Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Sergey Levine
[00:00:00] S0: Given that endurance is required, who or what most inspires you? [00:00:00] S1: Boston Dynamics. I think there's a lot of things that we can debate on the technology side, but there is a lot of value in repeatedly showing something that people wouldn't have thought possible, even if there's all sorts of caveats and assumptions and so on. And certainly in robotics, whatever we might say about demos and whatnot, I think it's very fair to say that people have revised their thoughts about what's possible from seeing some of that stuff. I think I'm also inspired by organizations that create an atmosphere for experimentation. There are some research labs that have done a very good job of this. OpenAI has historically done a great job of this – of creating an atmosphere where individual researchers can experiment with things and be empowered to see those things through. ChatGPT was basically John Schulman's pet experiment for a while. It wasn't a concerted corporate strategy with lots of spreadsheets and pie charts. It was a pet project. I think there's something pretty inspiring about organizations that empower people to have pet projects turn into world-changing successes. Certainly one of the aspirations that I and my co-founders have here at Physical Intelligence is to provide some of that to the best of our ability. It's hard to do. [00:00:00] S0: I feel like Google used to have that one day "you can do whatever you want" thing. Is that the spirit of it?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Sergey Levine
[00:00:00] S0: I feel like Google used to have that one day "you can do whatever you want" thing. Is that the spirit of it? [00:00:00] S1: I was absolutely shocked, when I started working at Google, at the level of leverage that I felt I could have. One of the projects that I did with many of my colleagues there in 2015 was colloquially referred to as the arm farm. So we took a couple dozen robots, put them in a lab and had them collect data. I found out from somebody that they had a warehouse full of robots that nobody was using. I asked Jeff Dean and Vincent Vanhoucke if we could stick them in a lab. I was just thinking like, okay, they're not going to take me seriously. I was a level four research scientist. Jeff was like, "Yeah, let's do it. What do you need?" I just remember feeling like, wow, I had never in my life thought that I'd have that leverage. I mean, I was very young at the time. That's very special. And I think getting to a place where people can unlock their creativity and have that kind of agency can make for a very remarkable place.
· Sergey Levine, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: I was absolutely shocked, when I started working at Google, at the level of leverage that I felt I could have. One of the projects that I did with many of my colleagues there in 2015 was colloquially referred to as the arm farm. So we took a couple dozen robots, put them in a lab and had them collect data. I found out from somebody that they had a warehouse full of robots that nobody was using. I asked Jeff Dean and Vincent Vanhoucke if we could stick them in a lab. I was just thinking like, okay, they're not going to take me seriously. I was a level four research scientist. Jeff was like, "Yeah, let's do it. What do you need?" I just remember feeling like, wow, I had never in my life thought that I'd have that leverage. I mean, I was very young at the time. That's very special. And I think getting to a place where people can unlock their creativity and have that kind of agency can make for a very remarkable place. [00:00:00] S0: My friend Jesse has this great question, which is for companies that you're not involved with, which one do you most hope succeeds and why? People used to say Boom a lot because they want to fly places faster. Increasingly, as I've asked this question, people have said PI, because the sheer impact that it might have if you're successful is massive on such a global scale. And it's been really fun just to hear about all the ins and outs of how you're thinking about the problem and attacking it. When I do these interviews, I have the same traditional last question for everyone. What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you?
· Sergey Levine, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: It's a tough question to answer because I do think there were many moments in my career where I got a leg up on something. I think I have the kind of personality where I sometimes don't appreciate it in the moment and only reflect on it afterwards. The three moments in my career that stand out – actually one of them I'd already mentioned to you, which was the arm farm thing. I'm especially grateful to Jeff and to Vincent for being willing to take that bet on me and my colleagues. And there are a couple other moments. When I started my postdoc with Pieter Abbeel at Berkeley, I had zero robotics experience. I had done virtual character animation and computer graphics. I felt like that was a bet on my potential more so than my actual accomplishments. And there was another moment even earlier on. I got an internship at Nvidia that got me to experience some cool stuff when I was just a sophomore. And I think the hiring manager for that also took a bet on me. And I think that these kinds of things, they really matter in a person's career. And I think that in the moment, I should have been more grateful, but certainly in hindsight, it's something that made a big difference. And hopefully I can make that difference in other people's careers as well. [00:00:00] S0: Well, I've learned so much from you and your co-founders and so much today. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.