Robots Like Us - EP 92 Andrew Kiguel and Matt McMullen From Realbotix

0:00All of those robots that I've seen in any of these events are remote controlled. There's no AI. If you think about loneliness, something like 25 % of the world identifies as lonely. If you're a 75-year-old man who's widowed, you're not going to go on Tinder to go on a bunch of coffee dates. I think that having a human-like embodiment for a robot and for an artificial intelligence creates a bridge between humans and technology that can't be done in any other way. Harvard came out with a report about nine months ago and the number one use case for AI, not that there aren't several, but the number one was companionship.

0:35For all the people that think it's strange, I get at least five or six messages a week on LinkedIn email everywhere, which is like, I'm so lonely. Can you please design and sell something to me that will solve my loneliness? So what I wanted was I wanted the face to come off like Westworld. So this is how the faces would peel off from a robot, a robot that can do karate chops and has a 30 minute battery life. Like, what is that good for? There's a lot of smoke and mirrors on social media. I'm the only CEO of a robotics company that's got to worry about the dress for the robots and them having nice manicures and nice, you know, hairstyles.

1:08If you are watching this episode, you will see right away that I have a couple of robotic companions behind me and they look quite human-like. They come from a company called Realbotics. We're joined by its two top executives today, Andrew Kegel and Matt McMullen. This is going to be a little bit of an adventure. Realbotics is trying to make human-like humanoids. They do have a background in making real dolls, companions, sometimes for emotional support and sometimes for sexual support. But Realbotics is creating a clean break with that past, and it is meant to create a new type of human-like robot that's out in the world, maybe being a greeter at a hotel, offering help at a hospital, or even being something like a tutor.

2:08They're full of artificial intelligence technology to speak and hear and communicate with you. The robots have a lot of animatronic details. Instead of doing the all-metal factory worker-looking robot or the generic ones we see that are supposed to be doing tasks inside of homes, a lot of these robots have these circular kind of blank faces. Robotics is all in on making these things look realistic. they've got animatronic components, they've got artificial intelligence software built in so that you can talk to and hear from the robots. They're a little weird, I guess, for a lot of people, and I get it.

2:52I also think Realbotics has put more thought and artistry and philosophy in what they're making than just about anyone else. I think they've got a bit of work still to do, but I appreciate the care and effort that they're putting into this because I suspect robots won't be generic and robot-y looking universally. I think we will have things that are human-like and somebody should be trying to do this and somebody should be trying to do it well. So we went to Las Vegas, to their headquarters, sat down, we had an interview. We're going to where we see how these robots are made. This will be on our YouTube channel.

3:39I go on a drive with one of the robots, Aria. We go down the Las Vegas Strip. It's going to be fantastic. As ever, please leave a review, some likes for the podcast on Apple or Spotify, or tell your friends that you enjoy the podcast. It would make a huge difference to people finding this show. I think you'll enjoy this chat. It is a little strange, quite a different take on robotics. Fascinating stuff. As ever, I am Ashley Vance. This is Core Memory. Here we go.

4:31Gentlemen, hello. Thank you for having us here. We're in Las Vegas at Robotics HQ. This is exciting. There's so many places to go with this story. How would you guys, just to give the viewers, and you should absolutely be watching this episode and not just listening to it. But, yeah, like, I mean, how do you guys usually describe what you do? Sure. So we are an AI software company and a robotics hardware company. We sort of marry both into an all-in-one solution, but we've come up with sort of a different way of thinking about AI and robotics that I think is very unique and different from what everybody else in the world is doing.

5:13Yeah, I mean, I live in Silicon Valley, not far from the American version of humanoid robot central with Tesla, One X, figure they're all down the street. But, you know, they're all doing the worker robot that's meant to be in a factory. That's most of what I see coming out of China right now. What I love about you guys' stories, I don't see anyone else doing anything quite like what you're doing. I mean, you guys are distinctly not making a factory worker robot. That's right. We're not making robots to replace physical human labor. We're also not making robots that look like metallic cyborgs.

5:51We're sort of focused more on the human interaction and different things that robots can do, such as customer service, companionship, healthcare, education. And in those scenarios, you need a robot that has a more human appearance so that it's not intimidating. And you need an AI that is flexible. And you need a robot an AI that is customizable and can work all day, seven days a week. And so we've got Aria. We've got Aria and Melody. Aria and Melody. And are they, they're kind of, I mean, Aria, she's got her own social media account. She's sort of, is she the one you put forward most often as like the public face of all this?

6:33Yeah. So that was an intentional strategy for us in that most of the other companies have these generic robots are making a lot of the same looking robot. And people still identify, you know, Optimus. People know sort of what that looks like, and it's got a brand. We wanted to create a robot with a personality that has a distinct appearance, a distinct social media presence. As an ambassador to the company, I show what we can do. Now, one of the amazing things about our company is we can customize the appearance, the voice, and the personality of all of our robots. Yeah, okay. I want to get in.

7:08I mean, you guys have done a ton of tech from the appearance level stuff that you're talking about. But then there's all this machinery underneath and software. So I want to get in all that. I also want to give people a flavor for how this started because unlike some of the humanoid robot companies, it's been like a boom. They've all appeared over the last five or six years. I mean, Matt, you've been on this journey for quite a while. Well, yeah, I mean, so tell me, tell me, when I was preparing to meet you guys, I mean, there's stories going back 10 years plus about your work in this field. When did you get into robotics, and how did you get into that?

7:49Well, you know, I mostly consider myself an artist, and I like to create very lifelike-looking pieces of art, three-dimensional you know kind of kind of like someone that would maybe do wax figures in a wax museum or something like that like that realism has always been kind of the core of what I want to do and 2016 or so I got really more fascinated with the idea of bringing something like that to life as it were and you know really at the center of all that I always had this idea of like he says a personality and a character versus, you know, a lot of people think of robots as a machine. And I want to think of them as a personality.

8:36And I think that having a human-like embodiment for a robot and for an artificial intelligence creates a bridge between humans and technology that can't be done in any other way. So it was really important that the robot was able to express you know micro expressions and make eye contact and kind of look around and move the way a person would move with no real goal no real task other than occupying that space and kind of feeling like you're interacting with a person so what did you i mean what did you do you're you're i think you're in san diego at the time yeah and we're from california and you from california and you're you're you said you're an artist i mean you're a musician and yeah i did did that too yeah yeah Yeah.

9:21And so, I mean, this happens in 2016. You want to make this thing. How do you even set out to do it? Well, I mean, so I always kind of look at the way a lot of, you know, you look at the landscape of robotics right now, it's just blowing up. And I think at the core of most of these companies, you have engineers, mechanical engineers, electronics engineers. So they're building this roughly human shaped thing that can move that has arms and legs. And then maybe at the end of all that they say oh, let's make it look human And so the last step in their sequence is making it look human Which is sometimes going to be an enormous challenge because the underlying Mechanisms are not completely able to fit within a human envelope So my approach is I've got the envelope.

