00:04:37 · Karol Hausman
[00:04:37] S0: Probably with watching movies as a kid. I think I was a big Star Wars fan. I was reading all the all the books, watching all the movies multiple times. And I I really love the way that robots were portrayed in that world. The diversity of them, different functionalities, the way they interacted with people, the way that there are good robots and bad robots. But I don't know if I can pinpoint a specific point. I remember just just growing up being fascinated by that concept that you can build something that is so human like. And I always thought that if you were able to do that, it would allow us to understand ourselves a little bit better. And I was fascinated by kind of the things that I think people are just fascinated as they're growing up. Asking deep questions about the nature of reality, how the brain works, what does it mean to think. And I thought that robots probably are going to have some answers to these questions because reading other kinds of books or studying philosophy didn't have good answers to these questions. Then more importantly, as I started looking into robotics and started studying it, the the first impression I had was that it was very disappointing. In that every robot you would see would or basically, it seemed like there are no intelligent robots out there and no one was working with them. Every robot you would see would be this this preprogrammed machine that just goes from a to b and does it repeatedly and has no intelligence whatsoever. So I think that was maybe the the most defining moment for me when I saw that because that was like a like a wake up call of, you know, there's so many people excited about this future that we saw in the movies, that we read about in the books, it seems like no one was working on it. You said that, you
00:06:31 · Mario Gabriele, Karol Hausman
[00:06:31] S1: know, in some ways you had... You know, that you're asking the the classic questions of every child about the nature of the universe and the human mind. I don't know if that's as universal as as you might imagine it to be. I think probably there are some kids who really become fascinated by that myth, but but maybe not all. Were your parents scientists? Were there things that they did that sort of encouraged that natural curiosity that you must have had? [00:06:54] S0: Not really. No. My dad was a mechanic... Was a mechanic, and my mom was an entrepreneur. So not really. There wasn't a lot of science at at at home. I think it was mostly coming from from watching movies and being fascinated by it. I also went to... So I come from a small town in Poland. I went to high school that had very high talent density for that for that area. And I remember that being then an environment where a lot of these questions were being asked, and it was very encouraged. So I found a group of friends that were really fascinated by similar things, and I think that's what really increased my interest in that area. This... It was just a thing that you would talk about in high school.
00:06:54 · Karol Hausman, Mario Gabriele
[00:06:54] S0: Not really. No. My dad was a mechanic... Was a mechanic, and my mom was an entrepreneur. So not really. There wasn't a lot of science at at at home. I think it was mostly coming from from watching movies and being fascinated by it. I also went to... So I come from a small town in Poland. I went to high school that had very high talent density for that for that area. And I remember that being then an environment where a lot of these questions were being asked, and it was very encouraged. So I found a group of friends that were really fascinated by similar things, and I think that's what really increased my interest in that area. This... It was just a thing that you would talk about in high school. [00:07:40] S1: You had a tweet that I I saw where you were talking about Fei Fei Li's biography and how it sort of spoke to you in some sense that, you know, the immigration story and also the fact of, you know, having teachers that believed in you along the way were were sort of parallels to your own life. In high school, was that when you sort of had that first batch of those teachers who maybe saw some of that, you know, really remarkable early talent?
00:07:40 · Mario Gabriele, Karol Hausman
[00:07:40] S1: You had a tweet that I I saw where you were talking about Fei Fei Li's biography and how it sort of spoke to you in some sense that, you know, the immigration story and also the fact of, you know, having teachers that believed in you along the way were were sort of parallels to your own life. In high school, was that when you sort of had that first batch of those teachers who maybe saw some of that, you know, really remarkable early talent? [00:08:04] S0: I think it was throughout. It wasn't just high school. It was it was throughout. There were multiple people that now looking back, I'm really grateful to, that either saw something or just encouraged me to to dig deeper or motivated me or give me some opportunities that I wouldn't have otherwise. And I think at at every single stage, there was someone I could point to. And reading Fei Fei's book just reminded me of that. And I remember after I read it, I I pinged some of them and thanked them for everything they did for me. So, yeah, it was it was a long journey from from Poland through Germany to The US, going through multiple places in The US. And it felt like at every single stage of the journey, was someone kind [00:08:51] S1: of rooting for me and and helping me. You know, before you realized that you wanted to work in robotics in particular, as an undergrad, you studied sort of computer science and philosophy. But I'm curious if there were interests before that. Like, as a kid, were you thinking I'm gonna be a astrophysicist or, I don't know, a neuroscientist? [00:09:12] S0: Yeah. I was I
00:09:12 · Karol Hausman, Mario Gabriele
[00:09:12] S0: Yeah. I was I [00:09:13] S2: was really into physics, actually. Right after high school, I applied to a lot of physics and and math programs, and I thought I was gonna be an astrophysicist or a theoretical physicist. I was really fascinated by it. I was reading a lot of books. I was really into physics in high school.
00:09:28 · Karol Hausman
[00:09:28] S0: But then a lot of my friends decided to go for engineering degrees, and we're all gonna go to Warsaw. And I thought that I could maybe try to study both or I could start with engineering and then go back to physics if it turns out to be boring. It wasn't like a very intentional choice at that time. It was more like, these are really smart people. I really wanna stay with my friends. And and and robots are really, really cool, so let me try that and then see how it goes. So I went to I went to Warsaw to study... It was called mechatronics at the time, which was basically like a mixture of electronics, some mechanical engineering, computer science. Then I also studied philosophy. But I I think that's when once I moved to Warsaw, whether that's when I started realizing that robotics is a thing, that it's a thing that is very disappointing. I remember studying robotics in Warsaw. The the kind of the dream job you could get was being a roboticist at an Avon factory that was right next to Warsaw. That was like the job that everybody was competing for. If you could work for Avon at the... On on the production line, that's like... That's how you made it in the robotics industry. And I remember I went there once and and saw that production line, and it was the most uninspiring thing I've ever seen with robots. As I said before, robots just moving from a to b, not being intelligent whatsoever. And I think that's when when it started clicking for me that I would really like to do something beyond that. And it seemed like no one was working on it, which sparked my interest even more. So that's where I started digging who is doing intelligent robots and is it even a thing? And that's then what defined, I think, the rest of the journey of trying to find those people, move from place to place as I try to as I try to find them, and then eventually start working on it myself. This sort