Latest / In the Loop AI / Robot Olympics 2026: China's Robots Just Broke Human World Records

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Robot Olympics 2026: China's Robots Just Broke Human World Records · In the Loop AI

0:00
Josh: 26 years ago, a human athlete ran the 1500-meter race in 3 minutes and 26 seconds.
0:07
Josh: And ever since then, the record had never been beaten.
0:10
Josh: We've had seven Olympics, the latest Nike running shoes, and no one has been able to beat it.
0:14
Josh: But over the weekend, a humanoid robot out of China crushed it in 2 minutes
0:19
Josh: and 21 seconds. This was the World Humanoid Olympics that was hosted in China over five days.
0:26
Josh: And these robots are crushing human-based Olympic events.
0:30
Josh: They ran a faster 100 meter than Usain Bolt. They jumped higher than the Olympic record.
0:35
Josh: And they broke 1500 meter and the 400 meter races.
0:38
Josh: We're talking about 2000 robots from over 16 countries that competed in 55 Olympic
0:44
Josh: events. These are the same events that humans compete every four years.
0:48
Josh: And the contrast between last year's Robot Olympics and this year's is vastly
0:53
Josh: different. And we're going to get into all of that on today's episode.
0:56
Ejaaz: This is a visual episode where like, if you're not watching,
0:58
Ejaaz: you're probably going to want to watch these videos because they're insane.
1:01
Ejaaz: This is also a funny episode because one year ago, we actually filmed the first
1:05
Ejaaz: annual Robot Olympics. We are here now for our second annual pretty much any event on the show.
1:09
Josh: Yeah, we're on the zone. To talk about the show.
1:11
Ejaaz: I mean, dude, just look at the visual of the sound screen. This looks like it's
1:13
Ejaaz: AI generated, but it is not AI generated. What we're seeing run across the screen
1:18
Ejaaz: is an army of robots that are perfectly in sync.
1:21
Ejaaz: For this event, the scale is huge. I think the total amount of robots competing
1:26
Ejaaz: is up 300% year over year.
1:29
Ejaaz: And the amount of teams is up like 200% year over year.
1:32
Ejaaz: And the most interesting statistic is 96% of all the robots that competed in
1:36
Ejaaz: this Olympics are all Chinese made.
1:39
Ejaaz: This is the China event. And it's kind of sad because I was looking at humanoid
1:43
Ejaaz: robots from the US and I was like, oh boy, we might just be cooked.
1:46
Ejaaz: So for the records i'm just gonna just list off a couple that are are kind of
1:50
Ejaaz: unbelievable and then we'll get into the videos of how they actually did it
1:52
Ejaaz: the first is the 100 meter gold that is like the flagship race that everyone kind of
1:58
Ejaaz: that denominates in. And that is the one where Usain Bolt famously is the human
2:02
Ejaaz: world record. He ran it in 9.58 seconds.
2:04
Ejaaz: The robot ran it in 9.39 seconds. And oh my God, look at this video. It's terrifying.
2:11
Ejaaz: Could you imagine a robot running at you that fast?
2:13
Josh: No. And also look how tall these things are. I could have sworn that these robots
2:18
Josh: are meant to be like waist height.
2:20
Josh: They were certainly like last year when they were competing.
2:22
Josh: This thing is like six foot three to six foot five. These things are huge.
2:26
Josh: Oh you see the crash pad over here as well where they just kind of like.
2:29
Ejaaz: Slam i find it funny how yeah they crash and they just die like they just turn
2:32
Ejaaz: off and then they have to get dragged off in carts they're coming
2:34
Josh: Because one and done it's nuts.
2:37
Ejaaz: The next one that was kind of crazy is the standing high jump which um
2:41
Ejaaz: was above the human record they cleared 2.8 meter 2.88 meters almost nine meters
2:47
Ejaaz: the 1500 meter race the tiangang ultra is what they call it was two minutes
2:53
Ejaaz: and 21 seconds against a human world record of
2:56
Ejaaz: three minutes and 26 seconds, which was untouched since 1998.
3:02
Ejaaz: And the robot, most interestingly, these aren't human controlled.
3:05
Ejaaz: They ran fully autonomously with zero human intervention.
3:09
Ejaaz: So I think all of these things, as we go through the videos from this event,
3:12
Ejaaz: yeah, here's the robot running 14.5 miles per hour and just running into the barricade.
3:17
Ejaaz: It's the first time that feels scary. And I remember we did this episode a year
3:20
Ejaaz: ago and I was like, okay, robots are kind of a joke. Like they don't actually
3:23
Ejaaz: look like they are doing anything effective. They're not running that fast.
