October 13, 2025 • 21 mins
In this episode, Kevin welcomes back Chris Mattmann— UCLA’s head of AI and former NASA JPL CTO — to explore the rapidly approaching future of humanoid robots. They dive into the technological breakthroughs and ethical dilemmas shaping a world where robots could become part of daily life by 2050. From job displacement and environmental impact to national security and cultural attitudes, the discussion examines how America can lead responsibly in advanced robotics. Chris also warns of the risks posed by Chinese surveillance and stresses the importance of embedding American values, privacy, and freedom into next-generation AI and robotic systems.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Is a humanoid robot going to take your job? What
about your kids teacher's job? What about your barista's job.
Morgan Stanley just put out a report that says that
there could be nearly one billion humanoid robots roaming about
the planet Earth by the year twenty fifty. Hello Future,
it's me Kevin. This is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier.
The planet is Earth, the year is twenty twenty five,
(00:29):
and the robots they're coming. My guest today is someone
who spends a lot of time thinking about robots. He
is the head of artificial Intelligence for UCLA. He was
also a former big wig at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
That's how I met him. He didn't give me a toy,
wouldn't let me in the bunny suit to go see
all the robots, and lord knows what they're building at
NASA's Jepper Paulson Lab. Do you ever get to Area
(00:51):
fifty one, Chris.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I have not been to the Groom Lake test bed.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Now all right, Well, if you ever get to go
and you want to bring a journalists, let me know.
Humanoid robots Are they going to take over the world?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
I don't think they're going to take over the world,
and thanks for having me on keV. But they're definitely
going to help do some activities that I think could
be very routine, could be very helpful. They could do
things like cook our food for us. They could do
things like fold our laundry. And you have to ask yourself,
you know, these are certainly things that are important, but
are these skills that you still need in twenty twenty
(01:29):
seven or twenty twenty eight and things like that. And
that's primarily the use case that they're currently being used for.
If we talk about things like Optimists and Tesla and
things that I'm sure what we're going to talk about,
but yeah, it's shifting the focus on some of those
routine and mundane activities.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
I think that's the big idea. Now.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
My big thing is I would love to have an
astronaut that does my laundry, brings me a cup of
coffee every morning. I would love that. I think it's great.
I think it's awesome. That said, Okay, what am I
going to do with my ex time? You know what
I mean? So, I mean, especially if you're for kids,
kids should learn how to do their own laundry. I'm
a big believer in that, But for humanoid robots. When
you were working at NASA, was NASA thinking about these
(02:11):
big questions? Did they know the humanoids were coming by
twenty fifty, that a billion humanoid robots are going to
be roaming about the planet. Were they planning for that?
All of these news reports are just popping up that
you know, Elon Musk is going to unleash the humanoids?
Is that real? And did did the government know that
this was going to happen?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
It's definitely real.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
It's not something that NASA, at least, you know, in
terms of the robotic space exploration that we were doing
at NASA JPL was heavily invested in it all.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
It's something that they studied and largely kind of threw
away a lot of times in terms of the feasibility
because the thoughts related to that, at least in the
meetings that I was in when I was Chief Technology
and Innovation Officer at NASA JPL, was that solving the
energy mass you know sort of problems were more difficult
than anyone wanted to deal with, you know, and the
(03:01):
focus of solving some of those energy and mass problems
wanted to be focused on exploration rather than the commercial
activity of eliminating.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Mundane tasks and things like that.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And what that means is that to power these things
you need the types of things that Elon Musk and
others have really solved, which is, you know, critical minerals,
mining for batteries, the ev sort of compact energy distribution
challenge that they've solved with things like Tesla, and the
miniaturization of ion lithium ion batteries, you know, to the
(03:31):
point of delivery of effective power and capability at large
and small scales. Those were all necessary beyond NASA spent
plenty of time figuring out kinetics and how to move
arms and you know, how to pick things up and
things like that. But the energy is the real change
in the last decade, keV.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
The energy that powers the robots. See this. When to
hear you talk, I'm thinking to myself, Okay, I really
want to have a robot that brings me coffee and
folds my laundry. But I don't want to kill the
planet in order to get that robot. And if there's
a billion of these things that are roaming around doing
all of this stuff, is that just gonna junk up
the planet, and it sounds like people forget just because
(04:09):
it's running wireless. It's not really wireless. It takes rare
earth minerals to build the robot's skin or the bones
of the robot, the arms of the robot. All of
that is mined from somewhere, and if the robots are
doing that mining, it just becomes this self fulfilling prophecy
of just murdering the planet. There's an environmental concern to this,
but at the same time, I like the idea that
(04:30):
the robots could be doing dangerous jobs that humans shouldn't
be able to do. And I also like the idea
of using robots to go to space, which is where
Elon really grabbed my attention the other week was when
he was talking about how they're first gonna put the
robots on Mars before humans, and that the robots are
gonna be building whatever laboratory. Remember a couple of years ago,
(04:51):
it was oh, three D printing is gonna build everything.
