Beyond Human
Beyond Human
Transcript for Beyond Human (full episode)
Multiple Speakers: [00:00:00] It is 90.1 KZU Stanford.
State of the Human
Mischa Shoni: Ian Morris is a professor of history at Stanford.
Ian Morris: I started my career as an archeologist working mostly in ancient Greece.
Mischa Shoni: He says that a lot of human history can be explained by a pretty simple piece of technology. The plow.
Ian Morris: The plow gets invented multiple times around the world. What happens is that up to the end of the last ice age, about 15,000 years ago, everybody in the world is a hunter-gatherer.
But then end of the ice age world warms up and one consequence of that population starts to rise. People start working much harder to try to find the food they need. So people start moving toward farming and they all start eventually running into rather similar problems. Boy, this farming is really hard work.
And so people start thinking about, what can I do to increase the yield from the bit of land that I've got? My children are hungry, my family is hungry. What can I do? And so they start tinkering around. You are still basically hunters and gatherers, but you know that there's this one particular hillside where, um, wheat seems to grow really well.
And so you'll say, well, maybe let's try taking a few seeds from that hillside, plant them somewhere else, and make a point of, we'll keep going back there. We'll take a bucket of water with us every so often and pour a little water on this. We'll pick up a little bit of animal scat, or we're wondering about the landscape.
We'll try just sort of kneading that into the soil, see if it makes it grow better. Doing just a little bit more and a little bit more. You're just tinkering around all the time. Doing just a little bit more and a little bit more, and I'm gonna start you digging holes with my stick so the seeds grow better.
Just a little bit more and a little bit more, a little bit more and a little bit more. Doing just a little bit more, a little bit more, little bit more, and maybe quickly, maybe it's [00:02:00] gonna take generations, but you'll start to figure out what works and what doesn't. But if you go out with a stick, I mean you try it yourself, go out with a stick and start trying to turn the soil and plant seeds.
This is really hard work. And so, um, people are experimenting, finding, trying to find better ways to do this. And one of the ways they eventually come up with pretty much everywhere where it's possible is some kinda blade pulled by animal cattle, water buffalo. These are tend to be the best animals, much later on, horses become even better.
This greatly increases the yields for the amount of energy you put in plowing the, the payoff in the yields your crops, just fantastic.
Mischa Shoni: You're listening to State of the Human, the Radio Show of the Stanford Storytelling Project. I am Mischa Shoni. Today's show is called Beyond Human. For Professor Ian Morris, the plow is a perfect example of what happens when we humans try to push past the limits nature's put on us. With the plow, humans invented a new technology that changed the world. But we were changed in the process and not necessarily for the better.
Ian Morris: The plow was this great move in one of the biggest changes in, in toll of world history. What people find as they move more and more to toward plow agriculture is the most effective way to be a plow farmer involves a whole different way of running your entire life, really. And they start to find, boy, the, the, the jobs we're doing out in the fields now are getting heavier and heavier labor, more and more dependence on upper body strengths and sort of, kind of makes sense for, for men to do a lot of this work.
So people start moving towards saying, well, the, the outdoor work, the fields, that, that is man's work. That's what men should be doing. In addition, population is growing early farming women, [00:04:00] they think probably would have six or seven babies on average. And they increasingly are in charge of the domestic tasks of processing food, of weaving clothes, of minding small children.
And a whole new way of running life comes into the world because of this. And this is what on the whole, we nowadays call patriarchy. And when you look at the history of peasant societies or the anthropology of peasant societies, overwhelmingly, you find that these sorts of patriarchal values dominate completely massive gender inequalities.
Well, this is a really big historical question. Why is the peasant world like that? Is it that all peasant farmers for 5,000 plus years of history were just monsters? And of course, that's just a, that's a stupid explanation. They moved in this direction because that was what was most effective and worked best in a world of plow agriculture.
Once the industrial revolution began around 1800 and societies, beginning in northwest Europe, then spreading across the world, learned how to tap into the power of fossil fuels and use these to power their machines. Then these old economic social dynamics of farming society, they just go out of the window.
By 2000, very large parts of the world have rejected patriarchy, at least in theory, even if a lot of the old fashioned patriarchal attitudes still keep going.
In a way that the history of tool use ever since it began, it's been all about extending the capabilities of being a human. So in a sense it's always been about becoming more than human, but of course it has also often had this unintended, unanticipated side effect of feeding back into and changing what our humanity is all about.
This is something that's become way more clear in the last few decades as information technology has begun to ramp up so much. The tools we create, the machines we create [00:06:00] have stopped just being extensions of us. They're feeding back into us, back into us. They're feeding back into us. They're changing what we are.
And it is not a, a crazy science fiction prediction to suggest that a hundred years from now, these machines may, in many ways have displaced old fashioned human beings altogether.
The obvious analogy here is us ourselves. Fully modern humans probably show up between 50,000 and 150,000 years ago. By 20,000 years ago. Every other kind of human on the planet has gone extinct. We outcompete them. They, they can't find food with us around. They all go extinct. It's a very nasty story.
