Humans are always doing work that is dull or dangerous. Brett Adcock, the founder and CEO of Figure AI, wants to build a fleet of robots that can do everything from work in a factory or warehouse to folding your laundry in the home. Today on No Priors, Sarah got the chance to talk with Brett about how a company that is only 21 months old has already built humanoid robots that not only walk the walk by performing tasks like item retrieval and making a cup of coffee but they also talk the talk through speech to speech reasoning. 

In this episode, Brett and Sarah discuss why right now is the correct time to build a fleet of AI robots and how implementation in industrial settings will be a stepping stone into AI robots coming into the home. They also get into how Brett built a team of world class engineers, commercial partnerships with BMW and OpenAI that are accelerating their growth, and the plan to achieve social acceptance for AI robots. 

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Show Notes: 

(0:00) Brett’s background

(3:09) Figure AI Thesis

(5:51) The argument for humanoid robots

(7:36) Figure AI public demos

(12:38) Mitigating risk factors

(15:20) Designing the org chart and finding the team

(16:38) Deployment timeline

(20:41) Build vs buy and vertical integration

(23:04) Product management at Figure

(28:37) Corporate partnerships

(31:58) Humans at home

(33:38) Social acceptance 

(35:41) AGI vs the robots