Elon said, no, we're gonna have some three D printing,
but our robots are gonna get off of the ship
and they're gonna build the stuff. Is that a shift
in recent years and the reliance on the three D
printing to the to the robots. What do you make.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, it's definitely a shift. I mean robots can't get COVID.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Robots can't you know, robots can get cosmically irradiated with
solar radiation. So that's something that Elon I think probably
is on a path to solving. But it hasn't been
the focus of things like SpaceX and Tesla, you know,
an XAI yet.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
But I think it's a pivot that he's gonna make.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
And what do I mean by that, keV is like
we spend a lot of time at NASA. You know,
when you throw up space parts and computer parts into space,
they're radiated by cosmic radiation.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So you know, you can't just take.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Your laptop computer with the powerful GPU and bring it
into space because guess what, like after a few months,
it's going to be cooked. As the kids say, you
know it's one Yeah, I have a teenager, so so anyways,
it's gonna be cooked. You know, zeros are gonna go
to ones, ones are gonna go to zero. So you
need what's called radiation hardened hardware, meaning that it can
(05:55):
survive cosmic radiation and things like that. And so you
know when Tesla, you know, provides that robot out here
in Hollywood and it's at a cafe and it's serving
you popcorn and soon burgers and things like that at
the Tesla Hollywood Cafe, which is, by the way.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
So badass, and have you been there? It's so cool?
I have not.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I want to go there. It's on my list and
I will. I'll get some popcorn from Optimist. But when
he's doing that, he really is, I think, working out
some of the kinetics and other things.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
But he's not solving the you know, cosmic radiation problem.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
These these things don't have to be you know, they're
radiated by the sun here on Earth, but it has
to go through our atmosphere, which is why we don't
we're all no, we're not all burnt to a crisp
and neither is it.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
But that's why to your point, if they don't have
good skincare, which is really what you're talking about, the
robots need good skincare. They need good stuff sunscreen for
lack of better word. Yeah, and like literally a sunscreen
to protect themselves when they're up there. That's why I
think personally, these reports that China's beating the US on
robotics are a bit overplayed because I mean, all I
(06:55):
do is open up your box from your favorite shipping
platform of cheap stuff from China, and it doesn't really work. Well,
it's everyone knows it. I mean, it's all cheap. And
so I just saw this headline from ZME Science that
China has more factory robots than the rest of the
world combined. New York Times headline last week there are
more robots working in China than the rest of the
(07:16):
world combined. So that's also And then you've got tech Node,
another great tech website. China installed nearly three hundred thousand
industrial robots in twenty twenty four, more than all of
the other markets combined. So China has a lot of robots.
US is falling behind on the robots. That's the message
from the mainstream media. But I mean they did like
their robot games. I don't know if you saw this
(07:37):
where they had the robots run marathons. I could. I'm
not that fast. I've done marathons. I could beat that
robot and only like half of them finished. They were
falling over. Okay, it's cool. It goes viral on the
social media. I get it. I watched them. I like
seeing them, you know, play soccer against one another and
like beat each other up. That's entertainment. But I'm not
(08:00):
necessarily something that is what I would build the backbone
of my economy on. Am I wrong?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
You're not wrong at all.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
I mean Boston Dynamics is the great example, the robot dog.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
The other things I look to are optimists. There's a
famous viral video of optimists, you know, with the cyber
truck getting out of a cyber truck and then shooting
the cyber truck, you know, and things like that. You know,
you look at the pure kinematics you know of what
we're achieving, and I think it's you know, the US
and the West leading in that sense again first of
a kind, things like when you think big, you know,
when you think you know future, like you and I
(08:32):
are doing here, and I think is your vision? You know,
when we think that, we're not thinking to production line
oriented robots that have no kinematics other than like the
top portion of their bodies, like build as many of
those as you want. Those are routine, Those are spacely sprockets,
you know, and things like that. It doesn't mean that
they're leading simply by producing more of them, you know.