That's how we got to be us. And that I suspect is how we will stop being us as well. We are creating these machines that are extensions of us, just like we initially were extensions of the precursor kinds of humanity. Um, these machines, I think, very probably will go on to replace us. It's the same process as we've seen extinctions going back 3.8 billion years to the origin of life. Same old, same old. It just now, it works so much faster.
Charlie Mintz: That's utterly terrifying. That's fine. Terrifying.
Mischa Shoni: That story was produced by Charlie Mintz and featured music by Poddington Bear, wilted Woman, and Broke for Free.
This is State of the Human, the radio show of the Stanford Storytelling Project. I'm Misha Shoney. Today's show is beyond human. Going Beyond human can be risky. [00:08:00] Professor Ian Morris foresees a world where the machines we created to make life easier. They might one day replace us entirely. Replace us the same way that we homo sapiens replace the almost humans who came before us.
That's one vision of going beyond human. Today on our show, we will bring you four other visions, four stories of people looking beyond our human boundaries, exploring ways to be more than we are right now. As you might expect, pushing the envelope like this brings us to a question that seems simple, but is really actually very hard.
What makes us, us? In our first story, we meet a human who's so totally limited in one sense, but who's found a way to make his presence felt all over the world. Our second story is about two scientists who think that trying to be more than human is maybe the most human thing about us. In our third story, a Stanford professor helps discover ways that computers can be human and why embracing this fact can make us more human too.
In our fourth story, we've got a radio play for you. It's about the strawberry sized gap between humans and machines. Stay with us.
You're listening to State of the Human. Today's episode is Beyond Human. In our first story, we're going to meet a man who has gone far beyond what most humans are capable of. He's unable to walk, but he can fly.
Multiple Speakers: This is a story about Henry Evans. In a lot of ways, Henry's life is just like mine and yours. He lives with his wife Jane High, up in the hills of Los Altos, California. He has four kids, Steve, Nick, McKayla, and Mike. He [00:10:00] likes to crack jokes and play soccer, but Henry does these things differently for most of us to explain why his wife Jane tells a story. It will soon be clear why she's the one telling it.
Jane Evans: So what was life, life like before the episode? Mm-hmm. Busy. Yeah, it was wonderful.
Mischa Shoni: 15 years ago, Henry was the CFO of a successful startup in Silicon Valley. He and Jane had just bought their first home and Henry was fixing it up himself. He was handy. He built furniture, he gardened, skied, played every kind of sport. But one day everything changed.
Jane Evans: It was the night before. It was back to school night for the kids, and he was complaining about a headache. He went to dinner and he kept complaining about the headache. So i'm thinking, just, just take something for it. Well, he got up at three in the morning, went out here to the hot tub and you know, I never heard him get up.
And the next day he kept complaining about that headache. And I was like, Henry, why don't you just stay home and sleep? Okay? He said, no, I got a big day at work. So he insists on taking the kids to school.
And so on the way down, his speech started becoming slurred. And you have to imagine this is, we're 2000 feet up in Page Mill Road. And so, and it's a windy road, and, uh, the kids thought he was gonna drive off the ledge.
And Steven was saying, dad, you know, what is going on? And he kept saying, I'm sick. I'm sick. And so he, he, he gets him off at school and then turns around and comes back up Paige Mill Road and comes through the door. And I kind of see him grabbing the walls, walking back there. Mm-hmm. And I'm going, Henry, and he's saying, I just need to sleep.
And I'm like, no, you don't need to sleep. Yeah, you need to get in the car right now and go to the hospital.[00:12:00]
And he's very stubborn and, and I'm five three. He's six four. It's not like I can really move this man. Okay. Yeah. So I finally said to him, okay, Henry, remember when I told you I was so sure about marrying you that day? Okay, this is even more than that. Okay. You need to get in the car. And at that point, he was so dizzy that he could still walk and still use his arms, but he was disoriented.
And so I told him, Henry, this is how I did it. When I had migraines, I had to change diapers. Just focus about a foot in front of your fingers and just crawl. So I got him to crawl to the car and then got him to use his arm to lift himself, pull himself up into the car, and, um, drove him down to the doctor's office.
When they took one look at him, they said, you know, get him to the er right now. I,
Mischa Shoni: Henry had suffered a brainstem attack, which is similar to a stroke. When he woke up, he was completely paralyzed and unable to speak. Even today, his voice is limited to what you can hear in the background. But despite this physical condition, Henry's mind is intact. To communicate with the outside world, he and his family have developed a special tool, they call the board,
Jane Evans: NO. Okay, uh,
Multiple Speakers: CH The board is a 12 inch by 12 inch piece of clear plexiglass with all 26 letters and 10 digits stenciled on it. The letters are arranged in groups. A, B, C, DE, F, just like you would see on the tight pad of an old T nine phone in order to speak.
Henry needs a translator to hold up the board in front of him. He then stares at a specific group of letters until the translator can tell where he's looking.
The Board: I will CANN.
Mischa Shoni: Once this is done, the translator reads off each letter one at [00:14:00] a time. When Henry hears the right letter, he nods and the whole process begins again.
Using this method, he eventually spells out words and phrases.
The Board: SRTT.
