Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:06:45 · Caitlin Kalinowski
[01:06:45] S0: It's a great question. I'm new relatively speaking to robotics. And so, I had to learn as much as I could as fast as I could. One of the researchers that helped me the most, her name's Leila Takayama. She's an expert at this. What she explained to me is that humans have a certain expectation about how other beings are going to respond when they enter a space. When someone walks into a room, you kind of acknowledge them. You might not talk to them, but you kind of look up. There is a lot of very complex nonverbal cues that we give to each other. And if you walk into a room and a robot's just like, it's creepy, and it's easy to be creepy. I'm a little surprised with some notable exceptions how creepy a lot of these humanoids are right now. You want, I think, these devices to be non-threatening, generally speaking. You want them to appear soft, you want them to appear reactive to you. You want to have a sense that they know that you're there, that they're attentive to you, that they're there to help you and make your work life easier, and you also expect them to intentionally or to show their intent before they do something. And so, one of the things I learned is if a robot just suddenly turns and does all this stuff, it scares you. But if a robot looks before it turns and then goes, it's much less alarming. So there's all these little pieces, and I recommend anyone to go look at her work. There's a lot of great research here about how to, not necessarily with a humanoid, but how to have any robot both respond properly in a social context with someone entering a room or exiting a room, but also transmit its intent physically so it doesn't surprise you.
01:08:43 · Lenny Rachitsky, Caitlin Kalinowski
[01:08:43] S1: It feels like there's a lot we can learn from Pixar and animation studios that have thought about this a long time. [01:08:49] S0: Yeah. I actually think Pixar, Disney are probably the world's best at doing this type of design work even though they haven't done as much in physical in volume. If you look at what they do and how they show emotion, intent, approachability, engagement with their characters, they're really world-class. [01:09:16] S1: I don't know about you, but I'm so excited to have a robot at home doing things. These videos that they're starting to put out where they're doing your... They can do dishes, at least the prototypes, they can fold laundry, they can do... It's like, yes, please come do this for me. How do you feel about robots in your house? [01:09:32] S0: So I'm into it. My partner, not so much. So I'm very lucky to have a partner who's got a high bar, which means was like never going to take Waymo, took one Waymo, and now, never wants to take anything else. So definitely willing to update her position, but it has to be pretty good. So she's in love with the Matic. It's amazing, but the bar is pretty high. So I think in order to have a home robot, it's going to have to be pretty incredible for her to be willing to have it in our home. But I take that as a challenge.
01:09:32 · Caitlin Kalinowski, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:09:32] S0: So I'm into it. My partner, not so much. So I'm very lucky to have a partner who's got a high bar, which means was like never going to take Waymo, took one Waymo, and now, never wants to take anything else. So definitely willing to update her position, but it has to be pretty good. So she's in love with the Matic. It's amazing, but the bar is pretty high. So I think in order to have a home robot, it's going to have to be pretty incredible for her to be willing to have it in our home. But I take that as a challenge. [01:10:04] S1: My wife is exactly the same way. She's like, "I don't want this thing in our house with Matic. Oh, wow, this is so cute." A recent example, a self-driving Tesla. She used to be so like, "No, don't do that." It was not that great originally, and now, she's like, "I don't want to drive any other car. This just feels like absurd to drive your car. I don't want to do that anymore." It's crazy how quickly that changes.
01:10:04 · Lenny Rachitsky, Caitlin Kalinowski
[01:10:04] S1: My wife is exactly the same way. She's like, "I don't want this thing in our house with Matic. Oh, wow, this is so cute." A recent example, a self-driving Tesla. She used to be so like, "No, don't do that." It was not that great originally, and now, she's like, "I don't want to drive any other car. This just feels like absurd to drive your car. I don't want to do that anymore." It's crazy how quickly that changes. [01:10:27] S0: So there's a big difference in my mind. This is a big categorical difference. There's a big difference between a car that is safer that drives itself versus a car that a human drives because you have an existence proof of the human driving car and you have the data. When you talk about homes, what is the delta? You have now a thing that you didn't have before doing things. So if it's bad at it, what are you relating it to? And if it's unsafe in any way, what are you relating that to? It's a much harder equation in my mind to get to a lot of people than a car where you can say, "Hey, Waymo save lives." You're going to have a fraction of the deaths using a Waymo, whether you're a passenger or you're not. When you already see people in San Francisco adapting how they respond around a Waymo versus any other car, so you're seeing behavioral changes that are based on trust, which is really cool. When you're talking about a new product that hasn't existed yet and is not essentially replacing something, that's a harder sell and you have to have a different story.
01:10:27 · Caitlin Kalinowski, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:10:27] S0: So there's a big difference in my mind. This is a big categorical difference. There's a big difference between a car that is safer that drives itself versus a car that a human drives because you have an existence proof of the human driving car and you have the data. When you talk about homes, what is the delta? You have now a thing that you didn't have before doing things. So if it's bad at it, what are you relating it to? And if it's unsafe in any way, what are you relating that to? It's a much harder equation in my mind to get to a lot of people than a car where you can say, "Hey, Waymo save lives." You're going to have a fraction of the deaths using a Waymo, whether you're a passenger or you're not. When you already see people in San Francisco adapting how they respond around a Waymo versus any other car, so you're seeing behavioral changes that are based on trust, which is really cool. When you're talking about a new product that hasn't existed yet and is not essentially replacing something, that's a harder sell and you have to have a different story. [01:11:26] S1: Something that someone needs to figure out with the Tesla self-driving is often, you're at a stop and you make eye contact and then, "Go ahead. Go ahead," or someone's about to cross and you're like, "Okay, go ahead." But the Tesla just does its own thing, and so it makes you look like an asshole a bunch of times like, "Oh, I'm not driving this and in control."
01:11:26 · Lenny Rachitsky, Caitlin Kalinowski
[01:11:26] S1: Something that someone needs to figure out with the Tesla self-driving is often, you're at a stop and you make eye contact and then, "Go ahead. Go ahead," or someone's about to cross and you're like, "Okay, go ahead." But the Tesla just does its own thing, and so it makes you look like an asshole a bunch of times like, "Oh, I'm not driving this and in control." [01:11:45] S0: Yeah. I had that happen once. You almost want a little two arms in the front to be gesturing or you go or something. It's amazing how much we actually rely on this human connection to decide even who's going to go in an intersection. [01:11:59] S1: Yeah. Okay. So zooming out a little bit, just what's cool about people like you is you're thinking and building things that will exist in the future. You're kind of living in the future and designing it, and you are one of the few people who has a glimpse into where things are going. So I'm curious just to ask, say in five years, what is the vision you have of what is different about our day-to-day robots, devices? Just what does it look like just roughly?