We don’t have anything anywhere near as good as an insect, so I’m not afraid of superintelligence showing up anytime soon.
CHAIRMAN, RETHINK ROBOTICS
Rodney Brooks is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost roboticists. Rodney co-founded iRobot Corporation, an industry leader in both consumer robotics (primarily the Roomba vacuum cleaner) and military robots, such as those used to defuse bombs in the Iraq war (iRobot divested its military robotics division in 2016). In 2008, Rodney co-founded a new company, Rethink Robotics, focused on building flexible, collaborative manufacturing robots that can safely work alongside human workers.
MARTIN FORD: While at MIT, you started the iRobot company, which is now one of the world’s biggest distributors of commercial robots. How did that come about?
RODNEY BROOKS: I started iRobot back in 1990 with Colin Angle and Helen Greiner. At iRobot we had a run of 14 failed business models and didn’t get a successful one...