Limitless: An AI Podcast

We discuss the World Humanoid Olympics in China, where humanoid robots competed in human-style events and set new performance marks. We also cover autonomy, reward-based training, and the comparison between China and the U.S. in robotics and AI.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Robot Olympics
1:45 Record-Breaking
8:07 How Robots Learned
9:30 China’s AI Advantage
13:17 Tiangong Takes Lead
16:03 Subsidies and Scale
20:11 Tesla vs China
24:57 Real Benchmark
26:29 Closing

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RESOURCES

Josh: https://x.com/JoshKale

Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Josh works with Anthropic as a contractor. All views expressed are his own and do not represent Anthropic, its leadership, or its affiliates. Nothing in this episode is investment advice.

Creators and Guests

Host
Ejaaz Ahamadeen
Host
Josh Kale

What is Limitless: An AI Podcast?

Exploring the frontiers of Technology and AI

Josh:
26 years ago, a human athlete ran the 1500-meter race in 3 minutes and 26 seconds.

Josh:
And ever since then, the record had never been beaten.

Josh:
We've had seven Olympics, the latest Nike running shoes, and no one has been able to beat it.

Josh:
But over the weekend, a humanoid robot out of China crushed it in 2 minutes

Josh:
and 21 seconds. This was the World Humanoid Olympics that was hosted in China over five days.

Josh:
And these robots are crushing human-based Olympic events.

Josh:
They ran a faster 100 meter than Usain Bolt. They jumped higher than the Olympic record.

Josh:
And they broke 1500 meter and the 400 meter races.

Josh:
We're talking about 2000 robots from over 16 countries that competed in 55 Olympic

Josh:
events. These are the same events that humans compete every four years.

Josh:
And the contrast between last year's Robot Olympics and this year's is vastly

Josh:
different. And we're going to get into all of that on today's episode.

Ejaaz:
This is a visual episode where like, if you're not watching,

Ejaaz:
you're probably going to want to watch these videos because they're insane.

Ejaaz:
This is also a funny episode because one year ago, we actually filmed the first

Ejaaz:
annual Robot Olympics. We are here now for our second annual pretty much any event on the show.

Josh:
Yeah, we're on the zone. To talk about the show.

Ejaaz:
I mean, dude, just look at the visual of the sound screen. This looks like it's

Ejaaz:
AI generated, but it is not AI generated. What we're seeing run across the screen

Ejaaz:
is an army of robots that are perfectly in sync.

Ejaaz:
For this event, the scale is huge. I think the total amount of robots competing

Ejaaz:
is up 300% year over year.

Ejaaz:
And the amount of teams is up like 200% year over year.

Ejaaz:
And the most interesting statistic is 96% of all the robots that competed in

Ejaaz:
this Olympics are all Chinese made.

Ejaaz:
This is the China event. And it's kind of sad because I was looking at humanoid

Ejaaz:
robots from the US and I was like, oh boy, we might just be cooked.

Ejaaz:
So for the records i'm just gonna just list off a couple that are are kind of

Ejaaz:
unbelievable and then we'll get into the videos of how they actually did it

Ejaaz:
the first is the 100 meter gold that is like the flagship race that everyone kind of

Ejaaz:
that denominates in. And that is the one where Usain Bolt famously is the human

Ejaaz:
world record. He ran it in 9.58 seconds.

Ejaaz:
The robot ran it in 9.39 seconds. And oh my God, look at this video. It's terrifying.

Ejaaz:
Could you imagine a robot running at you that fast?

Josh:
No. And also look how tall these things are. I could have sworn that these robots

Josh:
are meant to be like waist height.

Josh:
They were certainly like last year when they were competing.

Josh:
This thing is like six foot three to six foot five. These things are huge.

Josh:
Oh you see the crash pad over here as well where they just kind of like.

Ejaaz:
Slam i find it funny how yeah they crash and they just die like they just turn

Ejaaz:
off and then they have to get dragged off in carts they're coming

Josh:
Because one and done it's nuts.

