Theobald: Robots physically handling human beings remains a long way off
Daniel Theobald · He sold AI robots to Walmart & raised $150M. His #1 advice to founders? "Trust your gut." | Danie... · PMF Show · Aug 12, 2024 · at 4:43
Daniel Theobald, founder of Vecna Robotics, reflects on building the BEAR military extraction humanoid robot and why automated physical human care remains technically elusive.
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“Honestly, it was never going to be effective at rescuing soldiers from the battlefield because robots picking up human beings is just something that's, you know, we're a ways off from that.”
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Theobald: Comprehensive software test suites for robotics are physically impossible
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Human-in-the-loop assistance is essential because autonomous robots will never be perfect
“When you give the robot the ability to know it needs help, you give it the ability to ask for help, you create a situation where a human can help it, then we keep the robots moving and they don't have to be perfect because they never will be.”
Theobald: Modern AI systems like ChatGPT possess literally zero intelligence
“These modern AI systems, there's no intelligence at all. I mean, which is why we call them artificial intelligence, but I think artificial intelligence is even a misnomer. It's confusing to people because they think that implies that there's actually some inte…”
Vecna's Walmart robots improved throughput 18% solely via software updates
“We deployed robots at Walmart, for example, And I think it was within the first two months the robots were already just through software updates. They were already operating 18, you know, they're getting 18% more work done than when we had started.”