TechFirst with John Koetsier

Geordie Rose, CEO of Sanctuary AI humanoid general purpose robot, discusses their mission to create human-like intelligence in robots. They explore building a fully vertically integrated robotics system, subjective reality, task planning, human-like full-body mobility, the importance of grippers, and challenges of bipedal walking for robots.

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 ...

ChatGPT is not actually generative AI, says Intel senior research scientist Ilke Demir. In this TechFirst we chat with an Intel scientist who has been working on generative AI for years. We talk about the genesis of generative AI, which is as far back as the 1970s, and we talk about ethical uses of generative AI and how we can use neuromorphic computing to help reduce the massive computation cost of generative AI. Plus, we also talk about what Intel is doing with generative AI, including several projects around privacy.

I’ve done a lot of shows on alternative energy ... green energy sources like wind, geothermal, solar ... but should nuclear be in the mix? Nuclear’s having a bit of a resurgence lately as a green option for reliable energy. To talk about why and where it might fit we chat with the founder and president of Nano Nuclear Energy, Jay Yu, and the CEO, James Walker. We discuss Zeus and Odin, their two nuclear reactors, safety, disposal after their usable lifespan, and what the ideal mix of green energy sources might be.

Would you get a whole-body MRI scan to check for cancer and other problems even if you don’t feel any symptoms? Some have done just that and saved their lives. Others simply find out that they're relatively healthy. I seem to fall somewhere in the middle. I recently did a 60-minute full-body MRI scan. I learned I'm mostly healthy, but there are some potential problems. The CEO and co-founder of the company that ran the MRI says that adopting these kinds of scans would be part of a switch from sick care to health care, and it could save both millions of lives as well as billions of dollars. We chat about the technology, how it works, what it can do, and what it can't do. We also talk about why doctors are in general skeptical ... and why my doctor specifically didn't take the results super-seriously.

Apple's likely releasing its massively expensive VR/AR/mixed reality headset, Reality Pro, next week at WWDC 2023. One key VR competitor says he's much less worried about Apple winning than he is worried that Apple will fail. Why? That would devastate the consumer VR market, setting back the industry years. In this TechFirst I chat with Varjo CEO and co-founder Urho Konttori, Finnish maker of one of the best VR headsets on the market. Their headsets are super-high resolution ("human eye resolution"), have a wide field of view, impressive color, and LiDAR for high-quality mixed reality without occlusion fails. We chat about the state of VR, where VR is going, what Apple will do, what Meta will do, and how independents can compete with the kind of ecosystem Apple can bring to bear.

Generative AI is going to drive a 10X transformation in gaming, says Unity CEO John Riccitiello. It'll create truly believable worlds ... so believable it might even become more real that our "real world." It will transform NPCs -- non-player characters -- into deep, intelligent, and differentiated characters who might be more fun to hang out with than your real friends. And it will make infinite worlds and infinite experiences more of a reality than a dream. In this TechFirst we hang out with Unity's CEO and chat about how generative AI will change gaming. We also discuss how Unity's runtime -- on 4 billion devices -- has an AI inference engine built into it ... one that Unity started making 5 years ago.

Huge chunks of our lives are already managed by AI. The songs we listen to, the routes we drive, the search results we see, the climate in our homes? When AGI takes over, will you even notice? In this TechFirst, we chat with Evan Coopersmith, a data scientist and AI researcher who says that when AI fully takes over ... we probably won't. And, he says, his bird can teach us a lot about what our future relationship with AI will be.