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Physical Intelligence (Physical Intelligence) is building a foundation model that can control any robot to do any task — what the team describes as the GPT moment for robotics. The company's cross-embodiment approach trains across many different robot platforms, and recent results show tasks being performed zero-shot that last... year required hundreds of hours of data collection. In this episode of the Lightcone Podcast , co-founder Quan Vuong (Quan Vuong) sat down with Garry Tan, Jared Friedman, Diana, and Harj Taggar to talk about why robotics is finally ready for its scaling moment, how PI runs its models in the cloud rather than on-device, and the playbook for what Quan sees as a Cambrian explosion of vertical robotics companies. 00:00 — Robotics just got cheaper 00:41 — The GPT moment for robotics 02:24 — Why robots didn’t work before 05:30 — The breakthrough that changed everything 09:12 — The data problem 13:33 — Robots learning without data 15:05 — Robots folding laundry (for real) 22:18 — From engineering problem → ops problem 29:12 — The startup playbook 38:46 — Thousands of robotics startups are comingshow more

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My conversation with Sergey Levine (Sergey Levine). Sergey is the co-founder of Physical Intelligence -- a company building foundation models that can control any robot to do any task in any environment. The company's thesis is that generality is more scalable than specialization, meaning that a model trained across many different robots and tasks will ultimately outperform any system built to do one thing well (eg, just wash dishes). Sergey is a researcher by background, but I think you will appreciate how practical and commercially grounded this conversation is. We discuss: - Why changing a diaper will be the last task a robot masters - The simulation v. real-world data debate - How multimodal LLMs give robots common sense - Moravec's Paradox + Robot Olympics - Why robots can do long-horizon tasks now - A realistic timeline for robots in our homes I should note that I am an investor in Physical Intelligence -- I made the investment because I believe it is one of the most important companies tackling the problem of robotics. Enjoy! Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:39 Defining Physical Intelligence 5:19 The Challenge of Building General Models 6:34 The Stakes and Future of General Purpose Robotics 8:15 Pros and Cons of Humanoid Robots 10:12 Historical Milestones in Robotics Research 15:31 Combining Generative AI and Deep RL 21:24 Moravec's Paradox 25:33 Kitchen Robots 29:30 Simulation vs. Real-World Data 30:48 The Robot Olympics 36:31 The Physiological Reality of Embodiment 38:56 Controversies in the Robotics Community 44:18 What Makes a Great Researcher 48:27 How Businesses Should Prepare for Robotics 54:09 Tracking Progress Through Research Papers 57:02 The Next Step: Mid-Level Reasoning 1:02:00 The Kindest Thing

My conversation with Sergey Levine (Sergey Levine). Sergey is the co-founder of Physical Intelligence -- a company building foundation models that can control any robot to do any task in any environment. The company's thesis is that generality is more scalable than specialization, meaning that a model trained across many different robots and tasks will ultimately outperform any system built to do one thing well (eg, just wash dishes). Sergey is a researcher by background, but I think you will appreciate how practical and commercially grounded this conversation is. We discuss: - Why changing a diaper will be the last task a robot masters - The simulation v. real-world data debate - How multimodal LLMs give robots common sense - Moravec's Paradox + Robot Olympics - Why robots can do long-horizon tasks now - A realistic timeline for robots in our homes I should note that I am an investor in Physical Intelligence -- I made the investment because I believe it is one of the most important companies tackling the problem of robotics. Enjoy! Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:39 Defining Physical Intelligence 5:19 The Challenge of Building General Models 6:34 The Stakes and Future of General Purpose Robotics 8:15 Pros and Cons of Humanoid Robots 10:12 Historical Milestones in Robotics Research 15:31 Combining Generative AI and Deep RL 21:24 Moravec's Paradox 25:33 Kitchen Robots 29:30 Simulation vs. Real-World Data 30:48 The Robot Olympics 36:31 The Physiological Reality of Embodiment 38:56 Controversies in the Robotics Community 44:18 What Makes a Great Researcher 48:27 How Businesses Should Prepare for Robotics 54:09 Tracking Progress Through Research Papers 57:02 The Next Step: Mid-Level Reasoning 1:02:00 The Kindest Thing

Patrick OShaughnessy

133,833 views • 3 months ago

Karol Hausman is the co-founder and CEO of Physical Intelligence, a robotics company building a general-purpose “AI brain for the physical world.” The company has raised more than $1 billion in funding to develop foundation models that allow robots to operate across many machines, environments, and tasks rather than being programmed for a single purpose. In our conversation, we explore: • The moment a lecture from Sergey Levine convinced him to abandon his PhD research direction and pivot fully to deep learning • The case for building a general “AI brain” for the physical world rather than a single specialized robot • The role of real-world data in training robots, the limits of simulation, and how deployment could create a powerful data flywheel • The unique challenges of physical intelligence and why robots must operate with far higher reliability than language models Thank you to the partners who make this possible - Brex: The intelligent finance platform: - Granola: The app that might actually make you love meetings: Timestamps (00:00) Intro (04:05) Karol’s early fascination with robots (18:21) Karol’s entry point to robotics and PhD program (25:49) Combining robotics with LLMs: The Taylor Swift demo (30:48) The 1970s SHRDLU AI experiment (39:40) How research shapes what Physical Intelligence builds (49:07) The return of reinforcement learning in robotics (1:00:00) NVIDIA’s simulation engines (1:07:31) Compensating for missing senses