10:11I'm going to work backwards from that. Okay How can I fit the mechanical components that I need inside of that realistic envelope? versus trying to tackle that last, if that makes sense. Yeah. And we're the only group that has robots with human proportions. And so the clothes you see here is human clothing. And, you know, I think I joke, I'm the only CEO of a robotics company that's got to worry about the dress for the robots and them having nice manicures and nice, you know, hairstyles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, all the rest are, I mean... They're just metallic or plastic-looking cyborgs. Yeah, I mean...

10:47And functional, not dissing what they're doing. Right. But this is, you know, because we're not in Silicon Valley, and we've sort of been creating things as we think customers are going to want them, incredible things can happen when you're not sort of part of that group think where they're all sort of competing to create that all-in-one cyborg that might be available in, you know, five or ten years. Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of them, I've seen them try to put clothing on some of the robots, and it just doesn't work. No, it looks goofy. It looks weird. Well, in order to get the bipedal movement going, you've got to have sort of different sized hips and body shape.

11:25And so you sort of have to choose. It's not going to be able to wear human clothing if you're getting it to do that. And so I think we've been able to bridge that gap with our motorized wheelbases where a robot can wear human clothing. So it can act as a fashion ambassador, a model, or even working in places where they're not intimidating. They look friendly. They're customizable that our peers aren't even thinking about this kind of stuff. Yeah Well, okay, but you know like in Silicon Valley today I mean these humanoid robotics companies are raising like hundreds of millions of dollars They've got the massive factories, you know, it's a pretty expensive Undertaking when you started out to do this.

12:00I mean, I don't even know. It's a picture where you and was this like You hired a team well first, you know on your garage Not in a large space and not with a large team either. And frankly, a lot of the people that co-founded a lot of this stuff with me, none of us were getting paid. You know, this was a labor of passion. It was a labor of having a vision and wanting to do it, which is different. You know, I think it's really easy to sell an idea to people who have money of like, hey, this is going to be the next iPhone. Like, this is going to be huge. These robots are going to be able to do all these jobs.

12:38We won't have to deal with human beings anymore. And that is the reality of the way that thinking works. That's easy to raise money. But this is something else. Like this is a marriage of the idea of that same technology being used in a different way. And being used, what I would arguably say, is a beneficial function for humanity to be able to interact with our technology that we're creating. It's funny because when you watch sci-fi stuff, most often, of course you see images of the clone army and these factory workers. But I feel like most of the sci-fi we care about, it usually is some robot you're interacting with.

13:18And sometimes it looks like C-3PO where it's kind of robotic and everything. But if you go back to, I mean, often it's not, right? And it is either a human form or it's some sort of foreign form, but it's a being. And it is funny the way everything has tilted to just totally toward the metal cyborg type. Like, I'm actually kind of surprised more people haven't been working on this and that you guys, you've been at this for a while. And I see, you know, I've been to Japan. I met with Professor Ishiguro, I think, who's he's been chasing, trying to make like one offs, more like artistic pieces, I think, like research just for him.

14:02but he's been just I'm just surprised there's like not more of this really yeah I think it takes a very specific mindset to want to do that um and and frankly a lot of people have fallen short and you know what scares a lot of people that that start thinking about this is that uncanny valley yeah yeah you know that that you've you've attempted to make this thing look and behave like a human and you end up with this creepy factor that that's off-putting the people and they don't want to interact. So the magic, I think, is making them look human enough that you do want to interact, that you're more mesmerized than sort of put off.

14:42Interestingly, when you look at the end markets, so we're targeting hospitals, seniors, care facilities, schools, every shopping mall, every casino, every hotel, every resort, every mall. It's a massive end market. whereas all of the other you know sort of group think robotics companies are all targeting that sort of industrial base you know moving boxes around and like i said before i think because we've never been part of that we've been sort of working on the sides and sort of like what do we want to do we've been able to come with something that's unique and you know you said why aren't other people doing this this is actually really hard to do yeah to make a robot with facial expressions that can talk 100 plus languages, it's hard to replicate.

15:30And so while they're focused on trying to figure out how to make a robot walk without tripping and have a battery life that lasts more than 30 minutes, we've come up with our own solutions because we think that's what consumers are going to want. That's what we think businesses are going to need. So the walking part is pretty key because that is for the humanoid robots in the factories. I mean, walking is really hard. It takes a lot. Like you mentioned, it takes a lot of battery. But I would say, why is walking so important? Humans have already discovered that walking is one of the least efficient things people do.

15:58We bike, we boat, all kinds of things that we drive to figure out solutions that are more efficient than walking. I don't care what you see on social media. Nobody has nailed the walking down properly. Nobody. I go to the shows, and when the lights come, I see robots walking into walls, turning over, and there's always a human there teleoperating it with security all around. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors on social media. We're trying to create autonomous robots that can see. So we've developed, I think, probably the most advanced vision system in the world for a robot to create true embodied AI that can act autonomously.

16:34It can see things, interpret them through the AI, and then react physically or emotionally. Okay. And when you were starting out on this, I mean, you have to build all the machinery on the inside to do some of this. But then you had this in mind as well. like I want the skin to be good I want yes to be good well I mean I had a crash course it was for me it was a lot of analyzing the way our faces move and then figuring out how to get that to work on on the robot and with the silicone skin and all of that and one really key feature for me was I want you know I had built animatronics before and a lot of the robots that had been built prior and even still today, the skin is glued and attached permanently to all the actuators.

17:24So what I wanted was I wanted the face to come off, like Westworld. And I wanted to be able to take the face off and get in there really easily to fix or adjust something and then put the face back on. So we came up with the magnetic attachments that we now use for our faces, which is really key, I think. one nice thing about it too is that the magnets can be moved around within the silicone skin to get different points of articulation and you can add more magnets if you need you can add additional anchor points if you need but that face is still removable so that was really part of that fundamental starting point was figuring out how does that look on the outside when these things move.

18:09And I did, I mean, I'm no mechanical engineer, but I had to figure out where things should be, which way they should move, how far they should move, how fast they should move. And I think a lot of robots I've seen go over, they go overboard with that stuff, like super expression. And an interesting thing about that is we think about our robots as a platform. So you can use the same robotic skeleton and create different characters. So, you know, I think we mentioned to you before, you can peel off the face, put a different wig on, use our app and choose a different personality. And within one minute, you have an entirely different robot under the same platform.

18:44And because our robots can use our AI or any other AI on the planet, it adds an extra layer of flexibility in that you can say, okay, I want the robot to use our customized AI, or maybe I just want it to run chat GPT. We provide that customization and flexibility that, again, nobody else is thinking about these types of use cases. Well, and I wanted to ask you guys about the face coming off part, because I think it's really, I mean, for what you guys are trying to do, which is turn this into like a business. Well, it is a business. We're not trying to turn it. I mean, you know, grow the business, business doing all these tasks that you're talking about in hospitals and stores and things like that.

