Going Direct Conversations
00:48:09 · Michael Cho
[00:48:09] S1: Yeah, so to be honest, I was a crypto skeptic three, four years ago until I discovered this project called Helium. These days, they call these decentralized physical infrastructure networks. So, I mean, the way maybe I explain it is, I mean, if you look at, let's say, for example, everyone knows Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a project that has never raised any money. And yet it has amassed a huge amount of compute and every year it's spent, I read somewhere like 0.5% of global electricity bill is used to mine Bitcoin. So huge amount of resources gathered without raising money as a project. So there is something very unique about crypto that is very different as a way to do capital formation or basically gather resources that is different from the limited liability company kind of what we're used to for a few hundred years, right? And yeah, so I do think it maps quite well for some of these things we need to advance and body AI. A lot of this data, I think ultimately should be collected what they call in the wild. I think in theory, you can spin up some warehouses to collect teleoperation data full and close, but I tend to think that those models that are trained just using like robots in the warehouse will overfit to those control environment. Ultimately, these AR models are just compression of the underlying data. So actually, I have a sense that for research to, I mean, if you want to build very, very generalizable model, you want the underlying data to be collected in the world out there. And so it seems to me, it's something very hard to do centralized. And crypto is a great way to just, it's like a bit permissionless, right? You get people to just show up, hey, help me collect this data in your home, and then we give you a token in exchange, right? It's almost like, kind of like what, I mean, fundamental Bitcoin is doing, right? It's like, you help me do this, I give you Bitcoin, something like that. So, and I feel that if structured the right way, you can get a lot of resources at scale globally. Whether, when I say resources, it could be the teleoperator, the man hour, right? Someone needs to control the robot, someone needs to deploy the robots, someone needs to pay for the robots, right? And so, and even real estate, right? I mean, these robots need to be in somewhere, right? So paying for the real estate as well.
00:50:41 · Michael Cho, Jordan Wolfe, Chris Paxton
So all these, I feel that can be incentivized with crypto if done well. So anyway, I don't want to shoot my project too much, but effectively, that's my belief for the last few years. So really want to really get, yeah, take a good crack at using it. Yeah, I do believe it. I mean, you know, if it's done well, I think it can be, It definitely won't be the scale of all these large AI labs, but I think it still can be maybe a few billion of US dollar kind of resources that can be gathered this way. I think crypto is way more mature now. There's a lot of capital within the crypto market. And I think if we can activate those capital and then pull it and then turn it around and give to people like Crystal, then again, accelerate their work, I think that would be a great thing to try. [00:51:33] S2: Cool. All right, you guys ready for a little rapid fire for a rip-up? [00:51:38] S1: Yeah, let's do it. [00:51:39] S2: Sure. All right. I'll start with you, Chris, and then Mike, I'll go over to you. What's one myth about robotics you wish you would die? [00:51:52] S0: I don't know. I don't have a good answer for that one. What are myths about robotics right now? I think a lot of people overestimate what things can do from videos. Let's say that. I think that generally the rule of thumb when you see a video of a robot doing something is that you should always assume that it can do literally what it can see and nothing else. And I think that a lot of people tend to generalize a little bit more than that. There. That would be my
00:51:52 · Chris Paxton, Michael Cho
[00:51:52] S0: I don't know. I don't have a good answer for that one. What are myths about robotics right now? I think a lot of people overestimate what things can do from videos. Let's say that. I think that generally the rule of thumb when you see a video of a robot doing something is that you should always assume that it can do literally what it can see and nothing else. And I think that a lot of people tend to generalize a little bit more than that. There. That would be my [00:52:23] S1: Yeah, for me, I think it's even like, I wonder whether we're in a local minimum where the whole world is just trying to gather a lot of data and then throw in a lot of compute to solve and for the AI. Chris and I talk about it often, like I call it the mosquito intelligence. Like, you know, I can barely like catch, like, you know, kill a damn mosquito. The thing is so tiny, probably running at 0.1 watt, you know, must be have... Must have a very, very tiny, like whatever embodied AI model that's in this brain. But it's got excellent physical intelligence. So there's something missing there that nature has figured out that we, we, I feel that we're just maybe using, don't know how many percentage of global GDP to, to gather this data and, and compute to solve something. Yeah. I don't know. So I don't know whether it's Amoeba, but you know, I, I just thought that there's something there.