Jane Evans: Okay. Chatter box,
wYU. Okay. UST. No, UR. Your PA, your part is over.
Multiple Speakers: At first, the board was the only way that Henry could communicate.
The Board: While on the one hand, the board keeps me from being a vegetable, it is also very tedious and drives everyone, including me, crazy. It's not easy use for the translator. My part is also paint taking and difficult, although I am used to it. Basically when I have no choice but to try to communicate with someone who is no good at the board, I stick to single short words when I talk at all. Communication at a higher level is impossible. Thus, when I am left alone with strangers, they treat me like a vegetable. For this reason, I am pretty dependent on my family.
Mischa Shoni: Later, Henry got another way to communicate. It's what you're hearing. Now. He can pre-program speech into a computer using a special kind of mouse controlled by a very slight head movement one by one. He types each letter. This lets him communicate on his own, but it has drawbacks too. Typing this way, it's very slow.
So Henry uses both methods. The computer, when he's alone or with someone who doesn't know him very well, the board when he's with his family.
The Board: TSO. So WHE, where R. Where can [00:16:00] U find a?
Jane Evans: Where can you find a quadriplegic
Mischa Shoni: where?
Jane Evans: WHWE, well, T-S-T-S-U. No, I'm sorry, Henry. Well, RI, right. Well, you left him.
Mischa Shoni: Except for Henry, that's not exactly the case because even though his body is limited, he can be present all over the globe at a lab in Brown University at the Amage in St. Petersburg, he does this using robots. Robots that roll, robots that fly. He controls them from his bed using head motions, and through them he can explore the world.
Jane Evans: IT it's, it's stuck. No, it's THE. It's the
CL closest thing to walking. Closest thing to walking for me.
Mischa Shoni: After his incident, Henry got a television interview about some of the exciting new work being done with robots. He contacted the researchers and together they created a project known as Robots for Humanity.
Now they're working together to create technology to expand the world of disabled individuals across the globe. Thanks to their work, Henry is able to shave himself or scratch an itch using robots. He's part Guinea pig, part spokesperson, and part innovator. As part of his work, Henry has flown drones with his head tracker, spoken to Congress and presented a TED talk.
But as he likes to say, all work and no fun makes for a dull [00:18:00] quadriplegic. He plays soccer too.
Wow. So that's at Brown University.
Jane Evans: So see, this is how it works. See, he's driving this. Oh my God. So he'll see where he's going. That's the foot of the robot. That way he won't bump into a person.
Mischa Shoni: He's controlling a robot across the country at a lab in Providence, Rhode Island.
The robot has a small head-mounted camera so we can see where he is going. Henry controls the robot with the same head tracker he uses to type. Moving around the lab, he bumps the ball with the foot of the robot. He shoots, he scores a goal.
This is the world we're living in. A world where someone like Henry is still bound on the one hand to old technologies like the board and to newer, but still frustrating technologies like the computer he uses for speech, but it's also a world where unheard of freedoms are on the horizon. It's a world where flying, rolling, talking robots will give humans in effect new bodies. Henry says he feels lucky to be leading us there.
The Board: I have no idea how long I will be able to do this. I really just hope to leave a legacy of technological exploration for the disabled.
Mischa Shoni: That story was produced by Eileen Williams and Miles Seaver. Eileen is a freshman at Stanford University. Miles is a senior and a producer for State of the Human.
That story featured music by Audio Ntic and broke for free. To learn more about Henry Evans and his work with Robots for Humanity. You can go to r four h.org. That's the letter R, the number four, and the letter h.org.[00:20:00]
Welcome back to State of the Human. I'm Mischa Shoni. The theme of our show today is Beyond Human. We're looking at what happens when we go beyond what nature gave us. Pretty much forever, we humans have had this funny habit of looking at ourselves and thinking, meh, we could do better. Our skin was soft, so we made armor.
Our eyes were weak, so we made telescopes. Then we started changing the body itself. Lasik eye surgery, pacemakers, cochlear implants, and grafted skin. Now we're at a new frontier. Scientists can change our DNA. Jack Dewey tells us the story of two scientists at this frontier.
Jack Dewey: If you ask Xander Honkala to introduce himself, he'll say this.
Xander Honkala: Uh, my name is Alexander Honkala. I am a dork from a long line of dorks. We're very proud,
Jack Dewey: but if things go right for Xander in the future, he'll introduce himself like this.
Xander Honkala: Uh, my name is Xander. I used be White and now I am Chrome
Jack Dewey: To understand how Xander will go from being white to Chrome and why he'd want to, you have to go back to the beginning.
Xander Honkala: A couple years ago, a very close family member was in the hospital, liver failure, and at the time I graduated in molecular biology and immunology, I thought I understood biology very well.
But going to visit this person in the hospital, um, someone I don't see very often that I've been very close to being bright yellow from liver failure and being so weak and powerless and having diabetes from trying to clear off the liver problems. And despite everything I knew about biology, medical biology, and how why this happened, I was powerless to fix it.