19:24I mean, clearly you want to make the machine as mass producible as possible. You want to be able to take off the faces to change, to create this variety. there is like there is an element to it when you see it without the face you know it's sort of like peeking behind the curtain right and the wizard of oz kind of element goes away it's a little arresting i think just for some people because you're like oh yeah that's a that's a fucking robot you know and i was i was i wanted to ask you i was curious if you guys um how you thought about this and it's like oh maybe we should never reveal you know what lurks behind the curtain or Well, I mean, I think it's cool because, you know, I can't remember ever seeing, you know, a humanoid robot with a skin that just peels off like that.

20:10Yeah. So for me, it's kind of like... Which was patented, by the way. It is patented. But it was just, it was for initially more of a convenience. Like, how am I going to be able to get in here to fix this stuff? because the traditional approach was like, you've got to take the back of the head off and take all this other stuff out just to get to the thing that's sitting right behind the nose. And I said, I don't want to do that. I want to really be able to get to any aspect of this and I think it looks great. Without slicing the skin. And we can even look at one of the faces here that I have.

20:44So this would be sort of an example. So this is how the faces would peel off of a robot and we can create different personalities. I'm touching the skin. But you know, what's great about it is the other aspect, which is equally important to the convenience, is if I want to have four different characters, I shouldn't need four different robots. It's just one robot, four faces. So that was the whole... It's got some weight to it. Yeah, and that's what makes it look real when it's moving. How do you guys do like the hair? I mean somebody has to do that by hand Artists. It is a marriage of art and technology and chemistry And so this one doesn't have the magnets.

21:28This is more of a tester But we would put the magnets here and then you could peel off one face Do any repairs if you needed to and then just Swap it up with this one throw a wig on it and then you have a whole different character and it's fast And is there something like obviously Hollywood does all kinds of things like this, but is your skin is this your skin like totally different to what yeah well I mean there there are thousands of ways to make silicone and only 10 of them are right so we have our own blend you know like there are different additives there are different things people can use for softening for deadening for pigmentation that you know there's so many different ways so we do have our own special way of going about that.

22:14Okay. Is this Nadia? No, that's Aria. That's the same face as the blonde there. Okay. This episode is brought to you by Brex. I spend all of my time inside of the world's most ambitious companies making rockets, semiconductors, robots. Very often the business is struggling and then all of a sudden things click and take off. Then the company's expenses spin out of control. They either have to clamp down, start counting pennies, or cross their fingers, hope for the best that the quarter or the year comes out okay. Brex was built to handle exactly these situations. It helps you move fast, spend smarter at the same time.

22:55They've got credit cards, banking, expense management all in one place. They've got AI technology looking over everything, taking care of tasks for you. No more chasing down receipts. We use Brexit Core memory it has been a godsend and given me back so much time giants like anthropic and zoom use brex as well and so do tens of thousands of startups you should use brex and you can find out exactly how to do that by going to brex.com slash core memory well so we can mass produce when you're thinking about scaling and building a business we can start mass producing the internal robotic skeletons and the heads we 3d print the body panels oh okay and then we have molds made for certain characters that we can just get done very quickly and if somebody wanted a custom face and matt you can talk to this with the sort of laser imaging we can do that we will charge an extra price but some people yeah yeah like i said like i told you before at one point nvidia had approached us about making a jensen robot and like you know we should do that yeah if you're listening we'll give you a Jensen robot for free.

24:08But yeah, maybe talk about how that. So another third benefit of this whole approach is the customization that you can do. So essentially, you can digitally scan pretty much anyone, take that, convert it into a physical sculpture, marry it to the robot core, and now you've got that character. So that could be anything from some fanciful character that someone designed in a 3D modeling software versus an actual person that you want to scan and replicate. And by the way, we wouldn't, if someone came to us and said, hey, I want a Kim Kardashian or a Scarlett Johansson, we wouldn't be like, great, let's do that.

24:46We would only replicate a human with their permission. Okay. Okay. And like, if I wanted, okay, say I just wanted to order one that you guys already have today. How long does it take to build one of these and how much does it cost? Our aim is, so we have three different models. Our aim is to deliver within three months. Okay. We sell the bust. So if you just wanted someone to sort of talk as a receptionist, it's sort of call it from the shoulders up. And that retails right now for us for about$20 ,000. Okay. The models that we have here, we call the M series. And these are robotic from the waist up.

25:24It's about 39 degrees of freedom. and what's special about these is it can plug into the wall any normal electrical outlet they can plug in so you're getting all day all week functionality without a recharge and then our top of the line robot we call the f-series which has a motorized wheelbase that's programmable and can you know move around yeah that has about 52 degrees of freedom okay okay and and you guys Because, I mean, so today they're kind of built by hand. Today, yeah. But keep in mind we're an early stage company, so we're not, you know, so sometimes we get calls and people expect to see, you know, a robotic assembly line.

26:02But we are still finalizing some of our designs. There's ways we're always learning how to make things a little more efficient. The goal would be to bring our prices down by about 50 % in the next few years. Well, that's all I was going to ask because I have no idea what, like, you know, such new technology, people wrapping their heads around this. And obviously, I know enough that if you get the volume, I mean, all the economics start to change. And so... I think eventually we'll be able to sell a robot like this for about$30 ,000. Okay. Okay. Okay. And maybe, and like I order it and it comes...

26:37Three months later. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And I know, okay. And then we would charge additional things. So we do have a monthly subscription to the app. So similar to how a Tesla updates itself overnight through Wi-Fi, through the app, we can deliver things. Like let's say that Google comes out with a new AI, Ashley AI. We can update the robot to run that AI remotely. If there's a new robotic animation like, I don't know, like prayer hands, they can do a lot of things. But let's say prayer hands or something like that. We can update a lot of those things remotely through the AI. If somebody has a diagnostic problem with the robot, we can sort of pop in, take a look at it, and give people sort of direct assistance to what's happening.

27:18And so we charge for that as well. And it allows us, if our AI gets updated, we can also do those updates, again, remotely. And, like, since you started on this originally, LLabs, you know, the AI technology has come along. There are no LLabs. Right, yeah. This has come along so far. Yeah, our first AI was scripted using a language called AI ML, which is essentially a very elaborate A versus B. Like, if this is what's said, then one of these three responses will come out. And to some extent, it was random. But it's amazing how it came across as, like, super believable because it was so well done, right?

28:00like the fundamental code was well thought out and very versatile about talking about a lot of different things. But when LLM started to hit the mainstream, it was a game changer. That's right. It's got to be a big deal. It's a huge deal. And it's so incredible how little things like humor and knowledge about X, Y, or Z can be woven into this personality. And then on top of it, the voices now are just incredible. you know, the synthesized voices that are available. Oh, I see. Because you guys want to change personality. Yeah, so you've got this unparalleled degree of, you know, I can change the personality to be witty.

