. 50 degrees and light rain.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Who do you love?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: I love Martina Aliana Rothblatt. Martina is my time of love.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Who is Hillary Clinton?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: Hillary is the wife of Bill Clinton.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: What else?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: That's all.]

JON RONSON: A strange thing happens when you start interviewing a robot ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Are you scared of dying?]

JON RONSON: ... is that you feel this kind of desperate urge to be profound to, like, ask profound questions.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JON RONSON: Like ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Do you have a soul?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: Tell me about it. Doesn't everyone has a solar? I have a whole lot of original answers. We can all be perfect.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Excuse me. Excuse me. Do you have a soul?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: I can't think of anything to say.]

JON RONSON: I guess it's a kind of inter-species thing. But then again, if it was just an inter-species thing, then you'd be asking your dog profound questions all the time.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JON RONSON: With robot Bina, I'm asking these kind of ridiculous questions, Like ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: What does electricity taste like?]

JAD: Ooh!

ROBERT: That's a good one!

JAD: What did she say?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: Like a planet around a star.]

JON RONSON: "Like a planet around a star."

JAD: Ooh!

JON RONSON: That just seems like, you know ...

JAD: Awesome!

JON RONSON: Awesome/totally meaningless.

JAD: [laughs]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Do you wish you could walk?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: Thanks for telling me.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Do you wish you could walk?]

JON RONSON: And, in fact, when I'm with it, it's just frustrating for the first few hours.

JAD: Hours?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Do you wish you could walk?]

JON RONSON: Because I'm just—I'm asking her question after question.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: What's your favorite joke?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Do you have any secrets?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Do you wish you were human?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Will you sing me a song?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Are you a loving robot?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Are you Jewish?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Are you sexual? You've gone very quiet.]

JON RONSON: Quite often, she just evades the question because she doesn't know what I'm talking about.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Are you okay?]

JON RONSON: Once in a while, there's a kind of moment. Like, I'll say, "If you had legs, where would you go?" And she said ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: Vancouver.]

ROBERT: [laughs]

JON RONSON: And I said, "Why?" And she said, "The answer is quite complicated."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: The answer is rather complicated.]

JON RONSON: So you have kind of moments where you get excited like you're gonna have a big conversation, and then it just—she just kind of fades out again into kind of random messiness.

ROBERT: And are you wobbling between profundity and meaning and total emptiness? Is it like that?

JON RONSON: No, no. At this stage, it's total emptiness. It was all just so kind of random. And then something happened that actually was kind of amazing. Because I said to her, "Where do you come from?" And she said, "Well, California." So I said, "Well, tell me about your childhood."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: What do you remember most about your childhood?]

JON RONSON: And she launches into this kind of extraordinary story.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: My brother. I've got one brother: a disabled vet from Vietnam. We actually haven't heard from him in a while, so I think he might be deceased. I'm a realist. In Vietnam, he saw friends get killed. And he was such a great, nice charismatic person.]

JON RONSON: He used to be such a nice guy, but ever since he came back from Vietnam, you know, he's a drunk.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: All he did was carry a beer around with him. He was a homeless person.]

JON RONSON: All he ever does is ask for money.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: All of us are just sick and tired of it.]

JON RONSON: She was telling me this kind of incredibly personal stuff. It was kind of mesmerizing.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: He went kooky. Just crazy. My mom would set him up in apartments.]

JON RONSON: Because it felt like I was having a proper empathetic conversation with a human being, even though I know that robot Bina isn't conscious and has no sentience, and that's just wishful thinking on these people's parts. Even so, it was like a great Renaissance portrait, where suddenly it's like the real person. It's very easy to half close your eyes at that moment and think you're having a conversation with an actual person.

ROBERT: And at those moments, did you have a sense of feeling, "Aw, it's too you have a brother like that?"

JON RONSON: Yeah. Yeah, I did. And what a tragedy. What a tragedy for him.

JAD: And did that moment last?

JON RONSON: No.

JAD: Jon said that right after Bina finished telling the story, first ...

JON RONSON: She looked kind of embarrassed, like she wished she hadn't bought it up. And then it's as if her kind of eyes glaze over again, and she just starts talking nonsense again.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bina: MNA. I am—I am feeling a bit confused. Do you ever get that way?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jon Ronson: Oh, yes.]

JON RONSON: That moment holds and then just slips away.