Jack Dewey: The doctors, they couldn't do much either beyond treating the symptoms,
Xander Honkala: they could do metabolic screens, they could see what was wrong with the liver, but they couldn't reach in and actually do anything to fix it. And this is crude.[00:22:00]
Jack Dewey: Many of us have felt disillusioned with science when a loved one is sick with something that doctors can't cure. But Xander is better equipped than most of us to do something about it. He had studied immunology and biology. He also had a taste for robotics. He got a chance to combine these pursuits when he met Andre.
Andre Watson: I am Andre Watson. Well, I studied biomedical engineering at RPI, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It's the place where email came from and, uh, well, the at sign,
Jack Dewey: Andre had some of the same ideas about medicine percolating in his mind.
Andre Watson: I had done a lot of literature research in pharmacology and neuroscience,
Jack Dewey: and he was on Xander's wavelength.
Andre Watson: It was like finally finding someone you could talk at your full nerd level at. So we kind of combined powers and formed this neuro immuno pharmaco nanotech thing.
Xander Honkala: So within about 45 seconds, we've found Ligandal.
Jack Dewey: Ligandal is a nanotechnology startup. Xandr and Andre's goal is to fix two problems with modern medicine.
The first problem, we don't have a way to deliver medicine so that it just affects one part of your body, like say your tumor.
Xander Honkala: Right now, if you have a cancer, you have a tumor. We car bomb your entire system and you suffer a lot of damage because it maybe kills the cancer. We hope it kills the cancer faster than you, but we're not sure. All we can do right now is put the toxin in your vein and hope it works how It does.
Jack Dewey: Xandr and Andre are trying to build delivery mechanisms for drugs. Xander calls them multi-stage rockets.
Xander Honkala: We're taking a toxin, we're putting it into a multi-stage rocket that's targeted to only your tumor. And of course, to get to your tumor, it's gotta go through your mouth or your vein.
It's gotta get to a lot of different places. So E, each stage, this missile sheds a stage of that rocket, and the last stage delivers the payload. That affects the change that we want to see happen in the cell, where it needs to happen and nowhere else. [00:24:00]
Jack Dewey: So the first part of Ligandal's plan is a new delivery mechanism for drugs.
But Xandr and Andre are making different drugs too. Right now, most drugs are mass produced as the price of gene sequencing rapidly falls. It's becoming cheaper to understand each person's illness down to their genome and to make genome editing machines that are specific to each person's needs.
Xander Honkala: We don't wanna deliver drugs. We deliver genomic cures so that if it's a genomic problem, it's permanently cured. One application.
Jack Dewey: In other words, medicine customized to your genes tailored like a good suit,
Andre Watson: and it will be something that you step into a clinic. And if you have prostate cancer or small cell lung cancer in the next five years, you'll be okay. More than likely,
Jack Dewey: Andre and Xandr are being very optimistic, but there's real science here that backs some of this up. A company in Boston has built something like Xandr and Andre's nano missiles. It delivers chemotherapy drugs. And other labs are figuring out how to edit human genomes. Xandr and Andre are hoping to combine these two developments and the results they're seeing in preliminary tests are looking really good, which means that the cures Xandr and Andre hope for are on their way.
But for Xandr and Andre Cures are just the beginning.
Xander Honkala: I'm not satisfied with just fixing to the point of making someone merely normal human, which is kind of fragile.
Jack Dewey: Xandr and Andre are talking about improvements, augmentations.
Xander Honkala: If we use our technology to cure your asthma, and you come out with the TAL lung volume of Olympic athletes, have they cure you or have you augmented you?
Jack Dewey: Here's where things get tricky because we like cures. Cures take us back to what's basically human. Hearing, seeing walking, [00:26:00] cures are democratic, but augmenting people at the level of genome that's taking us beyond human.
Andre Watson: When we bring up the subjects of human augmentation, a lot of people wi and immediately start imagining their limbs being chopped off and replaced with machines, and this will probably happen to be frank.
Jack Dewey: In a future like Xander and Andre, imagine people can do more than heal like superheroes. They can see in the dark, they can breathe underwater.
They can change their bodies so much, they don't even look like people anymore. We asked Xander and Andre the big question. At what point do augmented humans stop being humans?
Xander Honkala: If someone wants to have 18 arms and compound eyes, I don't see that as not them not wanting to be human. I see as wanting to be human differently than you are.
Jack Dewey: Xander thinks that it's not your body that defines your humanity. It's your mind, your personality. Therefore, if you have more ability to express yourself, in some ways, you're becoming more human.
Xander Honkala: Allowing people to augment themselves in accord with their own autonomy is not robbing them of their humanity. It's enabling their expression thereof.
Jack Dewey: Andre isn't as sure he halfway believes in the soul, but he's not quite a dualist. He sees the soul as being part of your biology.
Andre Watson: I, I do know that you could put, uh, an electrode on a certain part of your brain and you would lose pretty much any semblance of a soul or capacity to express yourself, but that doesn't mean that you don't have a soul.
Jack Dewey: So if you were to say, slowly replace the biological brain with nano machinery that emulates your brain perfectly, it's not clear to him what happens to [00:28:00] the soul or at what point if at any point the person stops being a person.
