NEXT with John Koetsier

Who will win the race to have the world’s first usable general purpose humanoid robot?

I thought I knew all the companies making general purpose robots:

- Tesla

- Sanctuary AI

- Figure AI

- Fourier Intelligence

- Agility Robotics

- Boston Dynamics

I was wrong ... there’s probably a bunch I don’t know. But one that popped up as interesting is Apptronik. They’re based in Austin TX, they're partnering with NASA, and they're building Apollo, a 5’8” 160-pound robot.

In this TechFirst, we chat with CEO Jeff Cardenas. And we learn that he has a completely different approach to building a humanoid robot than probably every other robotic company out there.

Could artificial intelligence make you MORE human? Help you become your best self? And, maybe, 10-15X your output?

In this TechFirst we chat with author, flow coach, and entrepreneur David Passiak, who has gone way down the generative AI rabbit hole and made tools like ChatGPT his CMO, CEO, CRO, chief strategy officer, chief content officer, and more.

He says it's 10X'd his output, but in some ways it's even more that that.

10Xing what you can do it one thing, but enabling what you could never do (like design, or software engineering) is yet another level of enabler.

We also get a little deep and talk about what it means to be human in a world where everything is gaining intelligence.

GPUs are rare and expensive right now. Every company doing AI model training needs more, and NVIDIA can't build enough, especially of the NVIDIA H100 GPU.

Run.ai CEO and co-founder Omri Geller says he has a software solution to this hardware problem.

The key: GPUs are mostly idle, even in high-demand settings. According to Geller, his software 2X to 4Xs your GPU capacity on existing hardware, simply by streamlining workloads and maximizing GPU usage time.

In this TechFirst, we chat about:

- the GPU shortage

- how many GPUs we need

- what Open AI is using right now

- whether OpenAI is getting dumber or not

- and much more

As always, get a full transcript and subscribe to the audio podcast at my website:

https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/

Dronamics just got a license to operate in Europe. Its Black Swan cargo delivery drone is the size of a 2-seater aircraft and carries 800 pounds for 1500 miles.

It's also 50% cheaper with 60% fewer emissions and 80% faster than standard airfreight.

In this TechFirst, host John Koetsier chats with Dronamics CEO and co-founder, Svilen Rangelov. Topics include:

- The Black Swan cargo drone

- Why is it so much cheaper, faster, and less polluting?

- Dronamics has raised $40M. One of its investors is the European Union itself. It now have a license. What are the next steps?

- Concerns and challenges of drone cargo delivery?

- Will the Black Swan ever be an EV?

- Safety and hacking ... how are you protecting this drone?

- What kind of ground support is required?

It looks like we will soon be delivering power wirelessly to NASA robots on the moon. Yank Tech just won a NASA contract to to develop wireless charging solutions for autonomous vehicles on the moon.

In this TechFirst, we chat with CEO Josh Yank.

Topics we cover include:

- Wireless power on the moon ... how does it work?

- What’s the power source … solar energy?

- When will it be ready?

- When could it be used?

- What missions will this be used on?

- Any uses on earth?

- There's been a massive growth in humanoid robots … is this tech useful for them?

"ET phone home" has never been more relevant. We're seeing a wave of phone calls to space, or at least space connectivity from relatively ordinary cell phones.

- Apple added SOS

- T-Mobile is working with Starlink

- AT&T is working with AST SpaceMobile

Why? And where is this going?

To answer, we chat with a senior director from Ciena. It's a networking giant that supports 85% of the world’s largest telcos, with customers like AT&T, Amazon, Google, Deutsche Telekom, Verizon, and the U.S. DoD.

Formerly with Nortel, his name is Brian Lavallée.

Right now might be the golden age of humanoid general purpose robot development.

Elon Musk calls him "batshit crazy," but Dan O'Dowd has built software for the F-35 fighter jet, the B2 bomber, and to secure U.S. nuclear forces. He's also built a microprocessor for Mars, worked on the Mac at Steve Jobs' request, and completed a ton of test drives of Tesla full self driving.

His conclusion: it's worse than a drunk driver.

And: it does not recognize small children.

In this TechFirst we chat with Dan about his tests, what he thinks is wrong with Tesla, and why Tesla is falling behind General Motors and Google (Waymo) in full self driving.

Optimus, the Tesla bot, has been in development for 2 years and still can’t really do that much. There’s another dream team of engineers and roboticists who are building a humanoid robot that they call the “kinder, gentler” robot.

In this TechFirst we chat with 2 investors in Figure.ai: Jesse Coors and Gregg Hill.

They think humanoid bipedal robots could be one-to-one with humans in numbers "pretty quickly." Corporations will want thousands, and most of us will want at least one.

We also dive deep in the Figure.ai robot as I ask them these questions:

- Capability?

- Timeline to usefulness?

- Battery life?

- Cost?

- Where does a humanoid robot fit in the world?

- What does it do to our economy?

- Where do you see it helping most?

Can we get an open source medical AI that saves millions of lives?

Everywhere on the planet, health care is a problem. In the US it's too expensive. In Canada it's too busy. In much of Africa and India it's too rare, and in many other countries including Western Europe, it's overwhelmed and overrun.

AI could help, but only if we can get our act together, says HIPPO AI foundation founder Bart de Witte ...