3:26
Ejaaz: They're kind of falling apart and collapsing.
3:28
Ejaaz: Similar things were happening this year, but we're seeing some serious upgrades
3:32
Ejaaz: year over year. And if we continue this trajectory, even one year in the future,
3:35
Ejaaz: that leaves us with a pretty unnerving reality with how capable these robots are gonna be.
3:40
Josh: Yeah, I mean, I remember last year's Olympics. And just so that you guys have
3:45
Josh: an understanding in how advanced these robots have become in a very short period
3:49
Josh: of time, specifically in China.
3:51
Josh: Last year, the 100-meter time, the winning robot ran it in 21.5 seconds.
3:57
Josh: That's like more than double the world record that Usain Bolt held.
4:01
Josh: And now in less than a year, because it has been less than a year,
4:04
Josh: they crushed Usain Bolt's record. So what's that going to be next year when
4:08
Josh: these robots' arms aren't flailing in a crazy way and they're way more dynamically
4:12
Josh: efficient, they're going to crush it even more.
4:14
Josh: And so I think the realization that struck to me is this is,
4:18
Josh: to your point, no longer a joke.
4:20
Josh: The Chinese are very advanced in hardware. We were talking about this before
4:24
Josh: we started recording, but hardware and manufacturing has been their kind of
4:27
Josh: mecca over the last couple of decades at this point.
4:30
Josh: And they have completely beaten the US. When I compare, when I'm looking at
4:34
Josh: the figure robots in the US or any kind of robots, Amazon delivery robots.
4:38
Josh: I'm just like, China is way more advanced. And for humanoids specifically,
4:42
Josh: because this is the other thing, right? It's like, why would these events kind
4:46
Josh: of like matter to us at all?
4:48
Josh: It's because they're human looking robots competing in human based events.
4:52
Josh: Like look, and we're not just talking about, you know, track and field events.
4:55
Josh: We're talking about like football. We're talking about like tennis.
4:59
Josh: Like I think in this one, there's a crazy penalty. Josh, I want to show you
5:02
Josh: this. Hang on one second.
5:03
Josh: So a yellow card on the robot and again if you're not watching this I urge you
5:07
Josh: to and so he lines up for a penno.
5:10
Ejaaz: Drains it absolutely
5:12
Josh: Drains it so the point is these robots are no longer toys and we saw the famous
5:18
Josh: chinese robot lab unitree ipo last week and their stock is up 650 and that wasn't
5:24
Josh: like a pump a dump it's still up around four to five hundred percent
5:27
Josh: so there's obviously a demand for these robots these robots are very much at
5:30
Josh: the research phase until this event which tied in with a very important conference
5:35
Josh: i think it was like the world robotics conference or something like that,
5:38
Josh: where the pitch was essentially, these robots are now physically able to do
5:41
Josh: a lot of complex things that humans are able to do.
5:44
Josh: And you can now apply this to various different industries. And the sports and
5:48
Josh: athletics feed is just one example of that.
5:50
Ejaaz: There's one thing that I want to highlight that I found extremely interesting
5:53
Ejaaz: from this, because one of the new rules that happened this year is that if it's
5:56
Ejaaz: a flat event, meaning like if the robot is on a flat surface,
6:00
Ejaaz: it must be fully autonomous.
6:02
Ejaaz: And this is true for the relay races. This is true for anything on these flat surfaces.
6:05
Ejaaz: And what we noticed this year was a property that a lot of people laughed at,
6:10
Ejaaz: which is this robot, you guys know you saw it, running with its arms,
6:13
Ejaaz: waving, flailing crazy. And this is the best robot. Do we have a video that
6:16
Ejaaz: we can show them? Yes, this.
6:18
Ejaaz: So look at that robot. Look at how they're running with their arms flailing side to side.
6:22
Ejaaz: And I thought this was funny and goofy until I realized that this was actually
6:26
Ejaaz: an emergent property of machine learning.
6:29
Ejaaz: And this was not trained into the robot this was understood and emerged from
6:35
Ejaaz: what yielded the best results and it turns out that like the the robots are
6:39
Ejaaz: getting smart enough where they can kind of
6:41
Ejaaz: Self-recursively loop themselves and come to terms with the idea that this is
6:45
Ejaaz: the optimal strategy and when i look at this i'm laughing because this is kind
6:49
Ejaaz: of what evolution developed as a tail
6:51
Ejaaz: for a lot of animals that were running around like a lot of these large animals
6:55
Ejaaz: that run fast they need a tail as a counterbalance they don't fall over
6:58
Ejaaz: these humanoid robots now are running with their arms flailing back and forth
7:02
Ejaaz: as a mechanism for balancing. And I wonder, I wonder if this is some sort of
7:06
Ejaaz: Move 37 from Go. If you remember, there was like Google's DeepMind computer.