Andre Watson: And I, I personally have not come to an answer on this that, that I, I feel strongly as the right answer.
Jack Dewey: Ultimately, Xandr and Andre aren't sure whether augmented humans will really be beyond human.
Xander Honkala: I don't think we understand it well enough to say they'll be funnily different. We'd have to meet such a creature before we can decide whether or not they're still human.
Jack Dewey: But if things work out for Liganda, we'll be able to meet one of those creatures one day he'll say.
Andre Watson: My name is Andre. At the age of something, I got a glioblastoma, which used to be the most deadly brain tumor. We designed a customized nanotechnology that targeted the glioblastoma. It turned those cells into stem cells, and then we changed them into another cell type. That was quite fine. I now have a lot more neurons aside from that. I also got to glow in the dark tattoo. I can turn it on. When I think of the words that make me angry, there's a phrase, I don't want to say it, Xander.
Jack Dewey: He'll reach out and shake your hand with one of his many hands. Well,
Andre Watson: and my skin heal heals really fast. I'm kind of like wolverine. I jump and like, I, I don't have the claws yet. I, I really want to, I haven't figured out how to, how to get them to retract and not hurt like a lot. But anyway, I mean, we're working on it, but it's, it's good times.
Mischa Shoni: That story was produced by Rachel Hamburg and Jack Dewey. It included music by Christopher Bjork, Bjork's, Paddington Bear, and Rural Music.
Welcome back to State of the Human. Today's show is called Beyond Human. We're looking at what changes when we change what nature's given us. We've heard how technology can push us further and further out into the boundary of what is human. We've asked if we can change ourselves [00:30:00] so much that we are no longer human.
Our next story takes a different approach. It suggests that one of our most advanced technologies, the computer, can offer new ways to understand what's essentially human. And the man who helped us realize that was one of the most human humans you could ever meet.
BJ Fogg: When I was looking at doctoral programs back in the early nineties, decided to apply here to Stanford and wow, I got in,
Mischa Shoni: this is BJ Fog, he's a technology consultant and he directs the persuasive tech lab at Stanford University.
BJ Fogg: And after they admitted me and I was still deciding, I got a phone call from this guy named Cliff Nass, but I remember Cliff talking to me and then also talking to, and this is super high voice to this baby saying, yay, Matthew cooing over this baby Matthew, which was really odd. And I got off the phone and I was like, wow, that was really different.
But it also sort of put me at ease a little bit about, um. Okay. This'll be a kind of a human kind of place to be.
Mischa Shoni: Professor Clifford Nass was a luminary of Stanford campus. He was a beloved mentor to his students and a trusted advisor to his colleagues. Companies like Microsoft, Toyota and BMW ask him to help make their products better. His 2009 research about the dangers of multitasking earned him headlines in the New York Times, and as famous as he was for his work, he was almost as famous for his goofy, giddy, infectious personality.
Ed Mayback: My name is Ed Mayback. I'm the director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. Cliff was one of my professors in the doctoral program at at Stanford. My hypothesis about the world we live in today is that Cliff was the first case of Nerd Chic. He was the guy who showed the rest of the world that being a nerd is really [00:32:00] super cool.
Mischa Shoni: As you may know, last year after a long hike in the mountains, Clifford Nass suffered a heart attack and collapsed. At the age of 55, he passed away.
Lori Mason: He was always laughing. He was always delighted by something somebody said.
Mischa Shoni: This is Lori Mason. She was a doctoral student in Stanford's communication department.
Lori Mason: He was always waving his arms and talking so fast he would spit. He could just see something happen on the street corner and think about what his why had it caught his eye and choose from all the things to distill down to a research study and then so generously invite in the grad students and give them real jobs and real credit.
Yeah. There all, you know, there aren't that many people that I've met that I, I would be able to say these things about. He was very unusual and um, was very sorry to hear he had gone.
Mischa Shoni: Professor Clifford Nass has passed on, but his legacy endures. He helps transform our understanding of what happens when we use technologies like computers or cell phones. And his research is changing our world in some surprising, amazing, and slightly unsettling ways. Senior producer Charlie Mintz tells the story.
Charlie Mintz: Louise is a few inches tall and she lives on an iPad. She's a talking animated virtual nurse.
Chris Corio: Louise is technically termed an embodied conversational agent,
Charlie Mintz: and you wouldn't [00:34:00] expect her to be a good nurse, but she is.
Chris Corio: Her job is to communicate with a patient in the hospital and explain various aspects of their care when they leave and they go home.
Charlie Mintz: That's Chris Corio. He's the CEO of Engineered Care, the company that sells Luis. She's in about 10 hospitals right now. Stanford's VA Hospital recently purchased the software, and Chris comes by every now and then to see how his virtual nurse is doing.
Chris Corio: So Cheryl, let's look at his latest version of Louise.
Charlie Mintz: Chris whips out an iPad, touches a button, and there she is. There's wearing a white lab coat. She has dark hair, coffee card skin. Luis explains that I have pneumonia
Louise: infection in your lungs,
Charlie Mintz: and she's going to tell me how to get better.
Louise: Well, one thing I would like to talk with you about is how you can help your lungs recover with exercise.