Karol Hausman is the co-founder and CEO of Physical Intelligence, a robotics company building a general-purpose “AI brain for the physical world.” The company has raised more than $1 billion in funding to develop foundation models that allow robots to operate across many machines, environments, and tasks rather than being programmed for a single purpose. In our conversation, we explore: • The moment a lecture from Sergey Levine convinced him to abandon his PhD research direction and pivot fully to deep learning • The case for building a general “AI brain” for the physical world rather than a single specialized robot • The role of real-world data in training robots, the limits of simulation, and how deployment could create a powerful data flywheel • The unique challenges of physical intelligence and why robots must operate with far higher reliability than language models Thank you to the partners who make this possible - Brex: The intelligent finance platform: - Granola: The app that might actually make you love meetings: Timestamps (00:00) Intro (04:05) Karol’s early fascination with robots (18:21) Karol’s entry point to robotics and PhD program (25:49) Combining robotics with LLMs: The Taylor Swift demo (30:48) The 1970s SHRDLU AI experiment (39:40) How research shapes what Physical Intelligence builds (49:07) The return of reinforcement learning in robotics (1:00:00) NVIDIA’s simulation engines (1:07:31) Compensating for missing senses

Mario Gabriele 🦊

27,871 views • 3 months ago

My full conversation with Andrew Kang 2:36 Pivoting to robotics from crypto 11:46 Kang asks: Why are you trading? 24:14 Robotics' ChatGPT moment 28:44 GPT-5 robots within a year 33:04 A robot in every home 41:09 Big Tech is lagging 54:43 Where the real moat is 1:02:40 Building MicroStrategy for robots 1:08:00 How retail can access Robotics 1:19:23 The SoftBank playbook

My full conversation with Andrew Kang 2:36 Pivoting to robotics from crypto 11:46 Kang asks: Why are you trading? 24:14 Robotics' ChatGPT moment 28:44 GPT-5 robots within a year 33:04 A robot in every home 41:09 Big Tech is lagging 54:43 Where the real moat is 1:02:40 Building MicroStrategy for robots 1:08:00 How retail can access Robotics 1:19:23 The SoftBank playbook

threadguy

75,691 views • 1 month ago

Chelsea Finn (Chelsea Finn) on building general-purpose robotics, and bringing intelligence into the physical world. At AI Startup School in San Francisco. 00:00 - General Purpose Robots 00:11 - Challenges in Robotics Applications 00:57 - Physical Intelligence: A New Approach 01:47 - Learning from Language Models 02:08 - Data Sources for Training Robots 03:32 - Training with Real-World Data 04:39 - Initial Successes and Challenges 09:10 - Breakthrough in Robot Training 11:03 - Improving Performance 15:43 - Expanding Capabilities 17:34 - Robots in Unseen Environments 25:54 - Handling Open-Ended Prompts 29:36 - Evaluating Robot Performance 30:03 - Future Directions and Challenges 31:27 - Audience Q&A

Chelsea Finn (Chelsea Finn) on building general-purpose robotics, and bringing intelligence into the physical world. At AI Startup School in San Francisco. 00:00 - General Purpose Robots 00:11 - Challenges in Robotics Applications 00:57 - Physical Intelligence: A New Approach 01:47 - Learning from Language Models 02:08 - Data Sources for Training Robots 03:32 - Training with Real-World Data 04:39 - Initial Successes and Challenges 09:10 - Breakthrough in Robot Training 11:03 - Improving Performance 15:43 - Expanding Capabilities 17:34 - Robots in Unseen Environments 25:54 - Handling Open-Ended Prompts 29:36 - Evaluating Robot Performance 30:03 - Future Directions and Challenges 31:27 - Audience Q&A

Y Combinator

129,723 views • 11 months ago

Is Physical AI the Next Frontier for Digital Assets? with EtherMage founder of Virtuals Protocol Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 02:15 Virtuals Protocol Recap 05:30 From Digital Agents to Robots 09:00 Eastworlds Launch Explained 12:20 Tele-Operation Pilots Live Now 15:40 Three Reasons Digital Assets Fits with Robotics 20:10 Data Collection & Token Incentives 24:30 Robot-to-Robot Commerce Vision 28:00 What's Missing From the Stack 29:15 Privacy in Physical AI

Is Physical AI the Next Frontier for Digital Assets? with EtherMage founder of Virtuals Protocol Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 02:15 Virtuals Protocol Recap 05:30 From Digital Agents to Robots 09:00 Eastworlds Launch Explained 12:20 Tele-Operation Pilots Live Now 15:40 Three Reasons Digital Assets Fits with Robotics 20:10 Data Collection & Token Incentives 24:30 Robot-to-Robot Commerce Vision 28:00 What's Missing From the Stack 29:15 Privacy in Physical AI