Ejaaz:
The next one that was kind of crazy is the standing high jump which um

Ejaaz:
was above the human record they cleared 2.8 meter 2.88 meters almost nine meters

Ejaaz:
the 1500 meter race the tiangang ultra is what they call it was two minutes

Ejaaz:
and 21 seconds against a human world record of

Ejaaz:
three minutes and 26 seconds, which was untouched since 1998.

Ejaaz:
And the robot, most interestingly, these aren't human controlled.

Ejaaz:
They ran fully autonomously with zero human intervention.

Ejaaz:
So I think all of these things, as we go through the videos from this event,

Ejaaz:
yeah, here's the robot running 14.5 miles per hour and just running into the barricade.

Ejaaz:
It's the first time that feels scary. And I remember we did this episode a year

Ejaaz:
ago and I was like, okay, robots are kind of a joke. Like they don't actually

Ejaaz:
look like they are doing anything effective. They're not running that fast.

Ejaaz:
They're kind of falling apart and collapsing.

Ejaaz:
Similar things were happening this year, but we're seeing some serious upgrades

Ejaaz:
year over year. And if we continue this trajectory, even one year in the future,

Ejaaz:
that leaves us with a pretty unnerving reality with how capable these robots are gonna be.

Josh:
Yeah, I mean, I remember last year's Olympics. And just so that you guys have

Josh:
an understanding in how advanced these robots have become in a very short period

Josh:
of time, specifically in China.

Josh:
Last year, the 100-meter time, the winning robot ran it in 21.5 seconds.

Josh:
That's like more than double the world record that Usain Bolt held.

Josh:
And now in less than a year, because it has been less than a year,

Josh:
they crushed Usain Bolt's record. So what's that going to be next year when

Josh:
these robots' arms aren't flailing in a crazy way and they're way more dynamically

Josh:
efficient, they're going to crush it even more.

Josh:
And so I think the realization that struck to me is this is,

Josh:
to your point, no longer a joke.

Josh:
The Chinese are very advanced in hardware. We were talking about this before

Josh:
we started recording, but hardware and manufacturing has been their kind of

Josh:
mecca over the last couple of decades at this point.

Josh:
And they have completely beaten the US. When I compare, when I'm looking at

Josh:
the figure robots in the US or any kind of robots, Amazon delivery robots.

Josh:
I'm just like, China is way more advanced. And for humanoids specifically,

Josh:
because this is the other thing, right? It's like, why would these events kind

Josh:
of like matter to us at all?

Josh:
It's because they're human looking robots competing in human based events.

Josh:
Like look, and we're not just talking about, you know, track and field events.

Josh:
We're talking about like football. We're talking about like tennis.

Josh:
Like I think in this one, there's a crazy penalty. Josh, I want to show you

Josh:
this. Hang on one second.

Josh:
So a yellow card on the robot and again if you're not watching this I urge you

Josh:
to and so he lines up for a penno.

Ejaaz:
Drains it absolutely

Josh:
Drains it so the point is these robots are no longer toys and we saw the famous

Josh:
chinese robot lab unitree ipo last week and their stock is up 650 and that wasn't

Josh:
like a pump a dump it's still up around four to five hundred percent

Josh:
so there's obviously a demand for these robots these robots are very much at

Josh:
the research phase until this event which tied in with a very important conference

Josh:
i think it was like the world robotics conference or something like that,

Josh:
where the pitch was essentially, these robots are now physically able to do

Josh:
a lot of complex things that humans are able to do.

Josh:
And you can now apply this to various different industries. And the sports and

Josh:
athletics feed is just one example of that.

Ejaaz:
There's one thing that I want to highlight that I found extremely interesting

Ejaaz:
from this, because one of the new rules that happened this year is that if it's

Ejaaz:
a flat event, meaning like if the robot is on a flat surface,

Ejaaz:
it must be fully autonomous.

Ejaaz:
And this is true for the relay races. This is true for anything on these flat surfaces.

Ejaaz:
And what we noticed this year was a property that a lot of people laughed at,

Ejaaz:
which is this robot, you guys know you saw it, running with its arms,

Ejaaz:
waving, flailing crazy. And this is the best robot. Do we have a video that

Ejaaz:
we can show them? Yes, this.