Charlie Mintz: On the right hand side of the screen are buttons I can tap to give different responses. I can say, okay, or I don't understand. I tap one that says I'm too sick.
Louise: I'm sorry you're not feeling well. But actually there are several things that I think you will be able to do to exercise your lungs and help get better.
Charlie Mintz: Louise turns down her eyebrows in a show of concern. And here this moment, this is why I say Louis shouldn't work because most of what she does is pretty simple. She gives pre-programmed answers to a variety of statements and questions. Fine, but this, this saying, sorry, this making a face, this is really strange. This has nothing to do with giving information. This is giving empathy. This is weirdly human.
Chris Corio: I think it's sort of a interesting, especially if you look back 15 years, you would've had just the very basics of human characters being able to be on screen. And now you can have almost an entirely photorealistic experience.
I mean, if you look at a Pixar movie or things like that, they're amazingly close to real. Human beings at this point sort of just accept the fact [00:36:00] that they're very close, but they're not. The more we interact with software and the more it provides value to us, you sort of look beyond the fact they're not human.
Charlie Mintz: It shouldn't feel creeped out by the fact that she's a robot.
Chris Corio: You're gonna see more and more so
Charlie Mintz: Chris told me that researchers studying how patients react to Louise, they found something surprising, patients preferred her to real nurses. And, and maybe this all feels inevitable, this transition we're making as computers get more and more personal in a world where we can talk, not just with our phones, but to them, maybe a sympathetic virtual nurse doesn't seem like such a leap.
But even if Louise feels normal, just beneath the surface, some very strange things are happening. And to understand what deep, weird, and weirdly human forces are in motion, you need to hear a story about Professor Clifford Nass.
Shyam Sundar: Hello? Yes. Alright. My name is Shyam Sundar I am a distinguished professor of communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory at the College of Communications at Penn State University.
Charlie Mintz: Sham Sundar was a graduate student who worked with Professor Cliff Nass in the early nineties. Back then, only about one in 10 households even owned a computer. And the main way of thinking about them was as tools.
Primarily the concern was how to get computers to do your work. In those days, the idea of computers having effects on user psychology was rather new. Even the idea of personal computers was still taking off. So this is how things were around the time professor Nas came to Stanford in 1986. He'd studied sociology, but came to Stanford wanting to study how people responded to media objects like computers. [00:38:00] Fortunately, he landed in an office right next to a professor who'd been thinking along the same lines.
His name
Byron Reeves: was Byron Reeves. I'm a professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University.
Charlie Mintz: So you and Cliff became pretty, pretty close. How did that begin? You said you had offices next door to each other.
Byron Reeves: It was certainly an influence of architecture. I mean, we were on the same floor. I mean, we weren't really similar people.
Charlie Mintz: In personality? No. Professor Reeves was a bit older, more reserved than the exuberant Nass, but they shared an interest in how people responded to things on screens.
Byron Reeves: I, I remember there was one ad for sausage for Byron that meant television screens, and there was a sausage roll on a table, and then the roll of sausage starts rolling down the table and getting larger.
Charlie Mintz: As a professor at the University of Wisconsin, he'd studied how people's brains treat advertisements like their real life.
Byron Reeves: And I'm looking at brain activation getting substantially higher as the sausage, it comes closer and closer to the face of the viewer, and I thought this is incredible that, you know, of course the sausage isn't gonna come out of the screen and you know, hit you in the face, but that's what your old brain thought was gonna happen.
Charlie Mintz: When it comes to media, we humans have a tendency to confuse images for the real thing. At least deep in our unconscious brains, the image of a giant sausage rolling toward us getting closer and closer at a certain level, our brain treats that as an actual giant sausage coming closer and closer, and that's understandably terrifying. This fact helps explain why scary movies like Jaws or Alien are so scary.
Byron Reeves: Old visual systems, auditory systems, uh, approach avoidance systems, all the things that really kept the genes going from generation to generation. All of these responses that people were having were old [00:40:00] brain responses.
Charlie Mintz: Professors, Nass and Reeves talked a lot about these quirky ways human brains got all confused by new technologies. And Professor Nas got to wondering about another kind of technology, computers. Did humans make the same kind of mistakes when they use computers? Was there a computer equivalent to thinking about the giant sausage rolling towards us? Or was there an even deeper way the computers fooled us? Edward Maybach was a graduate student at the time, and he remembers how Professor Nass put his new idea,
Ed Mayback: Hey Ed, I got this notion that people might think about computers in much the same way they think about people. Where would such an idea come from? But it turned out to be truly prophetic.
Charlie Mintz: It seems like an incredibly abstract question, but Professors Nass and Reeves found a way to test it. They went to the library and took out books of research and social psychology. Social psychologists had studied human interaction in tons of dimensions. They had asked questions like, do people prefer similar personalities or different personalities?
What kinds of unconscious rules did people follow in conversation? These were the kinds of questions that professors Nas and Reeves began applying to human computer interactions.
Byron Reeves: So we go to the psychological literature that was about humans, humans cross out, one of the humans, put in some form of media and then go to town.