7:10
Ejaaz: It was competing against a human.
7:12
Ejaaz: And on Move 37, it did this like crazy, unbelievable move that no one expected.
7:16
Ejaaz: No one understood why, but it turned out to be genius because it was thinking so far in advance.
7:20
Ejaaz: I wonder what types of emergent properties we'll get and we'll learn about the
7:23
Ejaaz: human body through this.
7:24
Ejaaz: Like perhaps what if Usain Bolt spent his whole life training to run and training
7:28
Ejaaz: to run like this instead of with his arms straight forward like would that turn
7:32
Ejaaz: into a superhuman runner that's even faster I don't know but I find this really fascinating that
7:36
Ejaaz: humans are kind of or the humanoid robots are kind of relearning human movement
7:40
Ejaaz: principles from first principles and the results of that are going to be pretty
7:44
Ejaaz: interesting as we continue to watch these evolve like how are they going to
7:47
Ejaaz: move in a different way than us if if so
7:49
Ejaaz: and this is one of the examples I thought was like super interesting really bizarre and funny
7:53
Ejaaz: but on the inside like very technically interesting It's like,
7:55
Ejaaz: oh, they created their own tail. That's kind of cool.
7:58
Josh: When I look at this, it seems like it's in a perpetual state of falling,
8:03
Josh: like it's about to stumble, but it just gets in front of it just at the right time.
8:07
Josh: Now, the story behind this is actually interesting, just kind of like unpack it a bit more.
8:11
Josh: The makers of this robot in particular that crushed the 400 meter record,
8:17
Josh: a human record, is called Tiang Gong.
8:19
Josh: And the engineers actually had no idea how to teach this robot to run fast.
8:24
Josh: So they started off with the human movement, which is we swing our arms back
8:29
Josh: and forth, right? It propels us forward.
8:31
Josh: And so they built a robot that did exactly that. And they realized that this
8:34
Josh: was incredibly inefficient for their robot.
8:36
Josh: Its rotator cuff, its shoulder started getting really heated and it ended up
8:41
Josh: exploding. So its arms would literally fall off in the test case when they had
8:45
Josh: a robot that would run like a human.
8:47
Josh: So they didn't know, they were scratching their heads. They were like,
8:49
Josh: how on earth do we figure out how to make this robot run super fast autonomously?
8:53
Josh: And so it just gave the robot model that was in its brain the task and said,
8:58
Josh: I will give you more rewards if you figure out how to run faster.
9:01
Josh: Your goal is to get to the finish line as quick as you can.
9:04
Josh: And the robot started doing this. It started swinging its arm from side to side,
9:10
Josh: which basically mimicked the swinging your arms back and forth,
9:14
Josh: forwards as you're running normally like a human, but it had less resistance
9:18
Josh: on the shoulder rotator cuff.
9:19
Josh: So it figured it out on itself independently.
9:22
Josh: And this might be a more uniform way of running. I can't speak on behalf of
9:26
Josh: humans, but certainly for robots, it ran the fastest time it has ever run.
9:30
Josh: I saw another stat that was super interesting. 70% of AI tokens that are used
9:36
Josh: in China are apparently used for video models specifically.
9:41
Josh: And a large chunk of that is for robot models. So when we look at this and we're
9:46
Josh: wondering how on earth is China like, you know, usurp the US?
9:49
Josh: How have they like become so advanced in such a short amount of time?
9:52
Josh: It's because they're spent the majority of their AI tokens and research development
9:56
Josh: on video models specifically.
9:57
Josh: And we see this with like the text of video models that we've seen outside of
10:00
Josh: this that we've talked about on the show on various other episodes
10:03
Josh: they are far superior than the u.s based labs and so this makes sense like when
10:06
Josh: it comes to the world of world models and robotic brains it just has they have
10:11
Josh: a they have us on visual intelligence is what i'm realizing as i'm watching
10:14
Josh: more and more of these videos.