The Rollup

17,067 views • 2 months ago

We profiled the most hyped robotics company in the world. Inside Physical Intelligence with Co-founder Lachy Groom Exclusive interview in the Physical Intelligence robotics lab, who’re backed by top investors to build robots which work in the real world. Not just scripted environments. We cover: 0:00 So…What is Physical Intelligence? 1:41 Why can’t we solve Marovec’s Paradox? 2:33 Live Demo: Meet the Machines 4:17 Why robots still struggle today… 6:14 Meet PI’s Investors (Thrive Capital) 7:19 Teaming up with the mega-brilliant co-founder group of Karol Haussman, Sergey Levine, Chelsea Finn, Brian Ichter, Adnan Esmail & Quan Vuong 9:20 PI’s Robot Capabilities 11:37 How are they making intelligent robots? 13:43 The Future Impact of Everyday Robots 15:49 Jeff Bezos Investment in Physical Intelligence 16:43 What will the next 1-3 years look like? 17:54 Revealing PI’s Work Culture 19:23 Outro

We profiled the most hyped robotics company in the world. Inside Physical Intelligence with Co-founder Lachy Groom Exclusive interview in the Physical Intelligence robotics lab, who’re backed by top investors to build robots which work in the real world. Not just scripted environments. We cover: 0:00 So…What is Physical Intelligence? 1:41 Why can’t we solve Marovec’s Paradox? 2:33 Live Demo: Meet the Machines 4:17 Why robots still struggle today… 6:14 Meet PI’s Investors (Thrive Capital) 7:19 Teaming up with the mega-brilliant co-founder group of Karol Haussman, Sergey Levine, Chelsea Finn, Brian Ichter, Adnan Esmail & Quan Vuong 9:20 PI’s Robot Capabilities 11:37 How are they making intelligent robots? 13:43 The Future Impact of Everyday Robots 15:49 Jeff Bezos Investment in Physical Intelligence 16:43 What will the next 1-3 years look like? 17:54 Revealing PI’s Work Culture 19:23 Outro

Sachin Shah

119,340 views • 5 months ago

.Sergey Levine is one of the world's leading robotics researchers (and co-founder of Physical Intelligence). He thinks fully autonomous robots are much closer than people realize - when I pushed him on a prediction, he said 5 years to robots that can autonomously run your household). The big game changer, in his view, is that we finally have LLMs with common sense and prior knowledge that we can scaffold the robot models around. We get into all the reasons this might not happen, the data flywheel from deployment, architecture, simulation, manufacturing, and much more. Enjoy! 0:00:00 – Timeline to widely deployed autonomous robots 0:22:12 – Why robotics will scale faster than self-driving cars 0:32:15 – How vision-language-action models work 0:50:26 – Improvements needed for brainlike efficiency 1:02:48 – Learning from simulation 1:14:08 – How much will robots speed up AI buildouts? 1:22:54 – If hardware’s the bottleneck, does China win by default?

.Sergey Levine is one of the world's leading robotics researchers (and co-founder of Physical Intelligence). He thinks fully autonomous robots are much closer than people realize - when I pushed him on a prediction, he said 5 years to robots that can autonomously run your household). The big game changer, in his view, is that we finally have LLMs with common sense and prior knowledge that we can scaffold the robot models around. We get into all the reasons this might not happen, the data flywheel from deployment, architecture, simulation, manufacturing, and much more. Enjoy! 0:00:00 – Timeline to widely deployed autonomous robots 0:22:12 – Why robotics will scale faster than self-driving cars 0:32:15 – How vision-language-action models work 0:50:26 – Improvements needed for brainlike efficiency 1:02:48 – Learning from simulation 1:14:08 – How much will robots speed up AI buildouts? 1:22:54 – If hardware’s the bottleneck, does China win by default?

Dwarkesh Patel

210,969 views • 10 months ago

1/ New episode – Enabling AI Models to Drive Robots with Michael Cho - Rbt/Acc from BitRobot Network Hosts: Connor Lovely 🥷 EV3 Sal We discuss: - Building the world's largest robotic driving dataset - Working with researchers from Google DeepMind - Launching a memecoin ($SAM) pre-TGE Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 01:47 - Intersection of Robotics and AI 02:50 - Real-World Evaluation vs. Digital AI 06:00 - The Importance of Real-World Testing 07:07 - Mapping and Navigation in Robotics 08:12 - Value of Real-World Data for AI 09:38 - Differences in Data Utility 13:07 - Exploring Different Robotic Form Factors 14:04 - Cross-Embodiment in Robotics 16:35 - Introduction to BitRobot 17:30 - Transition from Frotobots to BitRobot 22:05 - Future Plans for BitRobot 24:27 - Meme Coins in Community Building 27:46 - Conclusion Watch on all platforms below ⬇️

