Interview with Ben Fajzullin, news anchor, Deutsche Welle Television, Berlin (15 April 2025).
I was asked to comment on Japan’s rapidly shrinking population and prospects of immigration.
Japan Society of New York, invited lecture, Can Robots Fix Japan’s Demographic Dilemma?, 19 October, 2024 (video)
University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Studies, Tokyo College Webinar: 50 Ways to Kill a Robot, 11/2024 (video)
Interview with Brent Goff, “The Day,” Deutsche Welle Television, Berlin (27 March 2024)
On very short notice, I was asked to talk about “how Japan deals with its birth rate hitting a record low.” The short segment followed the harrowing news of the Baltimore bridge collapse and Russian missile strikes in Ukraine. I think the segment may have been imagined by DW as a partly humorous topic. I aimed to correct the misconceptions about robots in Japan (especially the very small and mostly defunct minority of humanoids ). Humanoids are expensive and difficult to build; they are not end products but platforms for spinoff industries, increasingly security systems, surveillance devices and weapons (like drones, etc.). The vast majority of robots are industrial ones in factories; those in homes, offices, assisted living are mostly rolling tablets, mobility devices, and appliances.
University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Studies, Tokyo College Webinar: “Securitainment”: Embodied AI, Entertainment, and Surveillance, 11/2023 (video)
Emory University Lecture for Emerging Technologies and the Future of the Humanities: Emotional Robots and Digital Hormones: Japanese Perspectives on Technology, Religion, and Spirituality, 3/2023 (video)
University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Studies, Tokyo College Webinar: Affective Robotics: Designing and Programming Gender in Humanoid Robots. Perspectives from Japan, 2/2023 (video)
University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Studies, Tokyo College Webinar: Revolutionary Triangulations: Commentary on Pierre Serna’s ‘Mary Wollstonecraft: An English Woman Observing and Writing the History of the French Revolution’, 2/2023 (video)
Tempura (French Journal) interview, 12/2022 (pdf)
Business Insider interview, 5/2022 (pdf)
Cornell University Lecture, Robo-Sexism: Gendering AI & Robots in Japan and the USA, 4/2022 (video)
Camp Anthropology interview on Robo Sapiens Japanicus (2018) with Daniel White, 4/2019
Virginia Tech keynote (video), gendering technology, 9/2014 (video)
Canadian TVO “The Agenda” interview on robots, 12/2010 (video)
Theory, Culture & Society interview on robo-sexism, 9/2010 (pdf)
BBC 4 “Thinking Aloud” Interview on robot gender, 8/2010 (video)