10:15
Ejaaz: One thing that i did want to show i just sent you a post if you don't mind pulling
10:18
Ejaaz: it up yeah because i thought this was so funny too this is what an earlier version of this
10:22
Ejaaz: emergence of understanding human movement looked like this was an early google
10:26
Ejaaz: game mind project and what they did is they gave this like figure human properties
10:31
Ejaaz: but didn't teach it how to walk
10:33
Ejaaz: and you can see it slowly learning over time how to move its joints and its
10:37
Ejaaz: body wow to figure out how to like actually get from point a to point b using
10:41
Ejaaz: a reward system that you just described which is like if you can get to this
10:44
Ejaaz: place you will be rewarded figure out how to get there and you see it really yeah
10:49
Ejaaz: really like weird because it is like a humanoid looking thing and what we're
10:53
Ejaaz: seeing today is not only the evolution of this early technology that we saw at a google deep mind
10:57
Ejaaz: but the iterative improvement so much so that it actually has a physical body
11:00
Ejaaz: to live within when i think about the next evolution of or the next phase of
11:05
Ejaaz: this like general evolution as we get greater intelligence naturally the
11:10
Ejaaz: The hope is to embody that intelligence, to put it into these physical objects
11:14
Ejaaz: that are going to be moving physical atoms around. This is the next thing.
11:17
Ejaaz: It's much more difficult because we have to manufacture things.
11:19
Ejaaz: We're not the best at manufacturing things.
11:20
Ejaaz: But in the case that we are competing head to head with China on manufacturing
11:24
Ejaaz: things and applying AI to it, I see no world in which we stand a chance.
11:29
Ejaaz: And that's a kind of scary place to be because like 96% of these robots that
11:34
Ejaaz: competed are Chinese. And when I look at American robots, they're different.
11:39
Ejaaz: They're different. They're more general purpose. It's much more technically challenging.
11:42
Josh: They suck.
11:44
Ejaaz: They currently do suck. Like, it's funny. I was scrolling my feed.
11:47
Ejaaz: We were talking about this yesterday.
11:48
Josh: Even this robot's head is down. Look at this, Josh. Like at the start, look at it.
11:52
Ejaaz: Oh, he's just so sad. He watched the Robot Olympics. So I'm scrolling my feed.
11:55
Ejaaz: I'm seeing these robots doing like backflips. They're running 20 miles an hour.
11:58
Ejaaz: They're like doing high jumps. They're doing these unbelievable things.
12:01
Ejaaz: And then Brett Adcock from Figure, who is a humanoid robot maker,
12:04
Ejaaz: he's sharing like just robots kind of walking around campus slowly.
12:07
Ejaaz: And he shared a video of like a robot slowly walking up a staircase yeah this
12:10
Ejaaz: one he's like look guys he climbed like 15 feet of stairs and i'm like man i
12:16
Ejaaz: understand these are different robots i understand this is a general purpose
12:19
Ejaaz: robot that can do a lot of things
12:21
Ejaaz: just on a purely optical basis when you look at the videos from the olympics
12:25
Ejaaz: versus when you're looking at the videos from this you're like man we got a long way to go
12:29
Ejaaz: and not only that but we have what two maybe three companies here in the u.s
12:32
Ejaaz: that are doing it we have figure we have tesla
12:34
Ejaaz: maybe there's like boston dynamics china everyone's doing this there is like no
12:39
Ejaaz: specific company that is taking the lead everyone's building these unbelievable
12:42
Ejaaz: robots assuming that this progress continues next year is going to look freaking
12:46
Ejaaz: crazy like i cannot imagine they're probably going to need a bigger arena because
12:50
Ejaaz: i'm sure the robots are going to very quickly outgrow this like small confined
12:52
Ejaaz: space originally meant for humans
12:54
Ejaaz: this was taking place in the olympic stadium that is used for humans uh traditionally
12:59
Ejaaz: i think it's like the 200 meter lap race or whatever it is but really like unbelievable
13:03
Ejaaz: rate of progress and like kind of a scary
13:06
Ejaaz: thing to see knowing that none of those robots belong to us
13:09
Josh: So when i'm looking at this i'm thinking okay we know china is obviously very
13:13
Josh: advanced compared to the u.s but which companies in particular in china are
13:17
Josh: they private? Are they public?
13:18
Josh: Like what's so special about them? What are the name brands that we need to
13:21
Josh: kind of like bring ourselves to be aware of?
13:23
Josh: The winner, the winning brand is this company called Tiang Gong.
13:27
Josh: I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but Tiang Gong.
13:30
Josh: And it's basically a startup from Beijing, China. And no one kind of like knew
13:35
Josh: about their name very well outside of China, at least.
13:38
Josh: I think the name brand was basically Unitary, which placed second across all
13:42
Josh: the medals that were won so far.
