The Robot Brains Podcast

In Ep.16 of The Robot Brains Podcast, Pieter Abbeel sits down with AMP Robotics CEO and founder, Matanya Horowitz. Matanya is the founder and CEO of AMP Robotics, an industrial AI robotics company using automation to modernize recycling. An estimated $200bn worth of recyclable materials go un-recycled by municipal waste centres around the world. AMP’s incredible "waste sorting robots" recover this recyclable material from waste at superhuman speeds and with extremely high accuracy. Matanya's AI-powered robots use advanced vision systems to recover valuable resources from junk, in the process, improving the ecological impact of waste on our environment. In his chat with Pieter, Matanya explains how he started AMP Robotics, why he decided to get into the trash business, and what he imagines the future of a "waste free world" will look like? Host: Pieter Abbeel | Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones | Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji | Title Music: Alejandro Del Pozo   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Episode 15 of The Robot Brains Podcast, Pieter Abbeel is joined by Anca Dragan. Anca is a professor at UC Berkeley, where she is the director of the Interact Lab where she is working on the goal of enabling robots to work with, around, and in support of people. Because of her success in the field, Forbes magazine dubbed Anca: "the woman teaching AI about human values". Alongside her academic research, Anca is also a staff research scientist at the autonomous vehicle startup Waymo. In her discussion with Pieter, she explains why Asimov's three laws of robotics need updating if we want human robot interactions, why the future of robots probably isn't going to be a sci-fi dystopia, and how you teach a driverless car to understand human values. Host: Pieter Abbeel | Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones | Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji | Title Music: Alejandro Del Pozo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode 14 of The Robot Brains Podcast we sit down and chat with Mike Volpi of Index Ventures. Index is one of the largest and best known VC firms in Silicon Valley. Mike joined Index Ventures in 2009, helping to establish the firm's San Francisco office which has become one of the largest parts of their business today. Mike invests primarily in infrastructure, open-source, and artificial intelligence companies and he's currently on the boards of Aurora, Cockroach Labs, Confluent, Elastic, Kong, Sonos, Starburst, Wealthfront, and Covariant. He has been involved in the funding of some of the biggest AI companies on the planet, so he knows more about the business of AI than practically anyone. In his chat with our host, Pieter Abbeel, Mike explains what a VC does, why VCs and investors should be so excited about AI in particular, and gives his advice for startups who want to get their big idea funded. Host: Pieter Abbeel | Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones | Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji | Title Music: Alejandro Del Pozo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode thirteen of The Robot Brains Podcast we meet Mary "Missy" Cummings, former US Airforce fighter pilot and Professor at the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering. Missy tells us her incredible story moving from the theatre of war to the laboratories of computer sciences and explains how she became one of the chief proponents in the movement to ensure AI-to-human (like autonomous vehicles) interactions have stricter safety controls. During her chat with our host Pieter Abbeel, Missy also talks about her non-feud feud with Elon Musk and Tesla's autonomous vehicles, the role of AI and robotics in the military and how AI robots need to be built with human-centric safety controls. Host: Pieter Abbeel | Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones | Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji | Title Music: Alejandro Del Pozo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode twelve of The Robot Brains Podcast we are joined by Charles Isbell Jr, professor and Dean of the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. After starting his career as an industrial researcher at the legendary Bell Labs, and a long research career in Interactive and Human-Centric AI, Charles has more recently turned his attention to the major issues of ethics, fairness and diversity that are becoming ever more important as AI is being deployed in the real world. Speaking with Pieter Abbeel, Charles explains why researchers can find making ethical AI challenging, his fascinating keynote speech at NeurIPS, and how more diversity in academic admissions can help to improve AI research. Host: Pieter Abbeel | Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones | Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji | Title Music: Alejandro Del Pozo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode eleven of The Robot Brains Podcast we are joined by Alison Gopnik, professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and author of the "Mind and Matter" science column for the Wall Street Journal. She has written numerous books about developmental psychology and researching the ways children learn. Her TED Talk: "What do babies think?" has been seen over 4.2 million times. During her conversation with our host, Pieter Abbeel, we discussed the similarities and differences between the way robots and human children learn. We also covered some the methods for testing what a child and a robot actually knows, the theory of the mind, and whether a robot can ever truly be curious? Host: Pieter Abbeel | Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones | Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji | Title Music: Alejandro Del Pozo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode ten of The Robot Brains Podcast investigates how hedge funds are using AI to find competitive advantages for their investments. Joining us to explain how AI is starting to be used for pure profit is Mike Schuster Managing Director and Head of AI Core Team at the New York-based Financial Sciences firm: Two Sigma. With decades of experience working in AI (including Google where he pioneered the ML technology that became Google Translation), when Mike first joined Two Sigma he was described as potentially being the “hedge fund’s last human employee”. In his chat with our host