The Life Scientific: Helen Hastie
Discovery
BBC
4.3 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 June 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What if robots of the future weren’t just clever machines, performing tasks in isolation, but trusted teammates you could have a chat with? That could respond naturally to conversational cues and even explain their work? Making this relationship a reality is a focus for Helen Hastie, Professor of Human-Robot Interaction and Head of the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Helen’s career has taken her from developing early dialogue systems - the ancestors of today’s generative AI - to working on sophisticated bots that can serve coffee with a side of small-talk, teach struggling kids with empathy, or provide calm and confident decisions as triage nurses. She’s also driven some of the UK’s flagship robotics initiatives, including as co-lead of the National Robotarium. Talking to Professor Jim Al-Khalili - who reveals he was once told off for rudeness by an early chatbot - Helen explains her hopes for useful, reliable and ultimately trustworthy robots; machines that aren’t just in our world but a welcome part of it.
Transcript
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| 0:07.5 | From that crazy viral video to bizarre trends that are taking over our social feeds, |
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| 0:18.0 | I'm BBC correspondent, Mariana Spring. |
| 0:20.2 | And I'm investigative reporter Matt Shea. |
| 0:22.0 | Every week we look at the stories spilling out from our screens and into real life. |
| 0:26.0 | To work out what's actually real. |
| 0:27.9 | And what's not. |
| 0:29.2 | Top comment. |
| 0:30.4 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.7 | Hello, let's start with a quick test. |
| 0:36.9 | If I ask you to cunder up an image of a useful and reliable robot helper, what springs to mind? |
| 0:44.4 | Some of you might be thinking of those industrial robotic arms used in car assembly lines, or perhaps an explosive ordnance bot, the remote-controlled devices used by bomb disposal teams. |
| 0:56.3 | Others might be focusing on fictional robots, R2D2 from Star Wars perhaps, not just a tool, |
| 1:02.5 | but a machine that can actually interact with humans, one that is communicative, responsive, |
| 1:08.4 | and even trustworthy. In fact, those sorts of relationships are the focus |
| 1:12.4 | for today's guest. Helen Hasty is a professor of human robot interaction and head of the |
| 1:18.0 | School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Her mission is to develop robots that don't |
| 1:23.1 | just think but connect, systems that will competently perform their tasks, but which can also hold a |
| 1:29.9 | natural conversation and explain themselves clearly to their human colleagues. Although, as we'll |
| 1:34.9 | hear, that's not quite as straightforward as Star Wars made it seem. Helen's career has taken her |
| 1:40.7 | from developing early dialogue systems, the ancestors of today's generative |
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