13:43
Josh: Remember, it's still going on as you're listening to this right now,
13:45
Josh: you can probably catch the live stream.
13:47
Josh: But Tiangong, it's a small startup.
13:50
Josh: And they crushed it at the 400 meter, as well as a number of other track events.
13:54
Josh: And the reason why they're getting a lot of the glory right now is,
13:57
Josh: to your earlier point, any kind of flat surface events had to be completely
14:00
Josh: autonomous. So there was no human controller at all.
14:03
Josh: So it's a much harder feat to teach or train an AI robot to basically run around
14:08
Josh: a track or kind of like maneuver around various different obstacle courses.
14:12
Josh: And Tiangong had the best AI model paired with their hardware,
14:16
Josh: right? So it was very kind of like pliable.
14:18
Josh: Now, when you look at Unitree, Unitree is a name brand that I mentioned earlier,
14:21
Josh: that IPO last week, and their stock is up like something like 600%.
14:25
Josh: And I think they're valued at like $55 billion, where they initially IPO'd up
14:30
Josh: like $2 billion. So you're seeing these crazy multiple returns in China as of
14:34
Josh: recent. And it's not just in robotics. It's happening in the semiconductor space
14:37
Josh: with memory stuff. I think they had the CXMT IPO.
14:40
Josh: China's having a bit of a moment with their AI models and with their robotics
14:44
Josh: side of things. and I just want to spend a quick moment kind of describing what
14:47
Josh: those conjectures sort of look like.
14:49
Josh: On the AI model side of things, they have kept up in open source and now they're
14:54
Josh: kind of putting out models that are competing on the frontier.
14:57
Josh: There's this model, I don't know if you've seen it, being tested recently,
14:59
Josh: Josh, but it's called Ox Alpha and many people think that it's meant to be GLM's
15:04
Josh: next model, 5.3, and it's a flash model.
15:06
Ejaaz: Stay tuned for that episode once we know.
15:07
Josh: It's going to be a banging episode, hopefully, once they officially release it.
15:10
Josh: But that is competing at the level of a Fable 5 or a GPT 5.6 Sol.
15:14
Josh: And it's a hell of a lot cheaper. So somehow Chinese have been able to keep
15:18
Josh: up on the software model side.
15:20
Josh: But if you flip over to the hardware side, which it is my strong belief is going
15:24
Josh: to be the next kind of phase or frontier of AI, we're talking about world models,
15:28
Josh: visual intelligence, all that kind of stuff, we see a flow.
15:31
Josh: Where China actually might have the more advanced models and advanced hardware
15:36
Josh: and the scale to pump these robots out. Remember, China has,
15:40
Josh: I think, something ridiculous, like five times more robots.
15:44
Josh: Oh, they produce five times more robots than the US did in all of 2025.
15:49
Josh: And that's scaling on an exponential curve where the US just can't compete.
15:51
Josh: Right now, it's just like two startups.
15:53
Josh: So China's having a bit of a moment and it's something that we need to keep
15:56
Josh: an eye on, both from an investment perspective, but also from like protecting
15:59
Josh: the frontier if the West wants to stay ahead. of, you know, their main adversaries.
16:04
Ejaaz: And it also, it feels like it's private industry versus the government in the
16:08
Ejaaz: US versus China. Like this is interesting.
16:10
Ejaaz: Yeah. The Beijing government, they poured $20 billion in subsidies into the
16:15
Ejaaz: sector over just the last year alone, and reportedly is planning a 1 trillion yuan fund.
16:20
Ejaaz: I'm not sure exactly what that translates to, but that is like a tremendous
16:23
Ejaaz: amount of money that they're putting towards these companies to push the frontier forward.
16:27
Ejaaz: And this is in a way China's advantage
16:30
Ejaaz: where they are able to just force progress by any means necessary.
16:34
Ejaaz: We've seen this many instances with Frontier AI labs where they will just subsidize
16:40
Ejaaz: price or even prior to AI.
16:42
Ejaaz: If there was a competing product from China and a competing product from the
16:44
Ejaaz: United States, what they would do is the Chinese government would step in.
16:47
Ejaaz: They're going to say, hey, we're going to subsidize you.
16:49
Ejaaz: We're going to make the cost lower so that you can outcompete everyone else.
16:53
Ejaaz: The entire market will go to you and then we'll gradually raise the prices up.
16:56
Ejaaz: But they're willing to step in and put their hand on the scale to make meaningful
17:00
Ejaaz: change in the progress of a specific division. And it's very clear that robots
17:04
Ejaaz: is one of their top priorities.
17:07
Ejaaz: And this is interesting. It's happened in the past around manufacturing.