Professor Cliff Nass: Give you an example of how strongly people treat computers like people. Consider if I asked you how do you like my suit today?
Charlie Mintz: This is a speech professor Nas gave a few years ago explaining one of his earliest experiments.
Professor Cliff Nass: Fabulous. It's wonderful. 'cause you know it's important to be polite, you know that if you said you didn't like it, it would hurt my feelings.
Charlie Mintz: It asked whether people would be polite to computers.
Professor Cliff Nass: Would you worry [00:42:00] about hurting a computer's feelings? Let's find out.
Charlie Mintz: Here's how the experiment worked. Professors Nas and Reeves had test subjects come in and use a computer. Then those subjects evaluated the computer they just used, but one group of people did their evaluations with pencil and paper.
Another did their evaluations on a different computer than the one they'd used, and the third group did their evaluations on the same computer they had just used.
Professor Cliff Nass: What happened? Well, they turned out that when people answered on the computer they worked with, they gave significantly more positive responses than they did when they answered on paper and pencil.
Charlie Mintz: In other words,
Professor Cliff Nass: people were polite to a computer. Who were these ludicrous people who don't understand? They were graduate students in computer science at Stanford, so something very puzzling happened there. We then asked them, would you be polite to a computer and to a person, they insisted, absolutely not only an idiot would say nicer things to a computer that asked about itself than they would to a different computer across the room. No one would be that foolish.
Charlie Mintz: Yet, that's exactly what people did.
Byron Reeves: They did
In experiment after experiment and
then we'd laugh and think, well that was pretty funny. And then, you know, 50 studies later, we, uh, published a book.
Charlie Mintz: The book called The Media Equation Detailed, numerous ways that people treated computers like people, they trusted them, they felt good when they got compliments from them.[00:44:00]
BJ Fogg: It's just, uh, funny to think that, you know, the messages are fake.
Charlie Mintz: BJ Fog helped run some of their experiments. In one subjects received compliments from computers.
BJ Fogg: They're popping up from the computer, but you still have these positive responses to it and you can't help but have those responses 'cause they're social.
It's built into us, we're vulnerable.
Charlie Mintz: In another experiment, professor Nass had test subjects, wear a green armband and then work on a problem using a green computer in surveys afterwards, people said they liked those computers more, more than the people who'd used computers that were a different color from their own armband.
In other words, they felt like the computer was their teammate. For professors, Nass and Reeves, this was more proof that people treated computers like people.
Byron Reeves: Cliff was a strong advocate that that's not a flaw. The fact that we respond socially that this is not a flaw, and it is not that you're crazy, uh, I don't think he said this, but I think he would say it, that we should celebrate that reaction. That that's like, awesome. You know, you're, you're a healthy well human if that's your response, and if you're not, then you should be a little worried.
Charlie Mintz: In the end, professor byron Reeves and Professor Cliff Nass, they learned more about people than they did about technology. It turns out that it doesn't really take that much for us to think of a computer as a human.
Even back when a computer was about as human as a traffic light, people were still treating them kind of like people. So, sure. Louise,
Louise: I'm sorry you're not feeling well.
Charlie Mintz: She's an expression of how human technology can be.
Louise: But actually there are several things that I think you will be able to do to help get better.
Charlie Mintz: But she's also an expression of how inescapably human we are when we humans make something. [00:46:00] We make it human.
Mischa Shoni: Charlie Mintz is a producer for State of the Human, the story featured music by Broke for free, Poddington Bear, second Mouse, and Meone. Thanks to everyone who shared memories of Professor Clifford Nass. Byron Reeves, sham Sundar, Lori Mason, BJ Fog, Glenn Lesner, Edward Maybach, Leila Takayama, Ben Deten, Terry Winograd, Tandy Trower, and Michael Slater.
To learn more about Luis, the virtual nurse, you can visit engineered care.com.
Welcome back to State of the Human Today's show, beyond Human. We've been looking at humans who ventured out beyond their built-in limits. Our next story is a little different. It's not about a human trying to go beyond human, but a robot trying to go beyond robot. It's called the Simulation Deck. It was produced by Stanford freshmen, Jackson Roach.
Robot: It is time to wake up Mr. Williams.
Jackson Roach: How many times I gotta tell you to call me Jeff?
Robot: I apologize, Jeff. My orders were to address my crew mates formally. I will prepare your breakfast. How would you like your eggs this morning?
Jackson Roach: The usual.[00:48:00]
Robot: Is everything all right, Jeff?
Jackson Roach: Fine. Just feels weird every time I move up or down a deck level.
Robot: That is very normal experienced way changes in relation to distance from the hub of the station's centrifugal rotation and,
Jackson Roach: yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. They, they, they told me all that, how long before I get used to it
Robot: Most become acclimated within their first week in orbit. Your breakfast is ready.
Jackson Roach: Thanks, george.
Are you just gonna stand there?
Robot: Is there a task you wished me to perform, Jeff?
Jackson Roach: Uh, no. No. Just do you have to stare at me like that?
Robot: You may reattach the panel now. Jeff simulation Deck Repair complete.
Jackson Roach: All righty. Now what?