(08:53):
And again I think we're leading in terms of doing
the very interesting novel needed capabilities to do some of
these activities to Mars getting the moon, things like.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Well, some of it's creepy, Chris, and this is you know,
some of it. The headlines from the from the Chinese
Communist Party press about how they're having robots take care
of their old people, the aging population. That's horrible, Like,
go visit your loved ones, don't leave it to your robot.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
That's creepy one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
I mean, keV, you're talking about social credit, you know,
which is just society, right society, Western society versus you know,
at some level, you know, Eastern society and you know,
things like that. But like, yeah, in the West, I
don't see those as activities that anyone is building robots,
you know, in humanoid robots to replace right now.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
And I'm happy because of it too.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I like to kind of reach out and touch my family,
be there for them, have empathy.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I don't see that there.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah. Newsweek reported on this the other week. Michael McCartney
and Newsweek. He writes, quote, robots will play a growing
role in caring for China's elderly. Industry insiders say, who
are the industry insiders? Robotics firms moved to tap into
the countries expanding silver economy. Why it matters? China, like
the rest of East Asia, is grappling with a flagging
(10:09):
birth rate couple with a fast aging workforce. That's why
I think they're building all the robots, by the way,
is because their population is collapsing, and so build a
bunch of cheap robots. I mean people age sixty five
in order older, according to Newsweek, already make up about
fifteen percent of its one point four billion citizens. According
to the UN, and they expect China to join Japan
(10:30):
in South Korea as a super aged society where more
than one in five residents are seniors by twenty thirty five. Wow,
So now they're just gonna give them all robots. Would
you have a robot replace your pet? I could never
do that. That's the other thing I know a lot
about in Japan that took off. There's like this, I
call it a ferbie on steroids. Remember the Ferbi I
don't know if you're easy. I never got into the ferbie.
(10:52):
I thought I could never get it to talk, and
I was after a day, I was like, this is stupid,
Like the thing doesn't do anything. I liked my first
I never had a TAMAGATCHI though, I don't know. I
was too young for that.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
But yeah, but I had a cheap pet, you know,
I never had that.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I had a goldfish, but by accident I froze it
because I was cleaning the tank and it froze. But
I have a dog, and I love my dog, and
I would never want a robot dog. I would never ever.
I couldn't even imagine having a robot pet. And I
see all of these reports that they're trying to make
it a thing where they like sell over the holidays,
(11:29):
you know, and it took off in Japan. They love
them over there, these robot pets. Do you think that
would ever catch off culturally here?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
I think that there's a market for it, but yeah,
like culturally, like broadly, I mean, my wife and I,
you know, just have fun all day sharing videos of
our you know, frenchchiess because we're FRENCHI owners, you know,
two French seats and being a frenchie owner is like
a special thing, you know. You know, the dog comes
up and just stares you down. They twoed at you,
you know, with a different type of gas. You know,
an they're just you know, they have zoomies. I just
(11:59):
don't see robots doing that. And you know, for for
all the things and you know that you mentioned here,
I mean, look, having robots replace some level of human
you know, either to pet or human to human connection.
You know, there is a global declining birth rate. I mean,
that's why there's such a focus even here in the
west On, you know, by people like Elon and others.
And I would say the right, you know, in terms
(12:20):
of you know, focusing in on that.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
There's certainly something there that said.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
I don't know, Yeah, I feel like I feel like
Western culture wouldn't jive with that, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
And I still think even when you go I don't
even like when you have to go to a restaurant
and get the QR code, I want to talk to
a human who takes the order and then brings the food.
You know, I always have a million questions. So I
don't even I don't like the idea of a robot
replacing a waiter or waitress.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
It's the out of sight, out of mind, you know, Yes,
like you probably wouldn't mind flipping the robot flipping the
burger in the background, because you never necessarily out of
sight out of mind. But you know if that burger
was delivered to you by a waiter, you'd be down right.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yeah for sure. And even those even when you know
you see some of those things on the street that
are delivering stuff, they're not robots. They're not robots. I mean,
give us, if you're gonna give us robots by twenty
fifty a billion, like Morgan Stanley says, give us actual
humanoid robots, not these little smurf looking things that are
like cartoonish. No, I don't want that. I want the
(13:18):
terminy I.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yes, or house party protocol exact.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
House party yes, exactly, none of this like oh like again,
they're the cheap junior league robots. No, give us the
real ones like they have in Ukraine. Which is a
great pivot to the military implications of how robots are
being deployed in Ukraine and defending against Russia's egregious war
in Ukraine. I call it the first robotics War. I mean,
(13:44):
I remember as a kid when I was studying history,
and it was you know, how weaponry in the civil
in the American Revolutionary War, you know, back in seventeen
seventy six, Happy Birthday, America. Next year to fifty, I
remember learning about how weaponry really gave the scrappy, the Americans,
the upper hand because they were able to leverage. Again,
it's a form of technology to be able to beat
(14:07):
off the British. Now we're seeing robots being deployed in Ukraine,
which is really holding off of Russia. And Ukraine was
the underdog, and now they're being able to really surprise
people ap reports on a battlefield swarming with deadly Russian drones.