1/ New episode – Enabling AI Models to Drive Robots with Michael Cho - Rbt/Acc from BitRobot Network Hosts: Connor Lovely 🥷 EV3 Sal We discuss: - Building the world's largest robotic driving dataset - Working with researchers from Google DeepMind - Launching a memecoin ($SAM) pre-TGE Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 01:47 - Intersection of Robotics and AI 02:50 - Real-World Evaluation vs. Digital AI 06:00 - The Importance of Real-World Testing 07:07 - Mapping and Navigation in Robotics 08:12 - Value of Real-World Data for AI 09:38 - Differences in Data Utility 13:07 - Exploring Different Robotic Form Factors 14:04 - Cross-Embodiment in Robotics 16:35 - Introduction to BitRobot 17:30 - Transition from Frotobots to BitRobot 22:05 - Future Plans for BitRobot 24:27 - Meme Coins in Community Building 27:46 - Conclusion Watch on all platforms below ⬇️

Proof of Coverage Media 🥷

10,745 views • 1 year ago

We might be solving the wrong problem in robotics. That’s what this makes clear. UMI → Universal Manipulation Interface A simple $400 gripper that lets you teach robots by demonstration. You hold it like a tool. Show the task. The robot learns. No teleoperation. No expensive hardware. No robot-specific data. Stanford open-sourced everything → hardware, code, datasets. What stands out to me is the bottleneck. Not algorithms. Data. Teleoperation → ~35 demos/hour UMI → ~111 demos/hour And the data transfers across robots → UR5, Franka, others. The design is surprisingly practical: → GoPro fisheye lens (155° FOV) + mirrors for depth → SLAM + IMU for precise 6DoF tracking → latency matching for dynamic tasks → diffusion policies for multimodal actions Then it scales. Cheng Chi takes this further with Sunday Robotics (with Tony Zhao). A $200 glove → deployed in 500+ homes → ~10 million real-world interactions. Not lab data. Real human behavior. Their robot learns dishes, laundry, espresso → with zero robot-specific data. This is where the shift becomes obvious. From training robots in controlled environments → to learning directly from humans at scale So here’s the real question: Will robotics be unlocked by better models… or by unlocking data? #ArtificialIntelligence #Robotics #AI #Innovation #FutureOfWork

We might be solving the wrong problem in robotics. That’s what this makes clear. UMI → Universal Manipulation Interface A simple $400 gripper that lets you teach robots by demonstration. You hold it like a tool. Show the task. The robot learns. No teleoperation. No expensive hardware. No robot-specific data. Stanford open-sourced everything → hardware, code, datasets. What stands out to me is the bottleneck. Not algorithms. Data. Teleoperation → ~35 demos/hour UMI → ~111 demos/hour And the data transfers across robots → UR5, Franka, others. The design is surprisingly practical: → GoPro fisheye lens (155° FOV) + mirrors for depth → SLAM + IMU for precise 6DoF tracking → latency matching for dynamic tasks → diffusion policies for multimodal actions Then it scales. Cheng Chi takes this further with Sunday Robotics (with Tony Zhao). A $200 glove → deployed in 500+ homes → ~10 million real-world interactions. Not lab data. Real human behavior. Their robot learns dishes, laundry, espresso → with zero robot-specific data. This is where the shift becomes obvious. From training robots in controlled environments → to learning directly from humans at scale So here’s the real question: Will robotics be unlocked by better models… or by unlocking data? #ArtificialIntelligence #Robotics #AI #Innovation #FutureOfWork

Pascal Bornet

186,223 views • 3 months ago

Founder and CEO of The Bot Company Kyle Vogt—who also cofounded Twitch and Cruise—shares a pint and discusses robots doing your household chores, the autonomy industry, Tesla vs Waymo, and how future $100b companies will look different. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:38 The Bot Company pitch 02:05 Single-task vs. multi-task robots 04:27 What is the Turing test for robotics? 05:52 Why this time is different for home robots 08:42 The last mile in robotics and self-driving 09:47 Viral demos and hype cycles 10:38 Commercializing frontier tech 13:06 Self-driving CapEx 14:15 Regulatory hurdles 16:18 Tesla vs. Waymo 19:21 Why Kyle regrets selling Cruise 21:39 The next $100 billion company Podcast on Spotify/YouTube/etc too!

Founder and CEO of The Bot Company Kyle Vogt—who also cofounded Twitch and Cruise—shares a pint and discusses robots doing your household chores, the autonomy industry, Tesla vs Waymo, and how future $100b companies will look different. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:38 The Bot Company pitch 02:05 Single-task vs. multi-task robots 04:27 What is the Turing test for robotics? 05:52 Why this time is different for home robots 08:42 The last mile in robotics and self-driving 09:47 Viral demos and hype cycles 10:38 Commercializing frontier tech 13:06 Self-driving CapEx 14:15 Regulatory hurdles 16:18 Tesla vs. Waymo 19:21 Why Kyle regrets selling Cruise 21:39 The next $100 billion company Podcast on Spotify/YouTube/etc too!

