Dream Machines: Physical AI, Robotics, Being Human
00:01:55 · Lara Sophie Bothur, Evan Helda
[00:01:55] S0: So with that, I bring you Lara Sophie Bothur. [00:01:58] S1: Welcome to Dream Machines. Really appreciate you making the time to kick things off. I want to talk about the mission that you're on. There's lots of ways to define what you do. You're an influencer, you're a storyteller, you're a modern day journalist, but how would you define what you do and what your current mission is? [00:02:16] S0: Yeah. Thanks for inviting me, Evan. I'm very glad I'm here. I would call it a tech translator, actually. And I'm glad I was able to define this role. And the tech translator, someone translating tech to people, trying to reduce the gap between both, because I see that there is a big gap. People don't understand what's going on. The word is getting faster and faster. And the problem of not understanding tech is that it stays unused and you can't make good decisions or start to invest in technology. And I think this is something very, very risky also, because as soon as you don't understand technology, you won't understand the word anymore. [00:03:09] S1: I totally agree. I think we're on similar missions in that sense. And I agree with the Feeling of time getting faster. I feel like we're falling into a wormhole. Some call it the singularity, I guess, but it's starting to get visceral. What do you think is the biggest thing getting lost in translation with tech currently?
00:03:30 · Lara Sophie Bothur
[00:03:30] S0: I think it also just starts in normal conversations. You know, it's that people don't ask enough. And I think we should all Have this curiosity of a child, you know, where, you know, kids, they are like asking this, they play this Y game all the time and you're annoyed by that, but actually it's good because they need to understand the word and somehow, I don't know, between Being a property and becoming an adult, we stop asking questions because we feel like we're probably done, but we don't have time to listen anymore when we ask a question. But I see that so often in business conversations where someone is saying, oh yeah, did you hear about this quantum machine learning model? And then everyone's like, oh yeah, quantum, yeah. You see the nodding and the nodding tells you, I don't understand a word, but they don't want to ask. And I think it's very difficult when it also comes to AI because AI is the new electricity for us. It's like the new internet. And if you don't understand the internet and how to use that, You won't understand the word anymore. And coming back to the origin of this role, I visited my 101-year-old grandpa in Berlin and he asked me, Lara, how did she get here? And I was by car sharing. And he was curious and he asked, Lara, what is that? And I started to explain to this very old man why we share cars, which was of course a very weird and fun conversation. And showed me that there is a way to simplify and to tell a story. But so it's not just about our generation. It's also about the older generations and to take everyone along on this new journey. And I guess it's funny because I explained it to my grandpa. And then probably my kids one day will tell me, oh, mom, you don't see this is fake news and they will be better than I am. And I already see that too. For example, my mom, she always has her phone on now when she's at the dinner table and then, sorry, mom. But then she's opening the message directly and then responding like this. And because she feels appreciated that she got a message. If I would do that, I would not have a conversation anymore. But so I remind her and I think Marcus, you also have a daughter, right? It will remind you of something different because they grow up very naturally and intuitive with technology and that is a different word again.
00:06:24 · Lara Sophie Bothur, Evan Helda
What do you think is the technology we need to pay attention to most? [00:06:31] S1: Yeah, AI is becoming the water we swim in, but I feel like saying AI is a cliche answer. So I want to think of something a bit more interesting and deep. I think I'll riff off of what you just said, which is not so much one technology, but a confluence of them, perhaps that leads to a new type of interaction. And we'll call it the idea of ephemeral interfaces. It's like UIs on demand, meaning we're gonna get the right information at the right time in the right way. And we're not gonna have to just Having a loud alert and pull our phone out and break up the moment in the interaction. We're going to have all types of devices from the ear pods to the watches to the phones that just have intelligence in them and can sense and understand context. If you get information, it's not going to just give you an alert. It's going to wait. It's going to know you're in conversation. It's going to wait till you get in the car and then boom, pop it up on the dashboard of your vehicle. And so the question I like to ask and think about And the thing that I think gets lost in translation to flip the question I asked you is we like to think about consuming information with the current interfaces, but like we can totally reinvent the way all this information is consumed. And because intelligence is electricity, like put on your Harry Potter cap, right? Think, think in the realm of, of magic. And I think that's where, um, we'll find that there's much better ways to interact with tech and with, with each other.
