GeekWire podcast with guest Geordie Rose, CEO of Sanctuary AI, discusses the future of labor and the rise of humanoid robots. They explore the design and development of Phoenix, a humanoid robot powered by advanced AI, and the concept of 'labor as a service'. They delve into the intersection of declining birth rates and the advancement of robots, as well as the use of robots in warehouses and the challenges of building intelligent systems.
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Quick takeaways
The emergence of robots in the workforce has shifted the conversation from concerns about job loss to filling gaps in the labor market.
Sanctuary AI aims to build human-like intelligence in general purpose robots, prioritizing the design of human-like hands to enable a wide range of tasks.
Deep dives
Opportunity of developing humanoid robots
The economic opportunity of developing humanoid robots with advanced AI technology is unprecedented and surpasses previous technological advancements, such as the steam engine. The emergence of robots in the workforce has shifted the conversation from concerns about job loss to filling gaps in the labor market. Sanctuary AI, a Vancouver-based company, aims to build human-like intelligence in general purpose robots. Their robot, Phoenix, powered by the advanced AI system Carbon, is designed to perform tasks that people would traditionally do, with a focus on creating robots with humanoid forms to navigate and interact with the world built for humans.
Building a robot with the capability of human hands
Unlike many other robot developers, Sanctuary AI prioritizes the design of human-like hands for their robot, Phoenix. They believe that hands played a significant role in the evolution of human intelligence, tool use, and the development of language. By focusing on creating robots with human-like hands, Sanctuary aims to build a machine that can perform a wide range of tasks, moving beyond specialized robots for specific purposes. The challenge lies in building a software control system that allows the robot to understand and translate human instructions into actions, an ongoing endeavor in the AI and robotics community.
Training the AI system through demonstration
Sanctuary AI's AI system, Carbon, learns through demonstration. Pilots guide the robots in performing various tasks, providing episodes of good behavior that are collected and used as data to train the foundation models of behavior. These models are prediction machines, predicting the robot's next action based on context and input. The aim is to train the system to generalize from demonstrated tasks, enabling the robot to adapt and perform new tasks that it has not explicitly been shown. The goal is to create an artificial general intelligence that can think and act like a person, allowing the robot to interact with and complete a wide range of tasks.
Addressing labor market gaps with robotic labor as a service
Sanctuary AI's business model centers around labor as a service, mirroring the traditional employer-employee relationship but replacing humans with machines. Instead of paying a person, customers pay the machines to complete tasks. The aim is to offer a system where customers can have work tasks accomplished efficiently and economically by machines. The payment structure is based on task completion rather than hourly rates, as customers pay for the accomplishment of specific tasks. This approach allows for automation of a variety of jobs, particularly in a labor market facing a shortage of workers. Automation through advanced robotics provides a solution to the increasing demand for labor as population trends shift.
The global conversation about robots and the workforce has shifted substantially in recent years, from concern about robots taking jobs to questions about how quickly they can fill gaps in the labor market.
One of the ventures at the forefront of this issue is Sanctuary AI. It's a Vancouver, B.C.-based company that has raised more than $100 million Canadian dollars to pursue its vision for labor as a service.
Sanctuary makes a 5-foot, 7-inch general-purpose humanoid robot called Phoenix, powered by an advanced AI system called Carbon.