John Collison

104,312 views • 1 year ago

New Episode: Michael Cho - Rbt/Acc, co-founder and CEO of FrodoBots and Ultimate Fighting Bots. We talk about Michael’s journey, a near-death plane crash that reshaped his outlook, his passion for robotics, and data collection via real-world games. His big thesis: aligning economic incentives for robotics work through the BitRobot Network. 00:00 Introduction 01:30 Potential of robot fighting 02:02 Robotic gaming and entertainment 02:35 Inspiration from sci-fi and robotics passion 03:10 Entrepreneurial journey and impact of a plane crash 05:38 Michael's Background 08:32 What is FrodoBots 10:35 Data collection through robotic gaming 12:07 Human vs. AI competitions in robotics 13:42 The limiting factor in embodied AI 15:34 Challenges in robotic AI evaluation 21:49 BitRobot Network 23:58 Distributed architecture and socio-economics 30:47 RoboPapers podcast 35:14 Hardware limitations in humanoid robotics 45:46 Things new founders could focus on

New Episode: Michael Cho - Rbt/Acc, co-founder and CEO of FrodoBots and Ultimate Fighting Bots. We talk about Michael’s journey, a near-death plane crash that reshaped his outlook, his passion for robotics, and data collection via real-world games. His big thesis: aligning economic incentives for robotics work through the BitRobot Network. 00:00 Introduction 01:30 Potential of robot fighting 02:02 Robotic gaming and entertainment 02:35 Inspiration from sci-fi and robotics passion 03:10 Entrepreneurial journey and impact of a plane crash 05:38 Michael's Background 08:32 What is FrodoBots 10:35 Data collection through robotic gaming 12:07 Human vs. AI competitions in robotics 13:42 The limiting factor in embodied AI 15:34 Challenges in robotic AI evaluation 21:49 BitRobot Network 23:58 Distributed architecture and socio-economics 30:47 RoboPapers podcast 35:14 Hardware limitations in humanoid robotics 45:46 Things new founders could focus on

The Humanoid Hub

40,368 views • 10 months ago

Eka means unity -- “one,” in Sanskrit and “first” in Finnish. We’re building intelligence for the physical world in its native language: forces. Until now, robotics faced a tradeoff — generality or speed. The real world requires both. Robotics also faced a data problem. Our Vision–Force–Action (VFA) model — the first of its kind — breaks the generality-speed tradeoff and the data barrier. It's a new foundation uniting performance, generality, and safety for putting capable robots in everyone's hands. Today, I am excited to share our journey of pushing robots beyond human limits. Today, dexterity becomes scalable. Today, I welcome you to the Era of Eka. Co-founded with Tuomas Haarnoja, and so thrilled and grateful to be working with a dream team at Eka Robotics, Inc.. Learn more:

Eka means unity -- “one,” in Sanskrit and “first” in Finnish. We’re building intelligence for the physical world in its native language: forces. Until now, robotics faced a tradeoff — generality or speed. The real world requires both. Robotics also faced a data problem. Our Vision–Force–Action (VFA) model — the first of its kind — breaks the generality-speed tradeoff and the data barrier. It's a new foundation uniting performance, generality, and safety for putting capable robots in everyone's hands. Today, I am excited to share our journey of pushing robots beyond human limits. Today, dexterity becomes scalable. Today, I welcome you to the Era of Eka. Co-founded with Tuomas Haarnoja, and so thrilled and grateful to be working with a dream team at Eka Robotics, Inc.. Learn more:

Pulkit Agrawal

331,470 views • 2 months ago

New Episode: Carolina Parada leads the robotics team at Google DeepMind. Carolina believes in a future with a broad, rich ecosystem of diverse robot types, where AI is smart enough to embody any robot. We discuss her journey, advancements in Gemini Robotics 1.5, cross-embodiment transfer, RL versus imitation, humanoids, world models, scaling laws, societal concerns, and more. 1:17 Introduction 1:38 Career journey and inspirations 3:50 Reaction to the 2022 ChatGPT launch 4:53 Google DeepMind's robotics mission 9:13 Key upgrades in Gemini Robotics 1.5 14:06 Agentic system's web usage 15:33 Robotics data-gathering methods 16:57 VLA vs. reasoning model training differences 18:22 Convergence of action and reasoning models 19:35 Cross-embodiment transfer 22:34 Learning directly from humans 24:20 Generalization challenges 27:01 Imitation versus reinforcement learning 28:51 Use of world models in robotics 30:31 Applications and testing of Gemini Robotics 1.5 33:04 Do humanoids deserve special focus? 35:06 Home humanoids timeline & limiting factors 37:19 Scaling laws in robotics versus self-driving 38:46 Value of learning classical robotics approaches 40:38 Ethical issues and societal impact