Ejaaz:
So look at that robot. Look at how they're running with their arms flailing side to side.

Ejaaz:
And I thought this was funny and goofy until I realized that this was actually

Ejaaz:
an emergent property of machine learning.

Ejaaz:
And this was not trained into the robot this was understood and emerged from

Ejaaz:
what yielded the best results and it turns out that like the the robots are

Ejaaz:
getting smart enough where they can kind of

Ejaaz:
Self-recursively loop themselves and come to terms with the idea that this is

Ejaaz:
the optimal strategy and when i look at this i'm laughing because this is kind

Ejaaz:
of what evolution developed as a tail

Ejaaz:
for a lot of animals that were running around like a lot of these large animals

Ejaaz:
that run fast they need a tail as a counterbalance they don't fall over

Ejaaz:
these humanoid robots now are running with their arms flailing back and forth

Ejaaz:
as a mechanism for balancing. And I wonder, I wonder if this is some sort of

Ejaaz:
Move 37 from Go. If you remember, there was like Google's DeepMind computer.

Ejaaz:
It was competing against a human.

Ejaaz:
And on Move 37, it did this like crazy, unbelievable move that no one expected.

Ejaaz:
No one understood why, but it turned out to be genius because it was thinking so far in advance.

Ejaaz:
I wonder what types of emergent properties we'll get and we'll learn about the

Ejaaz:
human body through this.

Ejaaz:
Like perhaps what if Usain Bolt spent his whole life training to run and training

Ejaaz:
to run like this instead of with his arms straight forward like would that turn

Ejaaz:
into a superhuman runner that's even faster I don't know but I find this really fascinating that

Ejaaz:
humans are kind of or the humanoid robots are kind of relearning human movement

Ejaaz:
principles from first principles and the results of that are going to be pretty

Ejaaz:
interesting as we continue to watch these evolve like how are they going to

Ejaaz:
move in a different way than us if if so

Ejaaz:
and this is one of the examples I thought was like super interesting really bizarre and funny

Ejaaz:
but on the inside like very technically interesting It's like,

Ejaaz:
oh, they created their own tail. That's kind of cool.

Josh:
When I look at this, it seems like it's in a perpetual state of falling,

Josh:
like it's about to stumble, but it just gets in front of it just at the right time.

Josh:
Now, the story behind this is actually interesting, just kind of like unpack it a bit more.

Josh:
The makers of this robot in particular that crushed the 400 meter record,

Josh:
a human record, is called Tiang Gong.

Josh:
And the engineers actually had no idea how to teach this robot to run fast.

Josh:
So they started off with the human movement, which is we swing our arms back

Josh:
and forth, right? It propels us forward.

Josh:
And so they built a robot that did exactly that. And they realized that this

Josh:
was incredibly inefficient for their robot.

Josh:
Its rotator cuff, its shoulder started getting really heated and it ended up

Josh:
exploding. So its arms would literally fall off in the test case when they had

Josh:
a robot that would run like a human.

Josh:
So they didn't know, they were scratching their heads. They were like,

Josh:
how on earth do we figure out how to make this robot run super fast autonomously?

Josh:
And so it just gave the robot model that was in its brain the task and said,

Josh:
I will give you more rewards if you figure out how to run faster.

Josh:
Your goal is to get to the finish line as quick as you can.

Josh:
And the robot started doing this. It started swinging its arm from side to side,

Josh:
which basically mimicked the swinging your arms back and forth,

Josh:
forwards as you're running normally like a human, but it had less resistance

Josh:
on the shoulder rotator cuff.

Josh:
So it figured it out on itself independently.

Josh:
And this might be a more uniform way of running. I can't speak on behalf of

Josh:
humans, but certainly for robots, it ran the fastest time it has ever run.

Josh:
I saw another stat that was super interesting. 70% of AI tokens that are used

Josh:
in China are apparently used for video models specifically.

Josh:
And a large chunk of that is for robot models. So when we look at this and we're

Josh:
wondering how on earth is China like, you know, usurp the US?

Josh:
How have they like become so advanced in such a short amount of time?