17:10
Ejaaz: I know China has this like requirement for a lot of ships where when they're
17:14
Ejaaz: made, they must be made to a size in which you could fit a tank on top of them.
17:18
Ejaaz: Like you need to be able to roll a tank on top of your boat for it to be classified
17:22
Ejaaz: as a specific type of boat that you could then go off and build and use and
17:24
Ejaaz: get permits for because they they're thinking in this like almost military sense
17:29
Ejaaz: and they have the control over everyone where they can do that.
17:31
Ejaaz: So I think it's really interesting to see the dynamics of kind of like private
17:35
Ejaaz: government versus public industry at play
17:38
Ejaaz: um here in the u.s versus china and so far like capitalism kicking ass but man
17:43
Ejaaz: like china with their subsidies and their
17:45
Ejaaz: their ability to manufacture things at scale it seems like a legitimate concern
17:50
Ejaaz: and sure a lot of this is staged a lot of the software is like pre-coded but
17:54
Ejaaz: the robots are real like those things are
17:57
Ejaaz: real they're produced at scale they're doing the flips they're running the things
18:00
Ejaaz: and they're getting better much faster so if we gauge this on a rate of progress
18:03
Ejaaz: which is all we can ever do
18:05
Ejaaz: uh year over year i'd say they're up like what is this a 10x i remember last
18:08
Ejaaz: year as we were sitting here talking about this it was mostly a joke we were
18:11
Ejaaz: just kind of laughing like hot look at that robot like falling sparks flying everywhere
18:15
Ejaaz: just like dropping dead and totally blanking out but this year it is a very
18:18
Ejaaz: different story and like next year
18:20
Ejaaz: Man, you got to imagine it's just going to be even more slightly deranged than this.
18:25
Josh: I'm not even sure how much of this year's robots were hard-coded.
18:30
Josh: Like when I look at that 400 meter race and that robot kind of developed that
18:35
Josh: weird sideways swinging movement by itself, I think like, wow,
18:38
Josh: okay, so next year's robots are probably going to come up with completely new
18:41
Josh: performant ways that humans
18:43
Josh: probably could learn from at the actual human Olympics.
18:46
Josh: So I'm curious how that develops.
18:48
Josh: But your point around kind of like having a nation state influence and dictate
18:53
Josh: how a certain technology progresses, in this case, robotics,
18:56
Josh: it has had meaningful impact.
18:58
Josh: And listen, like on the West, when I compare it, right, we are arguing to ban
19:03
Josh: data centers almost everywhere in every single state in the US, at least, right?
19:07
Josh: And that is going to hinder progress in massive ways.
19:11
Josh: And listen, some of the reasoning is very valid around electricity concerns.
19:15
Josh: But I know that a lot of the AI labs are taking very meaningful steps to subsidize
19:20
Josh: that and also pay a much larger tax so that it goes to the local community so
19:24
Josh: they can get much more benefits from this kind of stuff.
19:27
Josh: There's a lot of pushback. The general feel and vibe in the Western Front,
19:32
Josh: or I'll speak for the US, is AI is bad. It consumes a lot of water.
19:36
Josh: It is bad for humans. It is taking our jobs. It is replacing us.
19:39
Josh: And I'm not saying that's right or wrong. But when you compare that to China,
19:42
Josh: which is so AI forward, it's just so robotics forward, they are obviously going to get the leap on us.
19:47
Josh: The US government comparatively is like, hmm, should we ban open models?
19:51
Josh: Should we ban some of these other frontier AI models? And China,
19:53
Josh: meanwhile, is like, we're going to do anything and everything to get ahead of
19:57
Josh: this space because we know it's going to be incredibly transformative technology
19:59
Josh: and we'll make it safe when we can.
20:01
Josh: I don't know what the right path is forwards, but we are going to see a stark
20:05
Josh: contrast over the next year is my guess if the two countries don't change their
20:09
Josh: kind of ideological views on how this pans out.
20:12
Josh: What I would like to see, Josh, next year is Tesla Optimus compete in this.
20:18
Josh: I'm sure or I know Elon Musk is looking at this and thinking,
20:22
Josh: hmm, I think I have a card up my sleeve and I can do this.
20:27
Josh: So I'm hoping that the Chinese Olympics, Robot Olympics will be open to taking
20:32
Josh: a Tesla Optimus because I kind of want to see how badass it is compared to it.
20:35
Josh: Now, China, granted, has all the data and information that is required to train frontier robotics.