Ukrainian soldiers are increasingly turning to nimble, remote controlled armored
(14:29):
vehicles that can perform an array of tasks and spare
troops from potentially life threatening missions. The Ukrainian army is
especially eager to deploy what soldiers referred to as robots
on wheels. So the military implications of this, especially what's
happening in Ukraine, I think, are going to change the
(14:49):
way we think about conflicts for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Right one hundred percent. I mean it started with you know,
the you know, at.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Least reported and speculated assassination and you know, right, you know,
related to enemies. I think of Israel, you know, and
assassination of an Iranian you know, scientist that was supposedly
done according to reporting by a robot.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
And then yeah, Ukraine and pivoting to Russia. That is
that is the robot battlefield. And you know, we imagine
a lot of these drone strikes, you know, being these
big predators, and that the US military polls in you know,
billions of dollars to build and the big contracts, and
the theater here has totally pivoted to these lightweight, cheap
drones that I used to see building erth science, remote sensing,
(15:35):
you know, where you'd have these little, you know, quad
copter type of things with instruments on them.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
And then now they've got bombs and guns.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
And you know, I read recently, I think it was
in the New York Times that everyone wants Iran Shaid.
I'm probably pronouncing it right, drone, right, these kamikaze drones,
and they want to copy you know basically that you know,
because basically they're lightweight they're cheap and you know their
single use, but you can build so many of them,
and you know this is both what Ukraine is using
but also what you know, Russia is partnering, you know,
(16:04):
with their side of the you know, conflict, and you
know that's why their relationship with Iran is so important.
So lightweight drones are certainly, you know, part of the battlefield.
One thing I'm looking for this is all about the future, right,
and it's to your point is that you know robot drones,
you know, remote control drone warfare isn't the only way.
What about robot robot medic evac vehicles? Yes, you know,
(16:25):
and that, Yeah, I love that. I've got a friend
who's really into that world. And just even just the
ability for a doctor to go into virtual reality or
an augmented reality and then to be able to be
doing like multiple surgeries in their VR while the robots
are in the operating table. Like that's where my mind goes.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
But I I I mean for the purposes of that, yeah,
one thousand percent. The medical implications are are huge. Chris Mattman,
I want to take it on a personal ending, which
is from a cultural human to human standpoint, China's decision
to do the one kid policy. Talk about why you
don't have a robots in middle class, Well, because you're
replacing your middle class with robots. All of that stems
(17:08):
from and your population issues stem from this whole ability
to limit people and tell people what to do with
their bodies and how many kids they can have. Like
it's it's wild to me. It has a direct impact
on the technology, which I don't hear ever talked about
in the sense of how our human to human interactions
and how our culture's core beliefs and what we in
(17:33):
America get to vote for and get to participate in,
how that actually shapes the technology services and what the
technology is giving back to us. Who knew I could
be so deep?
Speaker 3 (17:45):
You I did, But I mean your audience obviously does now.
But you know it's user centric, bro. I mean, that's
the thing is we walk backwards here from problems and
we do that culture really starting, you know, human to
human you know, and things like that. That's definitely ideals
of the West.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Also, you know those robots over there, you know, focused
on replicating those.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Interactions are mostly just shells.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
You know. You see the kind of you know East
Asian and Chinese equivalents to cs, and also what's going
on in the Koreas and things like that. And you
see a lot of these, like you said, personal robots
trying to replicate like that human interaction.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
I mean, even all the way to sex robots, you know,
and things.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
You don't necessarily see all of that over here. And
you know, if you look at even how people talk
to optimists, it's not like in a I would say
authoritative tone, but it's not in that tone where you
think optimist is real. You know what optimist is doing.
You know what Boston Robot Dynamics Dog is doing the
way that you command them, and you know they're serving
(18:43):
a task and serving a purpose. You're not connecting with
them necessarily on.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
A hure, I don't trust. I don't trust a Bodega
robot that's operated by the CCP. I don't trust that
robot when they're looking. When that robot's looking at me,
it's one hundred, it's taking pictures of me, it's videotaping me,
it's doing no. I don't want that robot here. And
the same way that I don't want Huawei technology in
the United States. I don't want these CCP robots coming
(19:09):
onto America and working at a bodega or working at
a coffee shop. No, no, I don't want any of
those Chinese robots there. It's not just so keep it
made in America. But the robots, if they're coming to America,
I want them to be born. And the robots should
be born in America as well, and humans should have
to make them because it is it is creepy. If
(19:29):
they've got more robots than the rest of the world combined.
That's because of their One China policy from decades ago,
where they have a collapsing middle class, and now they
have all of these humanoids cheaply made that are storing
lord knows how much data on people. It's creepy. The
whole thing's creepy. So I just think, you know, we
(19:50):
have to have our values, what we all believe in
our technology. And I don't mean that in a Republican
Democrat paradigm. I mean as like, bigger, think bigger, think
about the future, think about the ideals of the Constitution
of America, of what our freedoms and our freedom to debate.
That's the type of digital DNA that I want in
(20:11):
those robots, and I don't think that quite frankly that
the mainstream media, they don't have any any conversation about
that at all, and I will continue to call it out,
so I can't help it, Chris.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
I have to.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
You're reminded me of buckle Buck too. Our robots seed
to all learn Uncle Buck and the boots to match,
you know.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
And then if you could have one robot, what would
it do?
