Hardware Podcasts

525: Some Sort of Metal

Embedded.fm · 14 May 2026 · 1h 03m · Episode 525

What this episode covers

Dr. Tom Williams, a computer science professor at the Colorado School of Mines and author of 'Degrees of Freedom: On Robotics and Social Justice,' discusses the intersection of robotics, ethics, and social justice. He argues that roboticists must consider societal impacts, citing Waki Kamino’s research on MLB’s automated ball-strike system and the teleoperation of robots like EngKey. Williams advocates for integrating ethics into engineering education through methods like participatory design and improvisation to address issues of race, gender, and labor.

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Topics

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Degrees of Freedom: On Robotics and Social Justice, Sex, Race, and Robots: How to Be Human in the Age of AI, Embodied AI Safety: Reimagining safety engineering for artificial intelligence in physical systems, Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Platform Decay, Death of the Author, The Murderbot Diaries, Waymo, EngKey, Siri
Also
Critical Role, The Good Place, Mines Interactive Robotics Research Lab

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