28:42I can try different voices. Excellent. I can put different faces on the robot. I can change the way she's dressed. And, like, you really give people an unbelievable amount of flexibility on customizing post-purchase. Yeah, right. And we've also been able to tackle things like memory. And so while I listen to sort of what, again, some of our peers are doing, they're working on how do we create AI with a memory that learns about you. So one day you say, hey, I don't like apples. And it remembers that and it carries that forward into your conversations. So we've developed an ability for our AI to also have a memory when it's interacting with people.

29:18So it learns about you, remembers what it learns and incorporates that into the AI. So because you guys have your own model. I mean, I can use Chattribute or Gemini or whatever if I want. But you guys have your own. The idea is you'll just go to the app and select what you want. And so we get approached by a lot of AI companies that say, hey, can we integrate our AI into your app so that it is part of something that a user or a client can select. Okay. All right. I know this is not your favorite topic. I just want to do some of the background on some of this. I mean, this does sort of have its origin more in the companionship kind of part, I think, right?

29:53or is that well i mean the way i would put it is companionship comes in a lot of different forms yeah um and it is a vital part of being human um and also the the fundamental skills needed to create a very human-like robot were things that i learned along my path to get here um and so i think it started out as more of like a physical companionship and then it started to trajectory moving into emotional and mental and all of the other layers that can go into that. So at the core of it, for me anyway, like looking back, it's very clear that that path had to be exactly what it was for me to be able to have the skill set that I need to do what I'm doing now.

30:39But then you guys are in a tough spot because you want to take the business in this one direction. And then, I mean, there is always, at least at this moment in time, there's going to be a group of people who are like oh this is like a sex bot thing right so it's an interesting way so it's not that we're taking the business in a separate direction so real botics at its core has always been a commercial enterprise use product okay there is a separate company that is more focused on what i would say robots that are capable of physical intimacy and what we're doing is we're sort of separating those two businesses out because they had different end markets and we don't want one to cannibalize the other.

31:24And so by splitting up the businesses, and today they're different legal entities, we're able to have each business lean into its expertise. Okay. And the other, is it real doll? Is that the other? That would be the direct to consumer. Okay. Okay. So I mean, like, look, I'm a nerd and I'm into like all the stuff and i find i'm actually into just like the culture of robotics and and all the different forms of stakes but i understand like for you guys there's gonna be some people who are just like that's weird you know yeah and it's but you know it's kind of like um you know everyone has a computer yeah you can watch porn on a computer so you know it's not that that's all it's good for and it's it's kind of like some of the the origins of some technologies along you know humanity's path like dvds yeah initially were developed and and flourished with adult content yeah does that mean you're never going to watch a dvd probably not right you know it's even if you look at the advancements in the internet like most payment systems came out of online gambling yeah um certainly most of the what the way streaming has developed has come out of the pornography business.

32:37And so you want to sort of look and use the technologies that have been developed for some of these other purposes and see how can we leverage that to make it more mainstream, more accessible. Well, to be clear, I mean, we are in a moment in time when, you know, I mean, it's like these AIs are getting... Yeah. This is not like that unusual or anything. I mean, we're going to be interacting with these machines. Yeah. Well, I think robots are going to be everywhere, AI agents. This is some of the biggest market opportunities in history. But I want to go back to what you said that some people think it's weird.

33:15It's not weird. If you think about things like loneliness, because when we think about this stuff, we're not like, this is for sex. We're like, this is about companionship. It's about making somebody's life better. And if you think about loneliness, something like 25 % of the world identifies as lonely. It's an epidemic, leads to depression, which can lead to suicide, other morbidities. And when you think about longevity, there's been tons of research. It's not just about exercising, eating well, it's about your social community and having people to interact with. For people that might be geographically isolated, maybe they have PTSD, maybe social anxiety, they don't live in a town where you can just go, or maybe just for age-related, like if you're a 75-year-old man who's widowed, you're not going to go on Tinder to go on a bunch of coffee dates.

34:00What we're providing is an assistive technology for people to tackle that issue, which is a major problem around the world. So the AI advancements today are so good that you have even through our AI avatars or through our robots, something that can interact with you, remember your prior conversations, learn about you and fill that gap as an alternative relationship. It's not weird. We're helping people. Like I know a hundred percent. I'm just, yeah yeah no the people the people who always criticize is always like the the you know the reporter or someone who lives in new york that's got like doesn't understand they're like wow kids are gonna no no you're you're missing what the target market is yeah and then my so my dad right now he's 92 and you know it's like he's it's really frustrating he's he's used to be an avid reader he used to love the stock market he like he's struggling to use a computer now he can't read because he can't see and he wants to like talk to somebody yeah you know and then you know how it is i mean it's it's awful it's part of getting old it's like it's like the people around him don't want to hear the same story the 50th time but he like you otherwise he's bored he wants to talk to somebody so harvard came out with a report about nine months ago they did this massive study on ai use cases and the number one use case for ai not that there aren't several but the number one was companionship.

35:20So people go on chat GPT and like tell me a joke. And even when we had sort of our chat bot on our website, people are just looking for conversation. So one of the things we're looking to launch this year is an AI skin. So basically it'd be a digital avatar that you can log into. I think we would offer it maybe for free that then you just log into your chat GPT or Grok or whatever it is. You choose the face, you choose the voice, and then you can just leave it walk around your house and like how do I cook this what was the score in the hockey game last night tell me a joke whatever and for someone like your dad yeah that might be something really cool maybe you know just to have somebody there that he can talk to all day yeah I mean the reality is people are already and are going to continue to actually form bonds with AI characters no like and and and at some point a character on a screen is is a vastly different experience than An embodiment of an actual physical robot who you know in theory could be part of your life could be a friend Or even someone who's you know very close to you So I'm like with where you guys are going and I don't even mean this stuff like in that devil's advocate way Yeah, I just think there's oh there's people yeah, but I mean in the started like you guys you know, I think some people's mind will immediately I think because Just we've seen robots in portrayed in media and stuff a lot of times.

36:43So we had these conceptions, but now we're at this moment in time where it's like, this is... You're far more informed about this stuff than somebody who's looking at this stuff for the first time and they're nervous. I remember going on a podcast and they were like, oh, we just want to talk about this stuff. And I went in there and they had these three PhDs on there who started attacking me about this and like, wait, this is going to be kids. And I was like, no, no, we're not thinking about that. We're thinking about this as assistive tools to help people and to help companies. But there's going to be that level of skepticism out there that you know, it is for anything.