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Oh geez, like right now, probably lift heavy boxes from
my third floor to my first live.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I have been doing that all day, you know, helping.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
My wife reorganize. So something like that would be very
useful for.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Me because for me, I still want to do my laundry.
All right, Chris, have a great tomort today.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Thanks for coming on, Hello Future, I appreciate you, bro,
Is a humanoid robot going to take your job? What
about your kids teacher's job? What about your barista's job.
Morgan Stanley just put out a report that says that
there could be nearly one billion humanoid robots roaming about
the planet Earth by the year twenty fifty. Hello Future,
it's me Kevin. This is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier.
The planet is Earth, the year is twenty twenty five,
(00:29):
and the robots they're coming. My guest today is someone
who spends a lot of time thinking about robots. He
is the head of artificial Intelligence for UCLA. He was
also a former big wig at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
That's how I met him. He didn't give me a toy,
wouldn't let me in the bunny suit to go see
all the robots, and lord knows what they're building at
NASA's Jepper Paulson Lab. Do you ever get to Area
(00:51):
fifty one, Chris.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I have not been to the Groom Lake test bed.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Now all right, Well, if you ever get to go
and you want to bring a journalists, let me know.
Humanoid robots Are they going to take over the world?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
I don't think they're going to take over the world,
and thanks for having me on keV. But they're definitely
going to help do some activities that I think could
be very routine, could be very helpful. They could do
things like cook our food for us. They could do
things like fold our laundry. And you have to ask yourself,
you know, these are certainly things that are important, but
are these skills that you still need in twenty twenty
(01:29):
seven or twenty twenty eight and things like that. And
that's primarily the use case that they're currently being used for.
If we talk about things like Optimists and Tesla and
things that I'm sure what we're going to talk about,
but yeah, it's shifting the focus on some of those
routine and mundane activities.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
I think that's the big idea. Now.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
My big thing is I would love to have an
astronaut that does my laundry, brings me a cup of
coffee every morning. I would love that. I think it's great.
I think it's awesome. That said, Okay, what am I
going to do with my ex time? You know what
I mean? So, I mean, especially if you're for kids,
kids should learn how to do their own laundry. I'm
a big believer in that, But for humanoid robots. When
you were working at NASA, was NASA thinking about these
(02:11):
big questions? Did they know the humanoids were coming by
twenty fifty, that a billion humanoid robots are going to
be roaming about the planet. Were they planning for that?
All of these news reports are just popping up that
you know, Elon Musk is going to unleash the humanoids?
Is that real? And did did the government know that
this was going to happen?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
It's definitely real.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
It's not something that NASA, at least, you know, in
terms of the robotic space exploration that we were doing
at NASA JPL was heavily invested in it all.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
It's something that they studied and largely kind of threw
away a lot of times in terms of the feasibility
because the thoughts related to that, at least in the
meetings that I was in when I was Chief Technology
and Innovation Officer at NASA JPL, was that solving the
energy mass you know sort of problems were more difficult
than anyone wanted to deal with, you know, and the
(03:01):
focus of solving some of those energy and mass problems
wanted to be focused on exploration rather than the commercial
activity of eliminating.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Mundane tasks and things like that.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And what that means is that to power these things
you need the types of things that Elon Musk and
others have really solved, which is, you know, critical minerals,
mining for batteries, the ev sort of compact energy distribution
challenge that they've solved with things like Tesla, and the
miniaturization of ion lithium ion batteries, you know, to the
(03:31):
point of delivery of effective power and capability at large
and small scales. Those were all necessary beyond NASA spent
plenty of time figuring out kinetics and how to move
arms and you know, how to pick things up and
things like that. But the energy is the real change
in the last decade, keV.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
The energy that powers the robots. See this. When to
hear you talk, I'm thinking to myself, Okay, I really
want to have a robot that brings me coffee and
folds my laundry. But I don't want to kill the
planet in order to get that robot. And if there's
a billion of these things that are roaming around doing
all of this stuff, is that just gonna junk up
the planet, and it sounds like people forget just because
(04:09):
it's running wireless. It's not really wireless. It takes rare
earth minerals to build the robot's skin or the bones
of the robot, the arms of the robot. All of
that is mined from somewhere, and if the robots are
doing that mining, it just becomes this self fulfilling prophecy
of just murdering the planet. There's an environmental concern to this,
but at the same time, I like the idea that
(04:30):
the robots could be doing dangerous jobs that humans shouldn't
be able to do. And I also like the idea
of using robots to go to space, which is where
Elon really grabbed my attention the other week was when
he was talking about how they're first gonna put the
robots on Mars before humans, and that the robots are
gonna be building whatever laboratory. Remember a couple of years ago,
(04:51):
it was oh, three D printing is gonna build everything.
