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)
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)