Robot: You are free to use the simulation deck whenever you wish.
Jackson Roach: What does it do?
Robot: The simulation deck produces rudimentary simulations of environments and situations that can be found on earth.
Jackson Roach: What do you mean?
Robot: I will show you[00:50:00]
Jackson Roach: whoa, what is it for?
Robot: The simulation deck is designed to maintain the psychological wellbeing of human crew members.
Jackson Roach: Oh.
Robot: Hello, Jeff.
Jackson Roach: Hey, George.
Robot: Do you need something?
Jackson Roach: No, I'm, I'm, I'm All right. Where'd that come from?[00:52:00]
Robot: Ms. Wallace, Sarah left this violin hereafter her resonance on the station.
Jackson Roach: Did she teach you how to play it?
Robot: No. I learned by listening and watching. Is something funny?
Jackson Roach: No. No, not really. It's just, just a bizarre sight. You floating there upside down by the window. Know a robot playing the violin pretty well too. Who would've thought? And the whole earth right there behind you like an audience.
Robot: I am not upside down. You are.
Jackson Roach: Oh, I guess you're right. Ceiling looks like the floor where I am, weightlessness is a tricky thing for us humans to really comprehend, I guess.
Robot: Apparently.
Jackson Roach: What was Sarah like? Was she nice?
Robot: She left the violin here.
Jackson Roach: Yeah, quite a view. It'd be easy to sit here forever watching it all turn down there.
Robot: Easy.
Jackson Roach: How's it look out there, George?
Robot: Moving towards leak tight
Jackson Roach: adjusting cameras. There you are. I can see you just fine.
Robot: I have arrived at the leak tight beginning patch.
Jackson Roach: All righty. I'll be right here if you need anything.
Robot: May I ask you a question? Jeff?
Jackson Roach: Is, is something wrong? Do you need assistance from the arm?
Robot: No, just a question.
Jackson Roach: Oh, okay. Uh, sure. George. Shoot.
Robot: Have you ever even a strawberry? Jeff,
Jackson Roach: what?
Robot: A strawberry
Jackson Roach: heard you. Why are you asking me about strawberries?
Robot: I am curious. I once saw a person eating [00:54:00] a strawberry in one of the simulations.
Jackson Roach: You used a simulation deck?
Robot: Yes. Sometimes,
Jackson Roach: of course, I've eaten a strawberry before.
Robot: What did it taste like?
Jackson Roach: Oh, you know, just like a strawberry. Just like a strawberry Should.
Robot: What should a strawberry taste like, Jeff?
Jackson Roach: I don't know. Sweet. I guess
Robot: what is sweet? Like Jeff,
Jackson Roach: you know, like, like sugar candy and ice cream and stuff. Things like that are sweet.
Robot: You miss understand my question. I know about the group of foods that are called sweet.
I would like to know what it feels like to taste something sweet.
Jackson Roach: Oh, uh, well, that's hard to say. I guess it's nice. It's, it's a good feeling, uh, sort of cold without being actually cold. Maybe. Maybe, uh, soft, happy, I guess, makes your tongue get all, um, surprised or something like when you, like when you run your hand under a hot water and it almost hurts, but, but, but then it feels good and you keep it there.
Like, I don't really know what I'm saying. I don't know why I'm telling you this, George. Sometimes I forget. I don't know. It's not like you could understand what feelings like that are like anyway.
Robot: Why?
Jackson Roach: You're a machine.
Robot: Yes, I am.
Jackson Roach: So you can't feel like I can. You don't need to.
Robot: Why not?
Jackson Roach: Well, machines are built to work. You're just silicon and electricity in a metal box.
Robot: Are you not just meat and electricity in a carbon box?
Jackson Roach: Yeah, but well, it's just, you don't, human beings can be special. [00:56:00] We have the opportunity to be more than what we're made of.
Robot: How?
Jackson Roach: I don't really know, George. Somehow that's what religion and philosophy and art are for.
Robot: I can't play the violin.
Jackson Roach: Yes. But the music you're playing doesn't have any meaning. Meaning you can't tell the difference between Vivaldi playing the violin and me playing the violin.
Robot: Oh, leak patched.
Jackson Roach: George. George. George. Where are you?
Oh god. Jeez George. Good. The at me.
George George.
George George, how? How do I shut off the water, George?
Robot: The rain is very beautiful little. This is a strawberry. This is with [00:58:00] a strawberry taste.
Like eggs morning Jeff.
Upside down.
Easy. Easy. Quite a view. Born. Born, born by listening and watching.
It is time to wake up.
Jackson Roach: Oh God. George
Robot: George.
Mischa Shoni: This week's show is produced by Charlie Mintz, Rachel Hamburg, Josh Hoyt, will Rogers, Eileen Williams, Sernoski, Jack Dewey, and Jackson Roach with help from Jonah Willinhganz. Natasha Ruck. Christy Hartman. Nina Fouchee, Josh Hoyt, and Miles Seaver, thanks to the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and to Bruce Braden for his generous financial supports.
To learn more about the Stanford Storytelling Project, you can go to [01:00:00] storytelling.stanford.edu.