Elon said, no, we're gonna have some three D printing,
but our robots are gonna get off of the ship
and they're gonna build the stuff. Is that a shift
in recent years and the reliance on the three D
printing to the to the robots. What do you make.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, it's definitely a shift. I mean robots can't get COVID.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Robots can't you know, robots can get cosmically irradiated with
solar radiation. So that's something that Elon I think probably
is on a path to solving. But it hasn't been
the focus of things like SpaceX and Tesla, you know,
an XAI yet.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
But I think it's a pivot that he's gonna make.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
And what do I mean by that, keV is like
we spend a lot of time at NASA. You know,
when you throw up space parts and computer parts into space,
they're radiated by cosmic radiation.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So you know, you can't just take.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Your laptop computer with the powerful GPU and bring it
into space because guess what, like after a few months,
it's going to be cooked. As the kids say, you
know it's one Yeah, I have a teenager, so so anyways,
it's gonna be cooked. You know, zeros are gonna go
to ones, ones are gonna go to zero. So you
need what's called radiation hardened hardware, meaning that it can
(05:55):
survive cosmic radiation and things like that. And so you
know when Tesla, you know, provides that robot out here
in Hollywood and it's at a cafe and it's serving
you popcorn and soon burgers and things like that at
the Tesla Hollywood Cafe, which is, by the way.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
So badass, and have you been there? It's so cool?
I have not.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I want to go there. It's on my list and
I will. I'll get some popcorn from Optimist. But when
he's doing that, he really is, I think, working out
some of the kinetics and other things.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
But he's not solving the you know, cosmic radiation problem.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
These these things don't have to be you know, they're
radiated by the sun here on Earth, but it has
to go through our atmosphere, which is why we don't
we're all no, we're not all burnt to a crisp
and neither is it.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
But that's why to your point, if they don't have
good skincare, which is really what you're talking about, the
robots need good skincare. They need good stuff sunscreen for
lack of better word. Yeah, and like literally a sunscreen
to protect themselves when they're up there. That's why I
think personally, these reports that China's beating the US on
robotics are a bit overplayed because I mean, all I
(06:55):
do is open up your box from your favorite shipping
platform of cheap stuff from China, and it doesn't really work. Well,
it's everyone knows it. I mean, it's all cheap. And
so I just saw this headline from ZME Science that
China has more factory robots than the rest of the
world combined. New York Times headline last week there are
more robots working in China than the rest of the
(07:16):
world combined. So that's also And then you've got tech Node,
another great tech website. China installed nearly three hundred thousand
industrial robots in twenty twenty four, more than all of
the other markets combined. So China has a lot of robots.
US is falling behind on the robots. That's the message
from the mainstream media. But I mean they did like
their robot games. I don't know if you saw this
(07:37):
where they had the robots run marathons. I could. I'm
not that fast. I've done marathons. I could beat that
robot and only like half of them finished. They were
falling over. Okay, it's cool. It goes viral on the
social media. I get it. I watched them. I like
seeing them, you know, play soccer against one another and
like beat each other up. That's entertainment. But I'm not
(08:00):
necessarily something that is what I would build the backbone
of my economy on. Am I wrong?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
You're not wrong at all.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
I mean Boston Dynamics is the great example, the robot dog.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
The other things I look to are optimists. There's a
famous viral video of optimists, you know, with the cyber
truck getting out of a cyber truck and then shooting
the cyber truck, you know, and things like that. You know,
you look at the pure kinematics you know of what
we're achieving, and I think it's you know, the US
and the West leading in that sense again first of
a kind, things like when you think big, you know,
when you think you know future, like you and I
(08:32):
are doing here, and I think is your vision? You know,
when we think that, we're not thinking to production line
oriented robots that have no kinematics other than like the
top portion of their bodies, like build as many of
those as you want. Those are routine, Those are spacely sprockets,
you know, and things like that. It doesn't mean that
they're leading simply by producing more of them, you know.
(08:53):
And again I think we're leading in terms of doing
the very interesting novel needed capabilities to do some of
these activities to Mars getting the moon, things like.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Well, some of it's creepy, Chris, and this is you know,
some of it. The headlines from the from the Chinese
Communist Party press about how they're having robots take care
of their old people, the aging population. That's horrible, Like,
go visit your loved ones, don't leave it to your robot.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
That's creepy one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
I mean, keV, you're talking about social credit, you know,
which is just society, right society, Western society versus you know,
at some level, you know, Eastern society and you know,
things like that. But like, yeah, in the West, I
don't see those as activities that anyone is building robots,
you know, in humanoid robots to replace right now.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
And I'm happy because of it too.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I like to kind of reach out and touch my family,
be there for them, have empathy.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I don't see that there.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah. Newsweek reported on this the other week. Michael McCartney
and Newsweek. He writes, quote, robots will play a growing
role in caring for China's elderly. Industry insiders say, who
are the industry insiders? Robotics firms moved to tap into
the countries expanding silver economy. Why it matters? China, like
the rest of East Asia, is grappling with a flagging
(10:09):
birth rate couple with a fast aging workforce. That's why
I think they're building all the robots, by the way,
is because their population is collapsing, and so build a
bunch of cheap robots. I mean people age sixty five
in order older, according to Newsweek, already make up about
fifteen percent of its one point four billion citizens. According
to the UN, and they expect China to join Japan
(10:30):
in South Korea as a super aged society where more
than one in five residents are seniors by twenty thirty five. Wow,
So now they're just gonna give them all robots. Would
you have a robot replace your pet? I could never
do that. That's the other thing I know a lot
about in Japan that took off. There's like this, I
call it a ferbie on steroids. Remember the Ferbi I
don't know if you're easy. I never got into the ferbie.