00:08:06 · Lara Sophie Bothur
[00:08:06] S0: Yeah. Well, I think that what we also need to pay attention to is that technology is changing the way we interact with each other or not interact anymore. There's now different trends that is, for example, emotional outsourcing. So what does that mean? You know, a child, for example, has problems in school and is not going to her mom anymore to talk about the problems, but then rather chat with AI about it. So what does it mean for our society when we're not talking to each other anymore or when a woman falls in love with her AI and marries the AI? What does it truly mean to be human? And I think it's important that a child talks to the mom, but then also I think Aren't we already there? You know, is that true? Is that AI that is changing the world or are we already on the road to change? Because I think if you check out, you know, the internet already is already so anonymous and it already starts that our relationships are changing. Or if you check out all the dating apps, you know? How many people are in relationships, are happy, are not looking for the next best thing. And so I think this is also interesting how technologies are changing how our relationships work in the future. I think it's a big trend as well.
00:09:48 · Evan Helda
Ad[00:09:48] S1: This episode is sponsored by Bifrost, the simulation and evaluation platform for physical AI. In robotics, you don't really know if a model works until you know where it breaks. And the real world will not hand you those moments on demand. The rare object, the strange lighting, the one in 10,000 failure that only shows up when it matters most. That's what simulation is for. Not just generating pretty synthetic images, but making reality testable. The problem is, as most of us know, simulation is incredibly hard. You need a team of 3D experts, custom tooling, and weeks to months of setup before a team can run a single serious evaluation. Bifrost changes that. They make it easy for developers to build and scale high-fidelity simulations, drop their models into the exact scenarios they need, and evaluate against the edge cases before anything reaches the field. And the synthetic data, it comes with it. Perfectly labeled. Because in physical AI, the winner will not be the teams with the most data. It'll be the teams understand where their models fail and fixes them before they fail in the real world. If you're building robots and want to trust what you ship, go to Bifrost.ai. Yeah, I think the word is evolution. This is going to force us to think, act, and behave differently. And I think there is going to be this era where we don't realize how much we have to change in that way in order to thrive in this new era. And so it's going to be up to parents and modern day schools to really rethink what is taught. Uh, hard skills or even soft skills. It's almost inner world skills, right? To see the world a different way. And then alongside that, we have to build these tools and AI tools to encourage, Hey, yeah, talk to me first, says the AI and we'll get our head around things, but it has to then encourage some sort of action in the real world, I think for the effect to come full circle. And so I think that'll be the best type of tools. Is ones that bring you in to the power of the tech and then expel you back out to your family, to your friends, to the forest. I don't know. All kinds of ways to put you back into nature. I guess the word maybe to sum up that is we need tech to have wisdom.
00:12:07 · Lara Sophie Bothur, Evan Helda
[00:12:07] S0: Yeah. [00:12:08] S1: Technics of wisdom and wisdom is going to be rooted in understanding that we need connection with each other. And understanding people, I think that's something that you actually studied. You studied psychology. Yeah. Tech psychology. So give me the academic definition of tech psychologist. Like when you go to school and you sign up for that master's and you go to the signup page, how do they define tech psychology? [00:12:38] S0: Oh, well, maybe I need to really ask AI. No, but I think, I will not do that, but I think it's really to understand the theory Human and tech psychology and also the API, I would say. Where does human beings start? Where does it end? And what does human-machine collaboration mean? Why do robots look like us? You know, how to, what is a good user experience? I mean, that we can now chat with our factory. This is something new. And we all know, like from chat GPT moment on, AI has become more accessible. So make tech more human so humans can use it. And I mean, humans develop technology for humans. And on the way, We lose us. And it's so bad because we do all that for us and then we create something we don't understand anymore. And that should not be the case, I guess. And so it was very interesting to study that, but I was also working a lot besides that. So I was not always in class. [00:14:07] S1: Slacker. If you're working, actually, I shouldn't [00:14:11] S0: do that. [00:14:12] S1: Ambitious. We'll call it ambitious.