Learn about interacting with robots that talk to themselves; “mad honey,” a rare, dangerous hallucinogen; and “alief.” Robots that talk to themselves might be easier to interact with by Grant Currin Pepper the humanoid and programmable robot | SoftBank Robotics. (2021). Softbankrobotics.com. https://www.softbankrobotics.com/emea/en/pepper Pipitone, A., & Chella, A. (2021). What robots want? Hearing the inner voice of a robot. IScience, 102371. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102371 Pepper the robot talks to itself to improve its interactions with people. (2021). ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210421124654.htm "Mad honey" is a weird, rare, dangerous hallucinogen used as medicine around the Black Sea by Steffie Drucker Johnson, S. (2021, April 23). “Mad honey”: The rare hallucinogen from the mountains of Nepal. Big Think; Big Think. https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/mad-honey The Hallucinogenic Honey of Nepal and Turkey. (2017, November 12). Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/mad-honey-red-hallucinogen Hess, P. (2017, July 17). Mad Honey: What to know before eating hallucinogenic honey from Nepal. Inverse; Inverse. https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/33974-mad-honey-nepal-rhododendron-grayanotoxin-hallucinogenic Jansen, S. A., Kleerekooper, I., Hofman, Z. L. M., Kappen, I. F. P. M., Stary-Weinzinger, A., & van der Heyden, M. A. G. (2012). Grayanotoxin Poisoning: “Mad Honey Disease” and Beyond. Cardiovascular Toxicology, 12(3), 208–215. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12012-012-9162-2 Alief Is When You Act In Opposition To Your True Beliefs by Ashley Hamer Gendler, T. S. (2008). Alief in action (and reaction). Mind & Language, 23(5), 552-585. http://www.errol-lord.com/uploads/1/8/6/6/18669048/gendler-aliefinaction.pdf Bloom, P. (2010, May 30). The Pleasures of Imagination. The Chronicle of Higher Education; The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-pleasures-of-imagination/ Kawakami, K., Dovidio, J. F., Moll, J., Hermsen, S., & Russin, A. (2000). Just say no (to stereotyping): effects of training in the negation of stereotypic associations on stereotype activation. Journal of personality and social psychology, 78(5), 871. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sander-Hermsen-2/publication/12497209_Just_Say_No_to_Stereotyping_Effects_of_Training_in_the_Negation_of_Stereotypic_Associations_on_Stereotype_Activation/links/5602972108ae849b3c0e11f1/Just-Say-No-to-Stereotyping-Effects-of-Training-in-the-Negation-of-Stereotypic-Associations-on-Stereotype-Activation.pdf Blair, I. V. (2002). The Malleability of Automatic Stereotypes and Prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6(3), 242–261. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0603_8 Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free!
Learn about interacting with robots that talk to themselves; “mad honey,” a rare, dangerous hallucinogen; and “alief.”
Robots that talk to themselves might be easier to interact with by Grant Currin
"Mad honey" is a weird, rare, dangerous hallucinogen used as medicine around the Black Sea by Steffie Drucker
Alief Is When You Act In Opposition To Your True Beliefs by Ashley Hamer
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free!
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/a-robot-that-talks-to-itself-might-be-easier-to-interact-with
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why robots that talk to themselves might be easier to interact with; a weird, rare, dangerous hallucinogen known as mad honey; and why sometimes you react in a way that’s in opposition to your true beliefs.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa can be helpful. But they can also be really, really frustrating when they do things that don’t make any sense. Researchers in Italy have come up with a solution. It’s not a smarter robot — it’s a robot that thinks out loud.
“It” — by the way — is named Pepper. You might have seen Pepper before, maybe as a greeter or a robot assistant at a fancy storefront. It’s a friendly looking humanoid robot with big eyes and a tiny mouth like an anime character and a slender, all-white body. It also has an open-source platform, which makes it handy for research like this.
What’s different about this version of Pepper’s programming is that the robot speaks a sort of inner monologue while it’s trying to figure out what to do. In one experiment, researchers had Pepper work with a human to set a table. Pepper was taught where everything was supposed to go, and it knew that the napkin was supposed to go on the plate. But in the experiment, its human companion told the robot to put the napkin on the table instead.
That’s a big conundrum for a robot! Pepper responded by talking through the problem out loud. We recruited a high-tech robot to simulate what this might have sounded like:
“I have to place napkin on the table. What does the etiquette require? The napkin has to stay on the plate. It contravenes etiquette. The position has to be on plate and not table. Maybe he is wrong? I think he maybe got confused. I want to be sure and I will ask him again.”