Pieter Abbeel, Mike explains that it actually takes a team to bring AI to banking, as well as explaining how working for a hedge fund is like working for a tech company and the future potential of AI robot investors.Host: Pieter Abbeel | Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones | Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji | Title Music: Alejandro Del Pozo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the latest episode of The Robot Brains Podcast, we meet Graphcore's CTO, EVP of engineering and co-founder, Simon Knowles. Simon has had a long and illustrious career creating computer processors that have been used all over the world and in practically every industry. At Graphcore, he and his team have created the IPU, the world's first computer chip specifically designed to handle AI compute. In his chat with our host Pieter Abbeel, Simon discusses the history of AI compute, offers business advice from his experience as a tech startup founder and why we, if we want AI to change the world, we'll need a new breed of computer chips. Host: Pieter Abbeel | Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones | Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji | Title Music: Alejandro Del Pozo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode seven of The Robot Brains Podcast, our guest is Covariant CEO and co-founder Peter Chen. Peter is one of Pieter Abbeel's closest collaborators for the past five years, with Peter having studied for his PhD in Pieter's lab in Berkley before then working together at OpenAI. Now they are co-founders of Covariant, which they started back in 2017 with Peter as the CEO. On this episode we explore the future of AI-powered robotics, looking at what happens when you teach industrial robots to "think" and "learn" from their environment. Host: Pieter Abbeel | Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones | Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji | Title Music: Alejandro Del Pozo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode seven of The Robot Brains Podcast, our guest is ABB's Marc Segura. Marc is the Managing Director of consumer segments and service robotics at ABB. Founded in 1988, ABB is one of the largest producers and installers of robots around the world and Marc has been leading the charge on many of the company's efforts for 20+ years. He has seen the introduction of game-changing robots in practically every major industry, from car manufacturing in Germany to restaurants in China. On this week's show, he and Pieter Abbeel discuss the history of robotic automation and how AI is starting to really change where robotic automation is headed. Host: Pieter Abbeel | Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones | Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji | Title Music: Alejandro Del Pozo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode six of The Robot Brains Podcast, Pieter is joined by Keenan Wyrobek, co-founder and head of product and engineering at Zipline. Founded in 2014, Zipline is an on-demand drone delivery service using cutting-edge drone engineering and AI to deliver urgent medical products. In our chat Keenan talks about his youth tearing down his school's 3D printers, how U2's Bono joined his company's board of directors and working with NASA to help his drones fly through extreme weather. Host: Pieter Abbeel Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode five of The Robot Brains Podcast we are exploring AI robotics in healthcare. We chat with Andrea Thomaz, the co-founder and CEO of Diligent Robotics and Professor at UT Austin. In our interview, Andrea talks about her hospital helper AI-robot: Moxi, which is already being used to help frontline medical clinicians and care workers with their complex daily routines. Host: Pieter Abbeel Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode four of The Robot Brains Podcast we meet Cade Metz, technology correspondent for the New York Times and the author Genius Makers: The Mavericks who brought AI to Google, Facebook and the world. In our interview, Cade and Pieter discusses the history of AI from the perspective of the brilliant academic and business minds who helped to invent it. Host: Pieter Abbeel Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On episode three of The Robot Brains Podcast we have deep learning pioneer: Yann LeCun. Yann is a winner of the Turing Award (often called the Nobel Prize of Computer Science) who in 2013 was handpicked by Mark Zuckerberg to bring AI to Facebook. Yann also offers his predictions for the future of artificial general intelligence, talks about his life straddling the worlds of academia and business and explains why he likes to picture AI as a chocolate layer cake with a cherry on top. Host: Pieter Abbeel Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerj Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's guest is Princeton professor and co-founder of AI4All, Olga Russakovsky. Olga's research has focused on the societal biases in the data used to train machine learning AI. In our second episode, she talks about why we need more diversity in AI, problematic junk in, junk out data sets and what it was like being the only female researcher in early AI labs. Host: Pieter Abbeel Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the first ever episode of The Robot Brains podcast, our host Pieter Abbeel sits down with Andrej Karpathy, director of AI at Tesla. Andrej is a world-leading expert when it comes to machine learning and training neural nets. In this episode he talks about what it's like working with Elon Musk, training driverless cars with machine learning and the time he had to sleep on a yoga mat at Tesla HQ... Host: Pieter Abbeel. Executive Producers: Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias Jones. Audio Production: Kieron Matthew Banerji. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In each episode of The Robot Brains podcast (coming soon), renowned artificial intelligence researcher, professor and entrepreneur Pieter Abbeel meets the brilliant minds attempting to build robots with brains. Pieter is joined by leading experts in AI Robotics from all over the world as he explores how far humanity has come in its mission to create conscious computers, mindful machines and rational robots.Hosted by Pieter Abbeel Executive Producers Ricardo Reyes & Henry Tobias JonesSound editing by Kieron Matthew Banerji Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.