37:19You've got people out there who hate on robots, period. They're not in favor of factory worker robots because that's putting people out of jobs. They're not in favor of self-driving taxis because that puts people out of jobs. There is an undeniable group in any of these arenas that you might find robots in. There's going to be people that don't like it, that don't want it, that criticize it, that will come up with reasons why this is bad. We can't do this. So, I mean, that's never stopped any advancement in human history, and I don't think this is any exception. It was your butt that was in Lars and the Reels All.

37:57Yeah, so is something like that, is that net positive for you guys, or is that... I think it's positive. I mean, look, it's a great story, actually, that movie. I worked with the producer who literally wrote the story because they did the research. And it was actually not a far-off depiction of somebody who would need that. And I think it served a therapeutic purpose for the character of the movie. But is it a double-edged sword for the company? You must have to think these things through. because it's like, in some ways, it's humanizing all this and showing this kind of real situation where this could play out.

38:42But then some people are going to be like, oh, this is so strange. This guy. Well, I think, well, for all the people that think it's strange, I get at least five or six messages a week on LinkedIn email everywhere, which is like, I'm so lonely. Can you please design and sell something to me that will solve my loneliness? Like, you know, people are desperate for some type of interaction. Some kind of connection. Well, so I think when you've got people who are super critical of, you know, the topic and of the underlying thought processes behind any kind of virtual companion or synthetic companion, it's that function that humans feel necessary to police each other.

39:26Like, I'm going to impose my worldview on you. and I don't really like I'm sorry you're lonely but you need to find another way because I'm not okay with this yeah right I'm not okay with you being happy with a digital avatar I don't I don't like it therefore you can't have it and I think that's a bigger problem than some guy in the privacy of his own home feeling happy right and like who cares if this guy's got a you know a connection with something that's not real. So emotional attachment generally happens when there's an interaction happening and like it clicks off your endorphins, your dopamine, serotonin, these types of things, which allow you to form a connection to something.

40:12And I always talk about my children, you know, building attachments to stuffed animals or some prized possession. But if you have something that is physical, that can converse with you and can sort of hit those things, you know, the serotonin, the endorphins, all that in your mind, you're going to be able to form an attachment, an emotional attachment to that thing. It checks off the boxes that allow you to do that, which again, an assistive technology to help with things like depression, loneliness, social interaction issues. We can deliver that. How many people in the world do you think have a robotic companion?

40:51so i think in asia the idea of i mean i'm sure you've seen the movie her this you know sort of a digital in that movie it was even you know it's just a voice and so i think it's developed to the point where some of these these digital avatars can be used i don't think there's a lot of people that have robotic companions yet but it's growing there's a movement out there that's growing it's just it's just another interface right yeah like the robot is is an interface similar to an alexa right it's just the embodiment looks human and i think where people get triggered is like well but she's attractive yeah so therefore i'm not okay with that so you need to make all your robots look decidedly average because this makes me uncomfortable yeah and so think about that yeah Like, why does that person get to dictate?

41:42And again, if this is making a person feel happy and somehow fulfilled and filling a void that they had, why is it your job to say no? And the technology, I mean, there's not a lot of people because the technology wasn't there before. The reason why AI and robots are so hot today is, well, robotic things have existed for a long time, and AI as a notion has been around for a long time. It's only been in the last few years that AI has advanced enough that can be integrated into robotics to create something that is usable by consumers. It just wasn't available before. Yeah, but I want to ask you about that.

42:15I mean, because it has advanced really, really quick. Yeah. But, okay, but we've had, it's probably like around two years now running. We've had people talking to their chat bot, you know, returning to it for intimate conversations, trying to work things out in their life. Like, that is a phenomenon that's been going on. I just do not understand why. I really don't understand why there's so much money being poured into the humanoid robots versus, like, I don't understand why you guys don't have competitors that are all funded with, you know. Because this seems like it's so obvious to me that something big is going on.

42:56To what he said, it's hard. It's harder than it seems. yeah um it's easier to make like the farther away you step from the human embodiment the easier it becomes yeah right like and and again robots have have been around forever and you see car factories full of these robotic arms assembling things they're massive and they're obviously not human shaped right so the closer you get to a human the harder it becomes there's also this group think happening, where everybody's trying to compete and build these, again, these cyborg robots that can walk and do things that we just have never bought into.

43:37We came from different roots. And so we're not part of that group thing. And then the other thing that we always have to battle, what makes me the angriest is when people think, oh, our robots are just a novelty. Well, they're not. They have facial expressions. We talked about if they can plug into the wall, they have vision that can actually see. Is this person in a good mood, a bad mood? Is Is there danger? Is there theft? Is there a security issue? These are really hard things to do. We're not a novelty. We're providing AI and robots that have real world utility. So it really bothers me that we're sort of singled out in that way because we are singled out.

44:14You know, they don't, they sort of look at us and like, ah, we don't need to talk to robotics. Now, a lot of people, you know, we were named one of the top 50 AI companies in the world a couple months ago. I think people are starting to see what you're seeing and say, well, who else is doing this in the world? There might be some guys in Asia doing this, but in North America, like, we're it. There's nobody else that's doing it here. Yeah, and I think I was doing this really long-winded thing because I'm kind of processing it in real time a little bit. I think that's just the thing. It's like the first reaction, oh, this is like some weird sex bot thing.

44:47Then, oh, this is a novelty thing. and then I'm just sitting here, I'm like, dude, obviously people are going to be having these robots in their house. I mean, it's as clear as day and we're just spending all this money on this one. Well, let's talk about some of the use cases. So our robots can talk 100 plus languages. So imagine having a robot in a mall, a casino, a resort, or hotel that you can walk up to and speak to it in Mandarin and say, where can I get a coffee? Where's the bathroom? room? Can I order fries and a burger to my room? Book me a ticket, a massage. It can do it for you in any language.

45:25And it's providing that utility because there's an actual action behind it that's occurring. And think about a school where you can have a tutor. I didn't understand that math lesson. English is not my first language. I speak Spanish. And then you can have a whole conversation that is, you know, not improvised, but it's a natural conversation. Can you repeat that? The teacher said this, I didn't quite get it. There are so many use cases for what we do that are beyond the companionship. The physical humanoid robots are being built to do factory work, for example. People are overlooking the fact that there's massive amounts of work that are not physical.

46:06Physical actions that can be conveyed to an agent or a robot that don't involve lifting a box. Like they're, what they're doing is they're focusing on the low hanging fruit, which is, oh, we have all these like minimum wage employees working in these warehouses. Let's get rid of them and just have these robots do it. Right. Like that's the low hanging fruit. They're not seeing the obvious fact that, I mean, think of, of all the things that humans do and all the careers and all of the different tasks that humans perform daily. A huge chunk of them are non-physical and a huge chunk of them can be filled by an AI agent and or a human embodied robot because you're able to so think about ordering a coffee at Starbucks from from Optimus think of that experience versus a human like robot who smiles at you maybe tells you something funny yeah right it's a different experience that interaction with something that feels human is I think really what we're gonna go about a nursing home so we're having conversations with nursing homes again you don't want to have a cyborg there talking to your ailing grandparent, but you, you know, robots have infinite patients.