(10:52):
I thought I could never get it to talk, and
I was after a day, I was like, this is stupid,
Like the thing doesn't do anything. I liked my first
I never had a TAMAGATCHI though, I don't know. I
was too young for that.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
But yeah, but I had a cheap pet, you know,
I never had that.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I had a goldfish, but by accident I froze it
because I was cleaning the tank and it froze. But
I have a dog, and I love my dog, and
I would never want a robot dog. I would never ever.
I couldn't even imagine having a robot pet. And I
see all of these reports that they're trying to make
it a thing where they like sell over the holidays,
(11:29):
you know, and it took off in Japan. They love
them over there, these robot pets. Do you think that
would ever catch off culturally here?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
I think that there's a market for it, but yeah,
like culturally, like broadly, I mean, my wife and I,
you know, just have fun all day sharing videos of
our you know, frenchchiess because we're FRENCHI owners, you know,
two French seats and being a frenchie owner is like
a special thing, you know. You know, the dog comes
up and just stares you down. They twoed at you,
you know, with a different type of gas. You know,
an they're just you know, they have zoomies. I just
(11:59):
don't see robots doing that. And you know, for for
all the things and you know that you mentioned here,
I mean, look, having robots replace some level of human
you know, either to pet or human to human connection.
You know, there is a global declining birth rate. I mean,
that's why there's such a focus even here in the
west On, you know, by people like Elon and others.
And I would say the right, you know, in terms
(12:20):
of you know, focusing in on that.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
There's certainly something there that said.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
I don't know, Yeah, I feel like I feel like
Western culture wouldn't jive with that, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
And I still think even when you go I don't
even like when you have to go to a restaurant
and get the QR code, I want to talk to
a human who takes the order and then brings the food.
You know, I always have a million questions. So I
don't even I don't like the idea of a robot
replacing a waiter or waitress.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
It's the out of sight, out of mind, you know, Yes,
like you probably wouldn't mind flipping the robot flipping the
burger in the background, because you never necessarily out of
sight out of mind. But you know if that burger
was delivered to you by a waiter, you'd be down right.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yeah for sure. And even those even when you know
you see some of those things on the street that
are delivering stuff, they're not robots. They're not robots. I mean,
give us, if you're gonna give us robots by twenty
fifty a billion, like Morgan Stanley says, give us actual
humanoid robots, not these little smurf looking things that are
like cartoonish. No, I don't want that. I want the
(13:18):
terminy I.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yes, or house party protocol exact.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
House party yes, exactly, none of this like oh like again,
they're the cheap junior league robots. No, give us the
real ones like they have in Ukraine. Which is a
great pivot to the military implications of how robots are
being deployed in Ukraine and defending against Russia's egregious war
in Ukraine. I call it the first robotics War. I mean,
(13:44):
I remember as a kid when I was studying history,
and it was you know, how weaponry in the civil
in the American Revolutionary War, you know, back in seventeen
seventy six, Happy Birthday, America. Next year to fifty, I
remember learning about how weaponry really gave the scrappy, the Americans,
the upper hand because they were able to leverage. Again,
it's a form of technology to be able to beat
(14:07):
off the British. Now we're seeing robots being deployed in Ukraine,
which is really holding off of Russia. And Ukraine was
the underdog, and now they're being able to really surprise
people ap reports on a battlefield swarming with deadly Russian drones.
Ukrainian soldiers are increasingly turning to nimble, remote controlled armored
(14:29):
vehicles that can perform an array of tasks and spare
troops from potentially life threatening missions. The Ukrainian army is
especially eager to deploy what soldiers referred to as robots
on wheels. So the military implications of this, especially what's
happening in Ukraine, I think, are going to change the
(14:49):
way we think about conflicts for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Right one hundred percent. I mean it started with you know,
the you know, at.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Least reported and speculated assassination and you know, right, you know,
related to enemies. I think of Israel, you know, and
assassination of an Iranian you know, scientist that was supposedly
done according to reporting by a robot.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
And then yeah, Ukraine and pivoting to Russia. That is
that is the robot battlefield. And you know, we imagine
a lot of these drone strikes, you know, being these
big predators, and that the US military polls in you know,
billions of dollars to build and the big contracts, and
the theater here has totally pivoted to these lightweight, cheap
drones that I used to see building erth science, remote sensing,
(15:35):
you know, where you'd have these little, you know, quad
copter type of things with instruments on them.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
And then now they've got bombs and guns.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
And you know, I read recently, I think it was
in the New York Times that everyone wants Iran Shaid.