New Episode: Carolina Parada leads the robotics team at Google DeepMind. Carolina believes in a future with a broad, rich ecosystem of diverse robot types, where AI is smart enough to embody any robot. We discuss her journey, advancements in Gemini Robotics 1.5, cross-embodiment transfer, RL versus imitation, humanoids, world models, scaling laws, societal concerns, and more. 1:17 Introduction 1:38 Career journey and inspirations 3:50 Reaction to the 2022 ChatGPT launch 4:53 Google DeepMind's robotics mission 9:13 Key upgrades in Gemini Robotics 1.5 14:06 Agentic system's web usage 15:33 Robotics data-gathering methods 16:57 VLA vs. reasoning model training differences 18:22 Convergence of action and reasoning models 19:35 Cross-embodiment transfer 22:34 Learning directly from humans 24:20 Generalization challenges 27:01 Imitation versus reinforcement learning 28:51 Use of world models in robotics 30:31 Applications and testing of Gemini Robotics 1.5 33:04 Do humanoids deserve special focus? 35:06 Home humanoids timeline & limiting factors 37:19 Scaling laws in robotics versus self-driving 38:46 Value of learning classical robotics approaches 40:38 Ethical issues and societal impact

The Humanoid Hub

71,481 views • 8 months ago

The world today is built for humans, & cities built for cars... The world tomorrow will be built around the evolution of robotics. It was a pleasure hosting this week's Robotics episode of the Super Cycle Pod with Michael Cho - Rbt/Acc (BitRobot Network) & Nils of (Auki) have packed this full of insanely valuable insights: 0:00 - Intro + wen terminator? 5:13 - Robotics vs "GPT moment" 7:08 - Privacy in the world of robotics 11:40 - Web3 robotics + intro to frodobots / bitrobot 14:50 - Impact of $HNT on Michael and Nils 17:06 - Intro to $AUKI 19:26 - Why does dePIN as an investable asset suck? 25:36 - $AUKI community building philosophy 28:30 - Bitrobot mission w/ PhD researchers 31:40 - Bitrobot subnet structure 35:28 - Bitrobot value accrual + Impact 39:40 - $AUKI and proving people wrong 42:20 - Robotics is the biggest industry in the world 50:16 - Dangers of physical AI 55:25 - Human Philosophy in Physical AI 57:05 - How cities will change w/ robots 1:03:20 - Skills of the future 1:06:32 - Responsibility as innovators in robotics Where do you think we are in the robotics cycle? My DMs are open to teams wanting to chat about what they're building.

The world today is built for humans, & cities built for cars... The world tomorrow will be built around the evolution of robotics. It was a pleasure hosting this week's Robotics episode of the Super Cycle Pod with Michael Cho - Rbt/Acc (BitRobot Network) & Nils of (Auki) have packed this full of insanely valuable insights: 0:00 - Intro + wen terminator? 5:13 - Robotics vs "GPT moment" 7:08 - Privacy in the world of robotics 11:40 - Web3 robotics + intro to frodobots / bitrobot 14:50 - Impact of $HNT on Michael and Nils 17:06 - Intro to $AUKI 19:26 - Why does dePIN as an investable asset suck? 25:36 - $AUKI community building philosophy 28:30 - Bitrobot mission w/ PhD researchers 31:40 - Bitrobot subnet structure 35:28 - Bitrobot value accrual + Impact 39:40 - $AUKI and proving people wrong 42:20 - Robotics is the biggest industry in the world 50:16 - Dangers of physical AI 55:25 - Human Philosophy in Physical AI 57:05 - How cities will change w/ robots 1:03:20 - Skills of the future 1:06:32 - Responsibility as innovators in robotics Where do you think we are in the robotics cycle? My DMs are open to teams wanting to chat about what they're building.

0xSammy

60,470 views • 7 months ago

A few months ago we set out to understand exactly how our models can be used to accelerate progress in robotics and other AI systems that don’t just represent the world, but are actually able to interact with it. We’ve been collaborating with leading companies in the space and we’ve developed an initial approach that we're now opening up to accelerate development across the industry. Our fifth announcement is GWM Robotics. GWM Robotics is a learned simulator that generates synthetic data for scalable robot training and policy evaluation, removing the bottlenecks of physical hardware.

A few months ago we set out to understand exactly how our models can be used to accelerate progress in robotics and other AI systems that don’t just represent the world, but are actually able to interact with it. We’ve been collaborating with leading companies in the space and we’ve developed an initial approach that we're now opening up to accelerate development across the industry. Our fifth announcement is GWM Robotics. GWM Robotics is a learned simulator that generates synthetic data for scalable robot training and policy evaluation, removing the bottlenecks of physical hardware.