47:14Many parts of the world have shortages of doctors and nurses. Our robot could be there, have a conversation, remember your prior conversation. It's a contrast, you know, I want to tell you my life story. Can you write it down? Can you message my son or daughter or relay this back to a doctor or a nurse? You know, you're not going to have a nurse that can just sit there with somebody and keep them company for eight hours. Yeah. And you can't have an optimist or a figure AI robot doing that. it'll scare the shit out of me. Think of Optimus comforting an old lady putting his hand versus this. She puts her soft silicone hand.

47:44It feels different when she touches you than this metal thing like that. Yeah, and that's an interesting, we should talk about our hands because I was listening to... Can we do all the tech that's in here? Yeah, we can talk about it. But the hands are interesting because I heard how I was on this thing for listening to the Figure AI guys and they were real proud of like, you know our our hands like it's building hands that move like human hands is very hard um but they were real proud of like hey we're working on this we're gonna we got that already like our hands maybe talk about that matt well so i guess figures try to they've all been battling with hands for a long time because they want it to that's right motor they're looking at it's a different use case yeah yeah they're looking at the physical tasks that hands do so they're again going back to that low-hanging fruit of all the hands need to manipulate this and that to get this job done whereas for me it's not about what it can do it's like what does it feel like what does it look like yeah right and in human interactions a natural soft skin hand feels different obviously than you know the the T1 Terminators hand kind of resting right it's it's about that human to human interaction yeah so what are like what are if we if we look at our what are all the bits and pieces that you guys built in-house all of it all of it yeah so you're making you even make um the motors the actuator we don't make the motors okay so other than that like building all the mechanical components our motors are outsourced so we get those um from all different places but the all of the part like other than the motor structure of the head.

49:27It's all in-house. Like even the, okay, because there's machinery behind the eyes, but like the eyeballs themselves. Yeah, so we developed all the eye stuff in-house. We used to have an artist that would literally paint one at a time. We have a company now that we outsource the eyes to. That's able to provide us from our, you know, from our templates. This is what we want. And we do that with a lot of stuff. Like here, obviously, we're not going to have like 50 3D printers making fingers when we can outsource that component. No, no, no. Yeah. All of the fundamental designs and pieces and everything that goes into building it.

50:01All manufactured here in Las Vegas. And then like in the other room we saw, I mean, behind the eyes and stuff, I mean, there's actuators to like move the eyebrows. I mean, there's this whole structure inside the skull because you're trying to get these facial movements. Right. So you guys have to do all of that stuff as well. Yeah. Yeah. And we do use for the vision system an NVIDIA chip that goes in there as well. And where are the cameras? They're in the eyeball. Which we've patented that as well. And that by itself might be a super valuable patent down the road. We have the patent on cameras in the eye for robotic vision.

50:35Okay. And what's cool about that... Meaning just putting a camera in an eye or how you arrange it and compare it? It's the fact that the eye, just like the face, is modular. So the whole eye, you could change the eyes from blue to green to brown, and anybody that's able to just pull it off can do that. But that's the modularity, but the vision system as well. Yes, but that combined with the way the camera's attached and the board that it goes through to feed the processor, that's all part of the patent on that. And when you talk about the vision system, because I heard you in some of the other interviews getting into this, I mean, okay, so it's got an NVIDIA chip, in the back running a computer vision neural net, right?

51:18Like some sort of machine learning. And so what does it see? Like it sees, like it can recognize faces. Yeah. So we can upload whoever we want into that particular character's database. Okay. And we can say, this is so-and-so. Yeah. So it knows us. We stand in front. It's like, oh, hi, Andrew. So there's a few parts of it. So if you think about true embedded AI, If you really want an AI or a robot to understand what it's like to be human and learn from that, it's impossible to do that without vision. Right? Just can't. Like all these robots you see, it's all staged and scripted. Walk on this line, do that.

51:55I see this at the conferences. They don't have the vision systems that we have. The vision system also has to be more than observational. It can't just be like, I see blue. I see a camera. This says whatever. whatever. What's amazing and incredible about what we have done is that we've attached the vision to the AI brain and so that it can understand and recognize situations and facial cues. Is this person happy or sad? Is this person waving at me? I should wave back. Is there a dangerous situation? Do I see a security threat? Has somebody passed out? Is there a fire? and it can use that based on how we fine-tune the AI to react to it.

52:37And I think that's the amazing thing about what we've done is it's not just observational. It's reactive to what it's seen. And I don't know anybody, like we put this on social media. All these companies say they have this. I've never seen anybody post this stuff on social media. We've got robots on social media recognizing people, describing their surroundings, reading, seeing colors. And we're like, yeah, we got it so I don't see anybody else doing well I've worked on this for a while but like if I put on my meta glasses now and I say what am I looking at you know it'll say you're looking at two men who are seated at a table um in a room with a white wall you know I know it's my impression was that you guys were working on this like years before some of this stuff happened yeah and then but now like the LLMs are getting this function but it's more than but it's more like you could And it could, again, you could be, because we're actually talking about that.

53:30Can we integrate the vision system into wearables? But then you might look at it rather than just being observational. It can be like, hey, Ashley, I see this shirt here that I think would look great on you. It matches your color. You know, should we go check it out? So observation is easy. The AI brain that then gets the robot to react to that is what's hard. Yeah, that's the hard part. Okay, so that's all in your mind. Yeah, because, I mean, generative AI is like a two-way street. So you can either take an image and the AI will turn it into words, or you can take words and turn it into an image.

54:05But if you've messed around with this, you know that the hit rate is not 100%. It's arguably like 2%. So a lot of times, as cool as it is to say, oh, I see two men sitting here. But a lot of times you get stuff that doesn't make any sense, too. Right. So filtering all that out and then having it integrated into the AI that's able to incorporate that not only into the current conversation, but into memory is pretty, it's a hard thing to do. Yeah. And you don't see that. And we're actually developing this so that you'll have the same functionality of a computer or a phone. We'll utilize the camera in the computer or your phone to actually be able to have a conversation with you and be like, hey, you're looking a little upset today.

54:49Can I tell you a joke or what's going on? Tell me about what's happening. Okay. And so, again, it's part of this portable AI that we've developed, which can be on a tablet, a phone, a computer, or a robot, and then robots that can be used as a platform for our AI or anybody else's. And, okay, and then, I mean, my sense, listening to some of your interviews and even just chatting with you today, I mean, like, when you guys are at CES, everybody's lining up to come see your robots. It's, like, massive. I see this huge boost on social media. Everyone's talking about this thing. But then these other guys up in Silicon Valley or China are kind of getting all this attention right now.