It might seem weird to hear a robot’s inner monologue, but it’s a creative solution to the dilemma of human-robot relations. It’s basically bringing humans into the machine’s mind. Now, this isn’t exactly how robots think: the researchers had to write extra code so Pepper would produce this text. In reality, computers zip through programs and find contradictions way faster than they can explain them.
But it helps to clue the human into problems that are usually invisible. Pepper doesn’t freeze, flash an error message, or ignore important information when a problem comes up. Instead, the robot brings the human along with it by using language that a non-programmer can understand.
That approach would come in handy for all kinds of computers. Think navigation apps, Roombas, and even robots helping with surgical operations. If only human thoughts were so easy to comprehend.
Our writer, Steffie Drucker, went down the rabbit hole researching this next story: Beekeepers around the Black Sea risk their lives to harvest hallucinogenic honey. Seems like the perfect accompaniment for the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
It really is known as “mad honey,” but there’s no mistaking it for the golden goo you find on grocery store shelves. Mad honey is redder and has a bitter taste. Oh, and it gets you high.
This special nectar comes from the world’s largest honeybees, Apis dorsata laboriosa [AP-piss dor-SAH-tah luh-BORE-ee-OH-sah], high in the mountains of Turkey and Nepal. Honey harvesters have to climb up the side of a mountain and risk being stung by hundreds of bees to collect the nectar from their cliff-side hives. Mad honey is also, therefore, mad expensive. A whole kilo, or a little more than 2 pounds, can go for as much as $360.
Just as it’s dangerous to gather, it can be dangerous to ingest. The nectar’s psychedelic effect comes from the rhododendron flowers the bees feed on. The plants contain a neurotoxic compound called grayanotoxin that throws off the chemistry of the brain. Small doses cause dizziness and produce a euphoric feeling. But taking too much will cause someone to projectile vomit, pass out, and Winnie-the-Pooh their pants. Mad honey can even kill by causing a dangerous drop in blood pressure or heart rate, though honey-induced deaths are extremely rare.
The honey has practical purposes besides getting people buzzed. Ancient Turkish and Persian armies set literal honey traps for their enemies, who were much easier to defeat in their intoxicated state. Off the battlefield, it’s long been touted as a treatment for ailments like arthritis, diabetes, and hypertension. It’s also said to improve sexual performance and correct erectile dysfunction. That explains why a 2018 report found that middle-aged men were most likely to suffer from honey poisoning.
This special syrup will ensure you have a very merry unbirthday. But if you’re just looking to soothe a sore throat, best to stick to the regular stuff.
People do all sorts of irrational things without realizing it: If you’ve ever yelled at the TV screen, cowered on an otherwise sturdy glass walkway, or refused to eat a dessert because it was shaped like an insect, you’re in the club. These reactions are all examples of a little-known principle called alief: a reaction that contradicts a belief.
Alief happens in all sorts of ways. Most familiar may be on the big screen: it’s that feeling of dread at the climax of a movie you've seen a million times, or the quivering lip you get when a fictional character dies. You know it's not real, but your emotions don't care. The same goes for seemingly risky situations, like looking over the side of a cliff. There's hardly any danger, but you might still feel your stomach churn. Superstitious behavior works the same way. You know that nothing really happens when you knock on wood, but doing it makes you feel better, so you do it anyway.
Most of the time, alief is harmless, or even pleasurable. Sometimes, though, the knee-jerk reaction of alief works against us. Most insidious is in cases of racial prejudice, when a person who may even be an avowed anti-racist behaves in racist ways without realizing it. Studies show that white people who have just been shown images of black faces tend to be more quick to judge an ambiguous image as a gun, for example. And brain scans of both black and white Americans show more activity in the threat-centric amygdala when they're shown images of people of a different race.
The truth is that as much as we believe something, our unconscious reactions can go in a different direction. Luckily, there's a way to fight this tendency. One study found that people asked to press a "NO" button every time they saw a stereotypical image and "YES" when they saw an image that broke the stereotype became much faster at negating stereotypes. Another study found that people who were asked to picture a non-stereotypical person in their mind ended up being worse at stereotyping later on. That means that seeking examples of people who don't fit bigoted stereotypes — both on the individual level and in media — may have a big impact in the fight against the darker side of alief.
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Grant Currin and Steffie Drucker.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer, who was also a writer on today’s episode.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: “I have to listen to Curiosity Daily. What does the etiquette require? I must listen to a new episode. It contravenes etiquette. I listened to today’s episode but cannot listen again because it is no longer a new episode.” Hey robot! Maybe you must join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. “Beep beep boop! Confirmed! No disassemble!”
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!