In a lot of Western science fiction, you need some form of conflict, whether it's aliens or robots. I think in Western culture, being more suspicious of science, and hubris, you'll see a lot of fear of creating something that goes out of control.

Kids love robots. They're this fanciful, cool thing.

I do think, in time, people will have, sort of, relationships with certain kinds of robots - not every robot, but certain kinds of robots - where they might feel that it is a sort of friendship, but it's going to be of a robot-human kind.

My most memorable science fiction experience was 'Star Wars' and seeing R2D2 and C3PO. I fell in love with those robots.

I always work in a room where there's no Internet to keep from being distracted so easily.

If you're going to lead a space frontier, it has to be government; it'll never be private enterprise. Because the space frontier is dangerous, and it's expensive, and it has unquantified risks. And under those conditions, you cannot establish a capital-market evaluation of that enterprise. You can't get investors.

AIR was born from thinking about how rich Internet applications would play out over time and what new pieces of technology would be in demand for these to go to their next generation.

I learned early on, stay away from politics, stay away from religion and don't talk about sports. Those three right there will get you in trouble.