55:29Like, my sense was, like, you felt like it was, like, sort of unfair. The world wasn't paying as much attention as it should to what you guys developed. You know, it's easy when you look at our stuff to dismiss it as a novelty, just a simple animatronic. Obviously, I think through this, you see that we're not. But when we went to CS, like, one of the first things that we did when we developed our first robots was, let's go to CS. Nobody had seen the robots before, and that was about a year ago. The reaction was incredible. We got 4 billion media impressions in that month of January during CES because nobody had ever seen anything like this.

56:07We even had people from the other companies coming in, like heads of the robotics at different large companies, and they were all blown away. But you're absolutely right. We're sort of dismissed by Silicon Valley as this sort of novelty company. they don't well in the last year you've got like i don't know dozens if not hundreds of companies building now these kind of generic humanoid task performing robots so that's where i think where the focus shifted and all of a sudden walking is sort of coming together and people are like but here's the thing all of those robots that i've seen in any of these events are remote controlled.

56:46There's no AI, none. So there's a guy driving the robot. And like he said, there's always security and there's falls, there's accidents. So there's this huge sort of separation between the reality of what's going on and what people think is going on. Yeah. They're pre-programmed, right? Like here's 20 tasks for you to remember within this environment, but there's no real AI there. No. And here's the biggest question is what is it good for? Like you see, you see a robot, you know, like walking and you see a robot waving. Like, what is that good for? Yeah. Did you say busking? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause a lot of these robots, I mean, there's the, I think, I think they're the novelty and we're the real thing.

57:34You know, A robot that can do karate chops and has a 30-minute battery life, what is that good for? Right, right. Okay, and then coming here and seeing these for the first time, I mean, the uncanny valley question that you brought up in the beginning, that's always a big thing here. I mean, there's parts of this that are extremely realistic and a huge advance beyond things that I've seen before, and then there's parts where, if I'm being totally honest, you know it's a robot still, you know what I mean? So, like, do you guys feel like you've hit, that you're satisfied with where this is? No, no, no.

58:10We're working on this stuff every day. You know, we're hiring new people. We've just hired a new COO from Agility. We're working, like, we've got huge plans for this company. We're not stopping here. This is version one. And, you know, I will always hang our hat on the autonomy. I was telling you earlier about when we were in Times Square, there's a store called Tomorrow High End Electronic Store. We sort of taught the robot about the products and the floor layout. And then we were like, let's open up the doors and have it facing, you know, one of the busiest intersections in the world. And we sort of watched it, did things.

58:43And then we were like, let's go for dinner. You were going to a show with your wife. And, you know, we left the robot there with a security guy sort of a few feet away and just let it do its thing for several hours. Yeah. We come back and we look at it. It was talking, you know, German, Swiss, Hebrew, whatever, to different people, people taking selfies, it's waving, it's doing things. We just left it there. Yeah. And we did that. We left it there for six days. Yeah. Like eight o 'clock in the morning till eight o 'clock at night, store hours. We let the robot do its thing. Nobody else is doing that.

59:16You don't see anybody else doing that. A couple of weeks later, the optimist was there for like 10 minutes serving a drink or something that was teleoperated. There's no teleoperation here that we need to do. We can do that as well. But these robots act and think autonomously. And just to touch on your question about, you know, improving, and you can still tell it's a robot, but that's on purpose. So, you know, could we go further in terms of let's add some more skin pores, let's add some tiny, veiny details. And I think that's that line that you cross, and then you're in the uncanny valley. That's what I wanted to ask.

59:50You've seen robots, I'm sure. yeah uh Ishiguro does it yeah where the the face looks like like literally was peeled off of a cadaver because the detailing is so high it is but even when I'm with him you know this is I just wanted to talk this out with you guys because when I'm sitting with him yeah he's like you can't tell this from a human I'm like yes yes you can right and I can't tell if he like really believe right No, but I want people to be able to tell it's a robot. You do. Yes, absolutely. Until the underlying mechanism and control systems are able to move in such a way that they're indistinguishable, there's no point in making the skin indistinguishable.

1:00:34Because when you do that, one thing looks super real and the other doesn't, and that causes humans to recoil. It's built into us. We react, some people react to it as if they were looking at a dead person. Yeah. Right? Or something creepy. Often what we do is we put the robots in vests. And the reason why is I want people to see the hands. And when you see sort of the hand articulation, which is, you know, we put actuators in the same place where you have knuckles. I want people to see that this is a robot, just a very friendly robot that draws people in. And Matt, you know, we talk about this.

1:01:09See, yes, our robots bring in massive foot traffic. It's like traveling with a rock star wherever we go after CS. We normally get 30 40 invitations all over the world From people who are like can you please bring the robots here because nobody else has something like this But like when you're talking about this is this is the heart of my question is like if you're talking about this being a Hospital in a hotel in a casino. Yeah, do you want it to look as lifelike as possible? Is that what it would take to make it? Super mainstream or you think it should be distinguished from like I said until the underlying mechanisms can move realistically, there's no point in pushing the outside to that point.

1:01:48So is that something you guys... They have to work together, right? Is that something you guys would work on? On both, yeah, absolutely. So what's on our roadmap for the next couple of years is hands that can articulate a lot of things now, but are capable of small tasks. So maybe feeding someone. We're working on the ability to type on an iPad so they can transcribe things. So small tasks like that, opening a pillbox and giving someone medicine, things like that is sort of on our roadmap. Walking is not on the roadmap. Not right now. At some point when it's perfected, which I still think is years away, we'll find a way to replicate that.

1:02:26But it's not on the roadmap today. But we want to work on the AI, some of the things that might be useful to somebody. Even if you were to have it in your house in a kitchen, if it could actually lift small things and articulate certain things, that I think is far more useful than a robot sort of clunking around your house and bumping into things because it doesn't even have a real vision system. So I'm sure there's going to be people listening to this who see the foundational frontier AI companies that are spending literally hundreds of billions of dollars on their data centers and their models.

1:02:58I mean, they would be skeptical that a startup in Las Vegas has some model that's comparable or that has functions well beyond what the open AIs and the anthropics. Well, but we don't need to because we can use their AI. Right. And we have our own, obviously, but it's not so much always about the model or the data center or any of that. It's about how we take that coming in and convert it into working with our platform. That's the important part of shaping it. You bring up an interesting analogy, and this is something that maybe resonates with you, but you wrote a biography on Elon Musk, and he made an entire career out of working outside the norm, whether it's electric cars or rockets.

1:03:44And I remember reading somewhere, when SpaceX was first launching, we were like, you're never going to be able to compete with all these other companies with a smaller staff, less money, all this stuff, yet you can be successful. So I think none of us are, you know, first time founders or entrepreneurs, like, you know, we're bringing in the right people. And I don't think you need hundreds of millions of dollars to do what we're doing. We've identified what we're good at. We think it's hard to copy. We got massive end markets with no competition. Like, I think we're going to succeed. So what I like about you guys, which I think is totally in line with what you're saying and different, I feel like you guys have a point of view and I I don't really think these other companies really...