Runway

35,040 views • 7 months ago

🦔Workers in India are wearing head-mounted cameras for 12 cents an hour to collect training data for humanoid robots. The footage of them doing everyday tasks like cooking, cleaning, sorting, and walking through public spaces gets sold to robotics companies building the models meant to replace those same kinds of jobs in higher-wage countries. The arrangement has been running for roughly two years. Workers do not own the data, do not get residuals, and in many cases are not told what their footage is being used to train. My Take The workers wearing the cameras live in a country where robotics automation will hit decades later, so they are training their own future replacements at a delay that hides the consequence from them personally. The companies buying the data are mostly US and Chinese, building humanoid robots aimed at warehouses, retail, and service jobs in countries paying $15 to $25 an hour rather than 12 cents. Robotics companies need motion data that mimics how humans actually move through real environments, and synthetic data has not been good enough yet. Paying 12 cents an hour in Bengaluru is cheaper than running motion capture studios in Boston, and it works at scale because the worker absorbs the cost of the camera, the discomfort of wearing it, and the long-term loss of any rights to their own movement data. The robotics labor market that eventually emerges from this footage will displace far more wages than the data collection cost to gather. That is the trade investors funding humanoid robotics startups are betting will pay off, and the workers in the videos are the ones paying the tab up front. Hedgie🤗

🦔Workers in India are wearing head-mounted cameras for 12 cents an hour to collect training data for humanoid robots. The footage of them doing everyday tasks like cooking, cleaning, sorting, and walking through public spaces gets sold to robotics companies building the models meant to replace those same kinds of jobs in higher-wage countries. The arrangement has been running for roughly two years. Workers do not own the data, do not get residuals, and in many cases are not told what their footage is being used to train. My Take The workers wearing the cameras live in a country where robotics automation will hit decades later, so they are training their own future replacements at a delay that hides the consequence from them personally. The companies buying the data are mostly US and Chinese, building humanoid robots aimed at warehouses, retail, and service jobs in countries paying $15 to $25 an hour rather than 12 cents. Robotics companies need motion data that mimics how humans actually move through real environments, and synthetic data has not been good enough yet. Paying 12 cents an hour in Bengaluru is cheaper than running motion capture studios in Boston, and it works at scale because the worker absorbs the cost of the camera, the discomfort of wearing it, and the long-term loss of any rights to their own movement data. The robotics labor market that eventually emerges from this footage will displace far more wages than the data collection cost to gather. That is the trade investors funding humanoid robotics startups are betting will pay off, and the workers in the videos are the ones paying the tab up front. Hedgie🤗

Hedgie

161,631 views • 1 month ago

Robot trained entirely in simulation! 🤯 Sudo AI just released #sudo R1. This could be the moment the data bottleneck in robotics finally breaks, a major step forward for getting simulation-trained robots to actually work in the real world. #sudo R1 is a manipulation foundation model that reliably picks objects it has never seen: glass, fabric, metal, irregular shapes. All with zero real-world training data. No tele-op. No demos. No manual labeling. Pure simulation. And picking isn't just any skill, it's the foundation. Almost everything we want robots to do starts with being able to reliably pick something up. Data collection is the bottleneck holding the whole field back. Every new task means hours of tele-op and armies of labelers. If simulation alone can actually deliver production-grade picking, that bottleneck starts to disappear. Really exciting to see! If the results hold, the path to general-purpose robots just got a whole lot shorter. 👇 Read more here: ~~ ♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news →

Robot trained entirely in simulation! 🤯 Sudo AI just released #sudo R1. This could be the moment the data bottleneck in robotics finally breaks, a major step forward for getting simulation-trained robots to actually work in the real world. #sudo R1 is a manipulation foundation model that reliably picks objects it has never seen: glass, fabric, metal, irregular shapes. All with zero real-world training data. No tele-op. No demos. No manual labeling. Pure simulation. And picking isn't just any skill, it's the foundation. Almost everything we want robots to do starts with being able to reliably pick something up. Data collection is the bottleneck holding the whole field back. Every new task means hours of tele-op and armies of labelers. If simulation alone can actually deliver production-grade picking, that bottleneck starts to disappear. Really exciting to see! If the results hold, the path to general-purpose robots just got a whole lot shorter. 👇 Read more here: ~~ ♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news →

Lukas Ziegler

25,718 views • 2 months ago

Modern AI is confined to the digital world. At Skild AI, we are building towards AGI for the real world, unconstrained by robot type or task — a single, omni-bodied brain. Today, we are sharing our journey, starting with early milestones, with more to come in the weeks ahead. Our Mission: Artificial General Intelligence grounded in the physical world. We believe AGI that can truly understand and reason in the real world can only be built through grounding in the physical world. Our Vision: Any robot, Any task, One brain. We tackle robotics in its full generality – building a continually improving, omni-bodied brain that can control any hardware for any task. Who are we? A passionate group of scientists & engineers driven by our shared vision. We have been researching AI and robotics for more than a decade. Our team includes pioneers of self-supervised learning, curiosity-driven exploration, end-to-end sim2real for visual locomotion, dexterous manipulation, learning from human videos, robot parkour, and many more. Many of these works have won awards at top-tier AI and Robotics conferences. Our team has also built production-ready systems at Anduril, Tesla, Nvidia, Meta, Kitty Hawk, Google, Everyday Robotics, and Amazon. Join us in our mission to build the robot brains of tomorrow.

