Latest / Best of Business / Sam Dickie: Fisher Funds expert on the growing market interest in humanoids

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Sam Dickie: Fisher Funds expert on the growing market interest in humanoids · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks. That'd be
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  Speaker 1: Heather Duples see Allen.
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  Speaker 2: Right, Well, there's been an increasing amount of chatter in
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  Speaker 2: the market about humanoids, and absolutely I can hear you
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  Speaker 2: asking what on Earth are humanoids because I've been asking
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  Speaker 2: about that's the very same question myself and Sam Dicky
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  Speaker 2: from Fisher Funds fortunately does know. Hey Sam, everyone, then
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  Speaker 2: what is a humanoid?
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  Speaker 3: Yes, very jets and I don't know if you remember
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  Speaker 3: that program, but think of the human looking robots on
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  Speaker 3: that So the robot looks similar to a human, has
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  Speaker 3: human characteristics, for example, the ability to walk up right
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  Speaker 3: to grasp things with its fingers, and the humanoid is
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  Speaker 3: designed to kind of copy human actions and even human reasoning.
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  Speaker 2: Why do we need these things as well?
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  Speaker 3: I guess what's the background here. The first real robots
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  Speaker 3: are invented in the nineteen fifties, and they were more
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  Speaker 3: mechanical than intelligent and money for the repetitive tasks and factories.
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  Speaker 3: And over the last seven years these things have evolved
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  Speaker 3: pretty quickly. And to give you a factory where we're
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  Speaker 3: up to now, you might have heard of their humanoid
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  Speaker 3: sophiear in twenty seventeen, a very very human looking humanoid
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  Speaker 3: that was granted citizenship by Saudi Arabia in twenty seventeen.
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  Speaker 3: Now a bit of a publicity stunt point, as though
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  Speaker 3: robots have come a very very long way, and most
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  Speaker 3: for most of the last seven years, they learn very gradually.
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  Speaker 3: But in the generative AI world, they can now learn
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  Speaker 3: by understanding every day language, copying what they see, and
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  Speaker 3: lowing curves and performance accuracy is paying to jump or
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  Speaker 3: pass the format accuracy started to jump faster than ever before,
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  Speaker 3: so pretty exciting times. And the reason they take a
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  Speaker 3: human shape because because most of the four million robots
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  Speaker 3: and operations today don't look anything like you or I
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  Speaker 3: is because the world is created for humans. So if
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  Speaker 3: they could button levers controllers designed to be operated by humans,
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  Speaker 3: so human dexterity in human hands fingers are required to
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  Speaker 3: operate efficiently in this world of ours, right, So.
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  Speaker 2: What if the robot is in the shape of a human,
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  Speaker 2: therefore they will be able to use the world as
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  Speaker 2: well as that the thinking, that's the thinking yet right, Okay,
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  Speaker 2: why all of a sudden have they popped up as
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  Speaker 2: being something that we're interested in.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, while are we talking about them right now? As
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  Speaker 3: always with these things, it's the confluence of several things
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  Speaker 3: coming together at once. So I for humanoids, the first
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  Speaker 3: thing is improvements in the parts that make the move
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  Speaker 3: called actuators, which turn energy into movement. They've made leaps
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  Speaker 3: and bounds. Improvements in the gears that help them move
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  Speaker 3: smoothly not clinkily. That's come a long way. Improvements and
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  Speaker 3: prosthetics or artificial limbs have come a long way. And
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  Speaker 3: of course the huge leaps in compute power that you
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  Speaker 3: and I have talked a lot about have created a
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  Speaker 3: platform for more explosive growth. So that's the first thing.
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  Speaker 3: The second thing is the competition to build these things
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  Speaker 3: is ramping up too, so a lot more companies are
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  Speaker 3: putting a lot more money into it. So where He's like,
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  Speaker 3: Toyota Hands and Robotics, Boss Dynamics are in the race,
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  Speaker 3: but of course Tesla's in there as well, and Elon
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  Speaker 3: Musk thinks there will be one billion of these things
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  Speaker 3: by twenty forty.
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  Speaker 2: Wow. Okay, if we do have that many, even if
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  Speaker 2: we don't have that many, what impact are they going
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  Speaker 2: to have? On society and economies and labor.
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  Speaker 3: Quite a bout, I think. So there's only four million
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  Speaker 3: operation today, but they're kind of mechanic alarms operating, operating
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  Speaker 3: in factories. But the thing is, the need for humanoids
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  Speaker 3: is becoming more acute. So the working age population and
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  Speaker 3: just China and the OECD or the Western world for example,
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  Speaker 3: is shrinking. So it's around one point eight billion today
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  Speaker 3: and by twenty fifty that will be three hundred million
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  Speaker 3: people smaller. And not only will it shrink, but the
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  Speaker 3: remaining one point five billion people we're much older, so
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  Speaker 3: we do need these things. And of course it's unsettling
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  Speaker 3: to think about these things taking over so many jobs,
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  Speaker 3: but the reality is the shift is going to take decades,
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  Speaker 3: not years, and it's better to be prepared and better
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  Speaker 3: informed rather than hoping it doesn't happen.
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  Speaker 2: So is it a case of investors just kind of
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  Speaker 2: getting ahead of it before it actually takes off completely?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I mean maybe not so much. Because of the
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  Speaker 3: eery bleeding edge. It's a very early stage investment thematic,
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  Speaker 3: so it should be treated with caution. However, it's one
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  Speaker 3: to definitely keep on the radar and keep an eye
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  Speaker 3: out for so over the next year or so, there's
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  Speaker 3: a few big things that are going to happen. So
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  Speaker 3: we're going to have the unvaiving of tesmans Optimus Generation
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  Speaker 3: three humanoid, which will operate more outside of the factory,
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  Speaker 3: even in the home, and more details on Figure AIS
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  Speaker 3: humanoid figure out two, which has just been released, but
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  Speaker 3: it is early days. These things cost. These things cost
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  Speaker 3: fifty two, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That are
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  Speaker 3: a long way away from commercial scale, but I think
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  Speaker 3: it's a kind of bleaping edge thematic to keep an
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  Speaker 3: eye on.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, how fascinating, Sam, Thank you very much, really appreciate that.
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  Speaker 2: That's Sam Dicky Fisher Funds Humanoids Who Knew.
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