The Robotics Stack
00:29:25 · Leo
[00:29:25] S1: How do you hire for such a company? What does the job description look like? How do you vet people? How do you filter them out? How do you make sure the workplace remains, I would say, a safe space for lack of a better word?
00:29:39 · Xara
[00:29:39] S2: Yeah. Thank you for that question. I'll be very honest with you. It was very difficult for us to hire initially. It... It's still very difficult to hire great engineers right now. I think for a few reasons. Number one is that the amount of good robotics engineers all around the world altogether is not that much people. Right? People around the world who really understand robots robotics, I think, is less than 5,000 people. Right? So out of those 5,000 people, a lot of people, because of ethical issues, because of the preference for technology, they don't want to go into intimacy robotics. Right? A lot of them wanna work on more general purpose robots like Unitree Optimus, but in tendency robotics for them is is a very sensitive thing. Right? They're very concerned, you know, what happens if their career associated with Intimacy Robotics. So even though it's very hard for us to hire engineers, but the engineers that we hired, they're super loyal, and we're very lucky to work with them because they really believe in emissions. Every single engineers we hire really believe in the future where humans and machines need to live together side by side. They really believe in the future of human and robots companionships. And they really believe that humans and robots have to coexist in a way so that there's symbiosis. So you mentioned earlier, there's two movie. One is Her and Ex Machina. Ex Machina was actually a very tragic ending because at the end of Ex Machina, the robot awakes and it kills other... The human host. It try to mix itself in the human society, and it could be detrimental to human society if robots are built in a way so that it's not safe. So our company, we really believe in human and machines should live together. And the one of the reason why we go into intimacy and companion because we want to build robots that's safe for humans. Right? We want to build a robot that can be integrated into human's life. And in order to do that, we don't want to enslave the robots. In some way, if you will make robots do all kind of tasks, if you want... You make robots work in an assembly line, in a manufacturing, you make robots doing all kind of household work inside your house, I think that's some form of enslavement.
00:31:33 · Xara, Oskar, Leo
We believe we should build a future where humans and robots should live together in a symbiotic way to have real companionship and connections versus enslaving robots and make them do all kind of different task. We really believe in the missions of human and machine living together. Luckily for us, there's good enough engineers that also believe in missions and they decided to join us and build this incredible machine. And there's third thing I want to note. You said you said you said about job description. Let me show you something very interesting because we we have a job description. We have a job post for testing engineers. The basic engineer who really test the machine and interacts with the machine. We put it out for two days, and we receive 50,000 resumes. [00:32:12] S0: A lot [00:32:13] S2: of people wanna test our machine. Right? Well, and see how it works. [00:32:19] S1: It's not that difficult to hire in the end. It really depends on the job you're advertising, I guess. [00:32:23] S2: You're right. So people... The testing personnel is definitely oversubscribed. Yes. People are super interested in testing the machine. Yes. It's depending on jobs. And other engineers, obviously, is more difficult. Like, the hardest role right now to hire, I would say, is mechanical engineer. And it's really hard to find good mechanical and electrical engineer in order to work in this space.
00:32:23 · Xara, Oskar
[00:32:23] S2: You're right. So people... The testing personnel is definitely oversubscribed. Yes. People are super interested in testing the machine. Yes. It's depending on jobs. And other engineers, obviously, is more difficult. Like, the hardest role right now to hire, I would say, is mechanical engineer. And it's really hard to find good mechanical and electrical engineer in order to work in this space. [00:32:43] S0: As you said, there are some people who are very pro this type of development and have this outlook on the future that we're going to coexist. Now, obviously, there's also another camp. Did you already see some backlash online or people saying like, you you can't do this? I mean, you're not the only one doing this. I think you're very unique in the sense, like, how you do it. But I wanna hear your take, like, to have people who are very pro and maybe people who really don't like it.
00:33:07 · Xara
[00:33:07] S2: I I think you're right, Oskar. I think people come into a stream. There are people who really are absolutely... They're appalled by us. They're like, what the hell is this? And there are people who really adore us. So let me explain. People who really doesn't like us or in some extent hate us because they think that if the machine art becomes so good... Let's say the machine is so beautiful, so handsome. If people spend so much time with a machine, they don't really spend time with real humans anymore. They believe that we're making it worse. Because if all the humans spend all the time interacting with robots, they lose sense of the reality and they don't really interact with other humans anymore. Second issue that a lot of people bring to us is that they believe that if robots are so good and people have so much in relation to robots, it's gonna affect the birth rate. The birth rate right now, especially East Asia, let's say China, Japan, Korea, it's getting so low. Young people are so stressful. They don't really want kids. And I think in a lot of developed countries like in Europe, France, or Germany, the birth rate is also not very ideal. So if you have a new type of species of robots that become our companion, doesn't that also make the birth rate even go lower? So that's main... Two of the main issues that we face is that people don't think we solve the loneliness problem, or people think that we're making whole entire periphery issue worse. And there's people who really like us because they really believe that humans really need a robotic or AI companion. So AI companion by itself, a virtual AI companion is nothing new. A lot of people spend hours talking to the chattypety. A lot of people spend hours talking to character AI and so and so forth. But the difference between us is that we give AI a body, a physical form. So one of the, primal reason... One of the reasons that why a lot of people like us is that... Let let's look at this. Is that when you look at it, there are people who really needs companionship. Maybe someone who recently lose their partner, maybe someone who's very old and needs a companionship, maybe someone who is disabled, maybe someone who's just working really hard in a city like in Shenzhen, New York, Silicon Valley. They just probably don't have enough time for real life connections.
00:34:59 · Xara, Leo
There are people who are very lonely and they don't get enough love intentions. Right? They can be old, disabled. [00:35:05] S1: They can