20:41
Josh: If you look at any of the hardware components, like the actuators,
20:44
Josh: the rotator cuffs, they produce the majority of it.
20:46
Josh: I think actually Tesla Optimus sources a bunch of this from China,
20:49
Josh: But I want to see the Western front kind of like compete on this because right
20:52
Josh: now this feels like the GPT-3 moment Where China had nothing and American had
20:57
Josh: all the frontier AI models, but swapped the other way around.
21:01
Ejaaz: As you're saying that I'm like man, why is it China versus Elon?
21:03
Ejaaz: Why is it not China versus US? Why do we only have Elon and Optimus to put up against him?
21:07
Ejaaz: Maybe the figure robots It is also important to note to play both sides of the
21:11
Ejaaz: coin here that the United States is
21:14
Ejaaz: trying very different strategies than China in the most cases.
21:17
Ejaaz: Like Optimus and the figure robots are general purpose humanoid robots that
21:22
Ejaaz: are met for very different use cases than the ones that we're watching on screen today.
21:27
Ejaaz: The ones on screen today are very narrow purpose. They're built for a singular
21:31
Ejaaz: specific thing, whether it be racing, all these things are within a closed loop
21:34
Ejaaz: system. So we're seeing pickleball so crazy too.
21:37
Ejaaz: How long do you think, or is this tennis? I can't even, it's tennis.
21:41
Ejaaz: How long do you think until a robot can like, EJS, I know you play a paddle
21:44
Ejaaz: all the time like yes what would you give the over under on like say two years
21:48
Ejaaz: before a robot can kick your ass oh
21:50
Josh: Well i mean i would probably give it,
21:53
Josh: two maybe three years because like look at look at how well okay right now this
21:58
Josh: is like the equivalent of me laughing at this right because it looks like there's
22:01
Josh: a young kid playing tennis over here but i said that last year
22:04
Josh: for all the track of it's and now they're beating the world record so if i assume
22:09
Josh: in a year's time this is going to beat like say carlos alcaraz or djokovic then
22:14
Josh: yeah actually maybe even a year it could.
22:17
Ejaaz: Happen could happen it could happen and the thing with these systems is like
22:20
Ejaaz: humanoids that we're trying to build at tesla or figure those need to work for
22:25
Ejaaz: the real world those need to be trained on everything because they need to be prepared for
22:29
Ejaaz: the unknown variables that occur on a day-to-day basis that
22:32
Ejaaz: no computer can really predict what these are doing is they're being trained on very narrow focused
22:37
Ejaaz: versions of that so like this is a ping pong trained robot this ping pong robot
22:41
Ejaaz: cannot go and play tennis it cannot go run the 100 meter dash and win gold it
22:46
Ejaaz: is specific for this one use case and it's very cool to see but it is just a
22:49
Ejaaz: totally different strategy and when i think about
22:51
Ejaaz: where value is going to be derived from humanoids it's certainly across or from
22:55
Ejaaz: just like robots in general it's certainly across the stack but a general purpose
22:58
Ejaaz: humanoid who can do useful productive tasks is going to generally be more productive than a
23:04
Ejaaz: humanoid robot that can like kick like oh my god did you see
23:07
Josh: That do you see that that's great can you rewind that for everyone.
23:12
Ejaaz: For those of you listening this is like a full 360 roundhouse kick and kicked the robot's head off.
23:17
Josh: This is not AI. This is completely real.
23:19
Ejaaz: That's so sick, man. This is basically the- You're like walking out of a bar
23:24
Ejaaz: or something and a robot starts picking a fight with you.
23:26
Josh: And it starts hitting the emotes. The Fortnite emotes.
23:29
Ejaaz: Look at this. It's so insane. I do appreciate that they're having fun with it.
23:33
Ejaaz: But yeah, like that's it. That's what's happening. Like that is the robot Olympics
23:37
Ejaaz: summed up is like, it's scary. Like robots don't suck anymore. Robots are-
23:41
Ejaaz: Clearly the future, they're clearly being produced at scale,
23:44
Ejaaz: and they're clearly finding these emergent properties of human beings that we
23:47
Ejaaz: have not even considered to try yet.
23:51
Ejaaz: And like, this is so cool. If anything, just a really fun visual event.
23:54
Ejaaz: I really enjoyed scrolling this weekend, seeing all the videos from it and just
23:57
Ejaaz: kind of watching in awe at how much progress they've made just in the last 12 months.
24:00
Ejaaz: It's pretty sick. And what's also sick is agents, because if you are not fully
24:05
Ejaaz: operating humanoid robots, chances are you're running agentic robots.