I'm probably pronouncing it right, drone, right, these kamikaze drones,
and they want to copy you know basically that you know,
because basically they're lightweight they're cheap and you know their
single use, but you can build so many of them,
and you know this is both what Ukraine is using
but also what you know, Russia is partnering, you know,
(16:04):
with their side of the you know, conflict, and you
know that's why their relationship with Iran is so important.
So lightweight drones are certainly, you know, part of the battlefield.
One thing I'm looking for this is all about the future, right,
and it's to your point is that you know robot drones,
you know, remote control drone warfare isn't the only way.
What about robot robot medic evac vehicles? Yes, you know,
(16:25):
and that, Yeah, I love that. I've got a friend
who's really into that world. And just even just the
ability for a doctor to go into virtual reality or
an augmented reality and then to be able to be
doing like multiple surgeries in their VR while the robots
are in the operating table. Like that's where my mind goes.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
But I I I mean for the purposes of that, yeah,
one thousand percent. The medical implications are are huge. Chris Mattman,
I want to take it on a personal ending, which
is from a cultural human to human standpoint, China's decision
to do the one kid policy. Talk about why you
don't have a robots in middle class, Well, because you're
replacing your middle class with robots. All of that stems
(17:08):
from and your population issues stem from this whole ability
to limit people and tell people what to do with
their bodies and how many kids they can have. Like
it's it's wild to me. It has a direct impact
on the technology, which I don't hear ever talked about
in the sense of how our human to human interactions
and how our culture's core beliefs and what we in
(17:33):
America get to vote for and get to participate in,
how that actually shapes the technology services and what the
technology is giving back to us. Who knew I could
be so deep?
Speaker 3 (17:45):
You I did, But I mean your audience obviously does now.
But you know it's user centric, bro. I mean, that's
the thing is we walk backwards here from problems and
we do that culture really starting, you know, human to
human you know, and things like that. That's definitely ideals
of the West.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Also, you know those robots over there, you know, focused
on replicating those.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Interactions are mostly just shells.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
You know. You see the kind of you know East
Asian and Chinese equivalents to cs, and also what's going
on in the Koreas and things like that. And you
see a lot of these, like you said, personal robots
trying to replicate like that human interaction.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
I mean, even all the way to sex robots, you know,
and things.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
You don't necessarily see all of that over here. And
you know, if you look at even how people talk
to optimists, it's not like in a I would say
authoritative tone, but it's not in that tone where you
think optimist is real. You know what optimist is doing.
You know what Boston Robot Dynamics Dog is doing the
way that you command them, and you know they're serving
(18:43):
a task and serving a purpose. You're not connecting with
them necessarily on.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
A hure, I don't trust. I don't trust a Bodega
robot that's operated by the CCP. I don't trust that
robot when they're looking. When that robot's looking at me,
it's one hundred, it's taking pictures of me, it's videotaping me,
it's doing no. I don't want that robot here. And
the same way that I don't want Huawei technology in
the United States. I don't want these CCP robots coming
(19:09):
onto America and working at a bodega or working at
a coffee shop. No, no, I don't want any of
those Chinese robots there. It's not just so keep it
made in America. But the robots, if they're coming to America,
I want them to be born. And the robots should
be born in America as well, and humans should have
to make them because it is it is creepy. If
(19:29):
they've got more robots than the rest of the world combined.
That's because of their One China policy from decades ago,
where they have a collapsing middle class, and now they
have all of these humanoids cheaply made that are storing
lord knows how much data on people. It's creepy. The
whole thing's creepy. So I just think, you know, we
(19:50):
have to have our values, what we all believe in
our technology. And I don't mean that in a Republican
Democrat paradigm. I mean as like, bigger, think bigger, think
about the future, think about the ideals of the Constitution
of America, of what our freedoms and our freedom to debate.
That's the type of digital DNA that I want in
(20:11):
those robots, and I don't think that quite frankly that
the mainstream media, they don't have any any conversation about
that at all, and I will continue to call it out,
so I can't help it, Chris.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
I have to.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
You're reminded me of buckle Buck too. Our robots seed
to all learn Uncle Buck and the boots to match,
you know.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
And then if you could have one robot, what would
it do?
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Oh geez, like right now, probably lift heavy boxes from
my third floor to my first live.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I have been doing that all day, you know, helping.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
My wife reorganize. So something like that would be very
useful for.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Me because for me, I still want to do my laundry.
All right, Chris, have a great tomort today.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Thanks for coming on, Hello Future, I appreciate you, bro,
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