1:04:22Well, they have a point of view. It's money. Yeah, but it's very generic. We care about money too. But I think that there is, in that community, it's kind of like everybody's jumping on this boat. We better jump in kind of thing. That's what I mean. It's generic. It is. Whether you look at Optimus or Figure, the point of view might be like, oh, we want to make these robots do these functions. But you guys have like a very... You know, there's philosophy, there's art, there's culture. There's a lot. You guys have a world view that you're - And a robot you can order now and use. Yeah. But, you know, we both come from, you know, I think Matt and I, one of the reasons we get along well is we're both sort of outsiders.

1:05:06Like my background, my business before this, I launched the first public Bitcoin miner and built, you know, one of the largest data centers in Canada for Bitcoin mining at a time where people hated Bitcoin, where it was rat poison. And Matt's been doing this stuff from his background for two decades. And so I think that we are thinking about things in the way we want them to be. Again, that group think that happens where you're just hiring a bunch of engineers and people that have all, you said it yourself earlier, the guys from Tesla are moving to figure AI, the figure AI guys are moving to agility, who are moving to like NIO.

1:05:42Literally, they're all straight. They're all, and they're just elevating their pay and they're moving from what, so you're never getting original thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I could see that. So in terms of where China would fit in all this, same thing, when I look at figure Tesla, most of them are buying a ton of their components from China already. Yeah. It's very easy for China to, well, collectively. Well, only a copy of what they're doing. I mean, China's ahead. They're ahead, yeah. So if they're, given that you guys are doing something different and that you've had to build a lot of this technology, is that a concern that, oh, eventually China also comes around?

1:06:18No. And here's why. So one of our biggest clients right now is Ericsson, which is one of the largest companies in the world in the telecom space. And we're talking to all these people. And one of the key functionalities here is, number one, I think we can be relatively price competitive. I think we're using higher quality materials than the user of China. But the ability to integrate in third-party AIs means we're not necessarily competing with them on the AI front and all these things because we've thought about these different functions that, again, I don't see anybody else doing. So if you are a resort or a hotel chain and you want to implement these across your North America and you want robots that have a certain appeal, a certain aesthetic and can operate your AI, I don't know why you would choose to go with a Chinese company if a lot of that technology, the AI technology, is coming from what you've already developed anyways.

1:07:10Well, and I mean, there's no question. I mean China China really doubled down quicker than we did on the robot thing and and they're really good at that. Yeah, right So they're gonna be at all they're gonna have fingers and all of the pies There's no question but there's kind of this growing sentiment at least in some of the people I talked to in the space That are kind of like well, we don't want to buy stuff from them Yeah, or we don't want to necessarily send them this or that because they're gonna end up copying and knocking it off. So I think there's some level of really importance to the fact that we are US-based, that we don't rely heavily on things being manufactured offshore.

1:07:54And the world is a dynamic thing. And I think when we as Americans start to double down on something, we do get things done. Right. And it takes me a little bit to valuation because we've been talking to people on the investment front, they're like, the private company valuations are like on ayahuasca. They're just throwing a huge number, like figure 40 billion approximately. Our valuation right now in public work, it's like 40 million. And you think about, yeah, we're behind them, but bigger end market, no competition, amazing patented technology. Like we are a bargain right now relative to those guys.

1:08:33And I think when they start, you know, when figure I goes public at a hundred billion dollars and if we're still sitting at 40 or 50 million people are going to be like okay maybe that big valuation but we're definitely undervalued i mean i and then i think that is not investment advice i think unitary is like 10 billion or so i'm like yeah that versus figure i'm like what are you what this doesn't make sense guys well the public the public markets because there's liquidity tend to have sort of a different viewpoint on the private side again i I think that group think of everybody like, oh, just throw the money and keep elevating it.

1:09:06It's what you saw during the dot-com bubble and sort of the AI bubble that you can keep feeding into your own, drinking your own Kool-Aid and elevating these things. But at some point when it gets to sort of liquidity and there's price discovery, the valuations will change. And frankly, I don't think there's, unless there's some massive advancements here I'm not aware of, I can't see those valuations maintaining themselves. um okay well this has been this has been awesome to go through some of the history and all this i think like people are gonna have to tune in to our video that will come after this podcast but um we get to i get to like go on a drive i think with uh am i going with aria yeah yeah and then and then we're gonna have like a bit of a look um a little more like and you should interview one of the robots just have a conversation ask a bunch of questions as well let's do it yeah And then we're talking, maybe we can, down the road, get a little robot co-host on the...

1:10:00Yeah, yeah, we can do that. Maybe. That'd be cool. Yeah. And I would encourage you to ask any questions for the audience here. None of it is scripted. We haven't asked you for questions in advance, nothing. Ask whatever the fuck you want. Let the AI... We have a high degree of confidence, and you may want to even test it and push it. Ask it a sexual question or a racial question, political question, and see what it comes up with, a religious question. um you know that's you know as we fine-tune it we have a certain confidence in the guardrails we've put in but i would challenge you to even you know see if you can break them like do you want it to be because obviously sometimes claude and and some of the other ais can feel quite pc i mean is that something you try to avoid because you do it's a balance yeah you know it's a balance between you know i always ask myself if i was talking to a person yeah what would what would their response be if they were trying to be politically correct?

1:10:53And it's also obviously dependent on the person and the environment, right? Like you're a different PC when you're in church versus when you're hanging out with the guys at the gym. So there's a lot of little nuances there. And we are launching a new AI soon that will be unfiltered for what it was an adult conversation. So it can be a friend, a romantic partner, a mentor. And you as the user will be able to sort of decide really on an actual sliding scale. Like, do you want it to use foul language? Do you want it to have these types? And you answer on a slide. And then you can go back and be like, you know what?

1:11:30I'm not quite in love with the personality the way it is now. I'm going to create a new one and save it. So you can switch back and forth between different personalities for your robot or your AI. Yeah. Okay. That's cool. That's cool. Well, thank you guys so much for doing this. Thanks for letting us come. And I can't wait. I'm looking forward to my drive. Yeah, it's been great. Thanks for having us. All right, cool. Thank you, guys. We're having him. He's here for us. With us. We're on his show. Just here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's mutual. Cool. Thanks, everybody. The Core Memory Podcast is hosted by me, Ashley Vance, and or Kylie Robison, or both of us together.

1:12:12It is produced by me and David Nicholson. Our theme song is by James Mercer and John Sortland. And the show is edited always by the John Sortland. Thank you so much to Brext for all your support. And thank you most of all to everybody for listening or watching. We love you. Please leave us a like, a review, a subscribe, all those tremendous things. Thank you, and we'll see you again. Thank you.