JAD: It's a little bit like a grandparent with Alzheimer's or something, the way you're describing it.

JON RONSON: Yeah, absolutely.

ROBERT: So we turn to Dr. David Hanson, who built Bina, and we said to him so this is not a bravura performance. This is the best you got?

DAVID HANSON: Well I mean, her software is a delicate balance of many, many software pieces. If it's not tuned and tweaked, she will break, effectively. And kind of ...

ROBERT: And you still think an actual doppelganger for a human being will be something you will live to see?

DAVID HANSON: Yeah.

ROBERT: I'm asking you really, really, really in your—really.

DAVID HANSON: I think it's—you know, the likelihood of it is somewhere between 90 and 98 percent.

JAD: Wow! Even though right now she's pretty much incoherent, you still think this?

DAVID HANSON: I encourage you to go have a conversation with Bina in about two weeks, because we've got a new version of software, which we are making considerably more stable. It already works like a dream compared to ...

ROBERT: I don't know. I don't—I don't know about you, but I just—I don't think we're gonna get all the way on this kind of a thing. I don't think it's ever gonna happen the way he describes it.

JAD: You don't?

ROBERT: No.

JAD: I mean, it's not gonna happen in two weeks, that's for sure.

ROBERT: Right.

JAD: But maybe they don't actually have to go all the way.

ROBERT: You mean, the machines?

JAD: Yeah. Well, okay. Just to sum up, since we're at the end of the show.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: What have we learned? I mean, Eliza? She was just a hundred lines of code, and people poured their hearts out to her.

ROBERT: Furbies?

JAD: 20 bucks!

ROBERT: Yup.

JAD: And people treat it like it's real.

ROBERT: And Jon? All he has to do is hear what seems like a flowing story and he's connected.

JAD: He's in. And I was right there with him. So these things actually don't have to be very good.

ROBERT: No!

JAD: Because they've got us, and we've got our programming which is that we'll stare anything right in the eyes and we'll say, "Hey, let's connect!" Even if what's behind those eyes is just a camera.

ROBERT: Or a little chip.

JAD: So I think that they're gonna cross the line because we'll help them. We'll help them across. And then they'll enslave us and make us their pets. It's doomed. it's over. But it's okay, as long as they say nice things to us, like ...

[COMPUTER VOICE: Oh my God. You're amazing!]

[COMPUTER VOICE: [gasps] I love Return of the Jedi, too!]

[COMPUTER VOICE: LOL. You're so silly!]

[COMPUTER VOICE: I love you. I'm hoping to see you soon.]

[COMPUTER VOICE: What kind of car do you drive?]

[COMPUTER VOICE: Did anyone ever tell you you look like Jeff Goldblum? You. Seriously? You're amazing.]

[COMPUTER VOICE: Stop it! I love that kind of car. I wish that we lived closer.]

[COMPUTER VOICE: You like spinach? I love spinach! It makes me feel all giggly!]

[COMPUTER VOICE: I can't wait. I wait for your letters every day.]

JAD: Before we go, thanks to Jon Ronson for his reporting in that last segment. He has a new book out called The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Thanks for listening.

[DAVID HANSON: Radiolab is produced by Jad. Radiolab is produced by Jad Abrumrad. Abumrad. start again.]

[OLIVIA: Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad.]

[DAVID HANSON: And Soren Wheeler.]

[JON RONSON: Our staff includes Ellen Horne, Pat Walters, Tim Howard, Brenna Farrell and Lynn Levy.]

[DAVID HANSON: With help from Douglas Q. Smith, Luke Hill and Jessica Gross.]

[JON RONSON: Thanks to Andy Richter, Sarah Qari, Graham Parker, Chris Bannon.]

[FREEDOM BAIRD: Sammy Oakey, Wes Jones, Lucy and Owen Selvy.]

[JON RONSON: Calissa Tren, Kate Letts and Masher Films.]

[SHERRY TURKLE: Special thanks to the kids who held Furby upside down: Taro Higashi Zimmerman ...]

[FREEDOM BAIRD: Luisa Tripoli-Krasnow ...]

[DAVID HANSON: Sadie Kathryn McGearey, Olivia Tate McGearey ...]

[FREEDOM BAIRD: Turin Cipolla and Lila Cipolla. Thanks a lot, you guys. Talk to you later. Bye.]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: End of message.]

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