Modern AI is confined to the digital world. At Skild AI, we are building towards AGI for the real world, unconstrained by robot type or task — a single, omni-bodied brain. Today, we are sharing our journey, starting with early milestones, with more to come in the weeks ahead. Our Mission: Artificial General Intelligence grounded in the physical world. We believe AGI that can truly understand and reason in the real world can only be built through grounding in the physical world. Our Vision: Any robot, Any task, One brain. We tackle robotics in its full generality – building a continually improving, omni-bodied brain that can control any hardware for any task. Who are we? A passionate group of scientists & engineers driven by our shared vision. We have been researching AI and robotics for more than a decade. Our team includes pioneers of self-supervised learning, curiosity-driven exploration, end-to-end sim2real for visual locomotion, dexterous manipulation, learning from human videos, robot parkour, and many more. Many of these works have won awards at top-tier AI and Robotics conferences. Our team has also built production-ready systems at Anduril, Tesla, Nvidia, Meta, Kitty Hawk, Google, Everyday Robotics, and Amazon. Join us in our mission to build the robot brains of tomorrow.

Skild AI

382,440 views • 11 months ago

This week's episode is mostly about robots. Kyle Vogt is one of very few entrepreneurs to found 3 business valued at over a billion dollars - Twitch in 2006, Cruise in 2013, and The Bot Company in 2024. If you've caught any other Uncapped episodes you've probably heard some investors saying that home robots are close and they'll be a giant new market. Kyle Vogt is building them, and talking to him made me as bullish as ever. Timestamps: (0:00) Introduction (0:34) Why robotics is suddenly booming (3:31) Special-purpose vs generalized (5:32) Designing robots people actually use (9:00) Building for scale and affordability (12:17) The myth of humanoids (15:04) Trust, safety, and privacy in your home (17:51) Robotics intelligence (21:01) Why Kyle keeps starting hard companies (22:32) The 100-person rule and elite teams (26:10) How to actually ship (27:28) What home robotics will do first (35:05) Home security and other applications (38:41) Tesla vs Waymo (41:08) When to sell a company (42:41) Marathons

This week's episode is mostly about robots. Kyle Vogt is one of very few entrepreneurs to found 3 business valued at over a billion dollars - Twitch in 2006, Cruise in 2013, and The Bot Company in 2024. If you've caught any other Uncapped episodes you've probably heard some investors saying that home robots are close and they'll be a giant new market. Kyle Vogt is building them, and talking to him made me as bullish as ever. Timestamps: (0:00) Introduction (0:34) Why robotics is suddenly booming (3:31) Special-purpose vs generalized (5:32) Designing robots people actually use (9:00) Building for scale and affordability (12:17) The myth of humanoids (15:04) Trust, safety, and privacy in your home (17:51) Robotics intelligence (21:01) Why Kyle keeps starting hard companies (22:32) The 100-person rule and elite teams (26:10) How to actually ship (27:28) What home robotics will do first (35:05) Home security and other applications (38:41) Tesla vs Waymo (41:08) When to sell a company (42:41) Marathons

Jack Altman

288,081 views • 8 months ago

Not enough people are talking about physical AI and robotics. I sat down with Andrew Kang, one of the best investors of the last decade, to discuss his massive bet on humanoids and robotics. He breaks down the industry, the addressable market, multiple leading companies, and why he launched a publicly-traded fund ($BOT) focused on investing in the top private robotics companies. YouTube: Apple: Spotify: TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro 1:28 - Why Andrew shifted from crypto to humanoid robots 3:58 - How big is the total addressable market? 8:08 - Building conviction — the $19M bet on Figure AI 16:06 - US vs. China — who wins the robot race? 28:08 - General purpose vs. specialized robots 31:05 - Where does training data come from? 40:24 - Humanoid robots in your everyday life 43:27 - Can Tesla & Elon win the humanoid race? 46:19 - Job displacement & UBI 51:15 - RoboStrategy — the publicly traded venture fund 1:11:17 - What is exciting about Apptronik? 1:13:24 - Addressing the critics

Not enough people are talking about physical AI and robotics. I sat down with Andrew Kang, one of the best investors of the last decade, to discuss his massive bet on humanoids and robotics. He breaks down the industry, the addressable market, multiple leading companies, and why he launched a publicly-traded fund ($BOT) focused on investing in the top private robotics companies. YouTube: Apple: Spotify: TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro 1:28 - Why Andrew shifted from crypto to humanoid robots 3:58 - How big is the total addressable market? 8:08 - Building conviction — the $19M bet on Figure AI 16:06 - US vs. China — who wins the robot race? 28:08 - General purpose vs. specialized robots 31:05 - Where does training data come from? 40:24 - Humanoid robots in your everyday life 43:27 - Can Tesla & Elon win the humanoid race? 46:19 - Job displacement & UBI 51:15 - RoboStrategy — the publicly traded venture fund 1:11:17 - What is exciting about Apptronik? 1:13:24 - Addressing the critics

Anthony Pompliano 🌪

607,413 views • 1 month ago