00:52:23 · Michael Cho, Jordan Wolfe
[00:52:23] S1: Yeah, for me, I think it's even like, I wonder whether we're in a local minimum where the whole world is just trying to gather a lot of data and then throw in a lot of compute to solve and for the AI. Chris and I talk about it often, like I call it the mosquito intelligence. Like, you know, I can barely like catch, like, you know, kill a damn mosquito. The thing is so tiny, probably running at 0.1 watt, you know, must be have... Must have a very, very tiny, like whatever embodied AI model that's in this brain. But it's got excellent physical intelligence. So there's something missing there that nature has figured out that we, we, I feel that we're just maybe using, don't know how many percentage of global GDP to, to gather this data and, and compute to solve something. Yeah. I don't know. So I don't know whether it's Amoeba, but you know, I, I just thought that there's something there. [00:53:19] S2: Yeah. What's, uh, what's the most overhyped narrative and you can choose even AI or robotics today, Chris. You're into stuff every day. You gotta have a guess on this one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know.
00:53:19 · Jordan Wolfe, Chris Paxton, Michael Cho
[00:53:19] S2: Yeah. What's, uh, what's the most overhyped narrative and you can choose even AI or robotics today, Chris. You're into stuff every day. You gotta have a guess on this one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. [00:53:35] S0: I don't know. I don't know. I don't tend to think. I mean, I'm just very optimistic right now. I don't know. I don't think there's a lot that's super overhyped. I still think that there are... You could argue that individual companies are overhyped or something like that, which I don't necessarily know if I want to go start something. But I think that generally... No, I think that it's hard for me to think of a direction. I think all of it's worth investigating at least. I don't know. Michael, do you have a better answer than me? Yeah, maybe the overhyped is maybe some of the timelines that's been thrown around. Yeah. But I suspect it's over hype in the near term, but under hype in the long term. [00:54:25] S1: You know, the typical. [00:54:26] S0: I think that's fair. Like, I think everything, I think all of these are equally good directions. I think that people are, things will generally take longer than you expect. Like, that's always the rule. [00:54:36] S1: Yeah. Especially robotics. Yeah. Especially in robotics. Physics is brutal, man. No mercy. Right. [00:54:43] S2: Yeah. Yeah. Chris, if you weren't building robots, what would you be doing?
00:54:43 · Jordan Wolfe, Chris Paxton, Michael Cho, Jordan Wolfe
[00:54:43] S2: Yeah. Yeah. Chris, if you weren't building robots, what would you be doing? [00:54:51] S0: I don't know. Right now. Like, well, yeah. So part of the reason that I started doing this, like, I do a lot of, like, writing my blog. I like writing about stuff. So that's, like, I have a blog in addition to all this that I keep up most weeks. Not all. Not all. Yeah. So that's part of the genesis of a lot of this, actually. How about you, Michael? [00:55:18] S1: Oh, gosh. No robotics. It would be very boring, isn't it? I don't know. I do some music on the side. I street sing sometimes. Maybe I street sing more, but I think robotics is more fun. I do robotics, I guess. [00:55:36] S2: Who else should I talk to going direct about robotics invited AI? Any name come to mind? Yeah, you should maybe talk to some of these founders from the Chinese manufacturer. [00:55:46] S1: I think they will offer a very interesting perspective. Yeah. Yeah. Most of them only speak Chinese though. So that's the problem. If you can find someone. Yeah. I think they would, yeah. They will offer a very different perspective from, yeah, what we typically read about in the West, I think. [00:56:08] S2: Chris? [00:56:11] S0: You already talked to Bernt and to Physical Intelligence, who are two of the top ones that I would have recommended, right? I think they're doing really cool stuff. Let's see. [00:56:26] S3: Wow, you're getting on the top. I know, man.