24:08
Ejaaz: And security is a fairly big concern when you're working with agents.
24:11
Ejaaz: And we have a solution for that, which comes in the form of Ledger,
24:13
Ejaaz: our friend and sponsor of the show.
24:15
Ejaaz: If you are building with agents, you are probably worried about security.
24:18
Ejaaz: Ledger has an agent stack that fixes this. It does it in three steps.
24:21
Ejaaz: The agent proposes, the humans approve, the Ledger signer enforces.
24:25
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24:29
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24:33
Ejaaz: with agents it works with cloud code codex cursor basically anywhere that you
24:37
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24:41
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24:44
Ejaaz: you to ledger for sponsoring this part of the episode and with that
24:47
Ejaaz: i think we have described the robot olympics
24:51
Josh: The great part about just seeing these robots perform like people might think
24:55
Josh: this is like novel and like kind of stupid.
24:58
Josh: It is sort of a real physical benchmark. Like you can't game this benchmark.
25:03
Josh: This isn't like an AI model that kind of like fakes its scores and kind of like
25:07
Josh: scores really well against some
25:08
Josh: kind of like arbitrary exam where you can kind of see the answer sheet.
25:11
Josh: This is if a robot can jump high enough, you're going to be able to see it.
25:14
Josh: If it can kick a free throw or penalty and hit a Sue afterwards,
25:18
Josh: hell yeah, it can do that as well.
25:19
Josh: Like the point is, I like that with robots in particular, there is no kind of
25:25
Josh: like hidden in plain sight type of thing.
25:27
Josh: If a robot is good, you'll be able to see it performing as well as it can.
25:30
Josh: And I think China right now, if I was to summarize, is taking the number one
25:35
Josh: spot from the US and it's the US position to respond to.
25:40
Josh: And two, it's broken a number of the human Olympic records. Again,
25:43
Josh: just to recap, 1500 meter record is now owned by a humanoid robot.
25:48
Josh: The 100 meter record, Usain Bolt, sorry, goodbye, mate. Like it's owned by Tiangong, right? 400 meter.
25:54
Josh: Sorry, it's owned by a robot that runs like this with its arms swinging side
25:58
Josh: to side. It looks stupid, but they're taking over, right?
26:01
Josh: Now, imagine if you retrofit a robot that is as agile as this to your manufacturing
26:07
Josh: plant or to a factory or to any kind of manual labor job.
26:11
Josh: If it can do this, it can probably do some simple kind of movement,
26:13
Josh: such as packaging and stuff like that.
26:15
Josh: And my expectation is this is just the chaser. This is the advertising to say,
26:20
Josh: hey, don't you think we're cool?
26:22
Josh: Now let's have a serious business chat around what these robots can do for you.
26:26
Josh: And so, yeah, it's fun and novel, but I think we're going to see some real progress
26:29
Josh: in robotics going forward.
26:30
Josh: And I am pumped to see it. So if you've listened to this episode,
26:33
Josh: that is the robotics download. There's anything and everything you need to know.
26:37
Josh: In the last year, China is winning very effectively. If you're listening to
26:40
Josh: this on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you're listening to, please give us a
26:43
Josh: thumbs up. Leave us a comment.
26:46
Josh: It helps us out massively. We read every single comment. There are a lot of
26:49
Josh: newbies, Josh. I think it's like 1,500 over the last couple of weeks.
26:53
Ejaaz: Welcome to the party.
26:54
Josh: Welcome to the party. It is lovely to have you here. We post around four times a week.
26:59
Josh: We love talking about AI, robotics, and any kind of frontier tech.
27:02
Josh: If there's anything that we've missed over the last couple of weeks that you
27:05
Josh: think we should include, let us know. Reach out to us on our personal profiles.
27:09
Josh: Josh, any final concluding thoughts?
27:11
Ejaaz: Yeah, don't forget to share with a friend who you want to terrify.
27:14
Ejaaz: You know who you could share with?
27:16
Ejaaz: There's a lot of people who still use AI as a Google search,
27:21
Ejaaz: and they're not really sure about what's going on.
27:22
Ejaaz: Just send him a video from the humanoid olympics be like listen this is where
27:25
Ejaaz: we're at it's a lot farther along than you think and maybe he'll give him a little scare
27:30
Ejaaz: before the end of the day but yeah it's it's nuts it's not so we're going to
27:33
Ejaaz: be following along with that as well as all the other fun and exciting topics
27:37
Ejaaz: on the frontier of technology of ai and thank you just so much for being here
27:41
Ejaaz: with us for the journey so with that we will see you guys on the next one