Josh:
It's because they're spent the majority of their AI tokens and research development

Josh:
on video models specifically.

Josh:
And we see this with like the text of video models that we've seen outside of

Josh:
this that we've talked about on the show on various other episodes

Josh:
they are far superior than the u.s based labs and so this makes sense like when

Josh:
it comes to the world of world models and robotic brains it just has they have

Josh:
a they have us on visual intelligence is what i'm realizing as i'm watching

Josh:
more and more of these videos.

Ejaaz:
One thing that i did want to show i just sent you a post if you don't mind pulling

Ejaaz:
it up yeah because i thought this was so funny too this is what an earlier version of this

Ejaaz:
emergence of understanding human movement looked like this was an early google

Ejaaz:
game mind project and what they did is they gave this like figure human properties

Ejaaz:
but didn't teach it how to walk

Ejaaz:
and you can see it slowly learning over time how to move its joints and its

Ejaaz:
body wow to figure out how to like actually get from point a to point b using

Ejaaz:
a reward system that you just described which is like if you can get to this

Ejaaz:
place you will be rewarded figure out how to get there and you see it really yeah

Ejaaz:
really like weird because it is like a humanoid looking thing and what we're

Ejaaz:
seeing today is not only the evolution of this early technology that we saw at a google deep mind

Ejaaz:
but the iterative improvement so much so that it actually has a physical body

Ejaaz:
to live within when i think about the next evolution of or the next phase of

Ejaaz:
this like general evolution as we get greater intelligence naturally the

Ejaaz:
The hope is to embody that intelligence, to put it into these physical objects

Ejaaz:
that are going to be moving physical atoms around. This is the next thing.

Ejaaz:
It's much more difficult because we have to manufacture things.

Ejaaz:
We're not the best at manufacturing things.

Ejaaz:
But in the case that we are competing head to head with China on manufacturing

Ejaaz:
things and applying AI to it, I see no world in which we stand a chance.

Ejaaz:
And that's a kind of scary place to be because like 96% of these robots that

Ejaaz:
competed are Chinese. And when I look at American robots, they're different.

Ejaaz:
They're different. They're more general purpose. It's much more technically challenging.

Josh:
They suck.

Ejaaz:
They currently do suck. Like, it's funny. I was scrolling my feed.

Ejaaz:
We were talking about this yesterday.

Josh:
Even this robot's head is down. Look at this, Josh. Like at the start, look at it.

Ejaaz:
Oh, he's just so sad. He watched the Robot Olympics. So I'm scrolling my feed.

Ejaaz:
I'm seeing these robots doing like backflips. They're running 20 miles an hour.

Ejaaz:
They're like doing high jumps. They're doing these unbelievable things.

Ejaaz:
And then Brett Adcock from Figure, who is a humanoid robot maker,

Ejaaz:
he's sharing like just robots kind of walking around campus slowly.

Ejaaz:
And he shared a video of like a robot slowly walking up a staircase yeah this

Ejaaz:
one he's like look guys he climbed like 15 feet of stairs and i'm like man i

Ejaaz:
understand these are different robots i understand this is a general purpose

Ejaaz:
robot that can do a lot of things

Ejaaz:
just on a purely optical basis when you look at the videos from the olympics

Ejaaz:
versus when you're looking at the videos from this you're like man we got a long way to go

Ejaaz:
and not only that but we have what two maybe three companies here in the u.s

Ejaaz:
that are doing it we have figure we have tesla

Ejaaz:
maybe there's like boston dynamics china everyone's doing this there is like no

Ejaaz:
specific company that is taking the lead everyone's building these unbelievable

Ejaaz:
robots assuming that this progress continues next year is going to look freaking

Ejaaz:
crazy like i cannot imagine they're probably going to need a bigger arena because

Ejaaz:
i'm sure the robots are going to very quickly outgrow this like small confined

Ejaaz:
space originally meant for humans

Ejaaz:
this was taking place in the olympic stadium that is used for humans uh traditionally

Ejaaz:
i think it's like the 200 meter lap race or whatever it is but really like unbelievable

Ejaaz:
rate of progress and like kind of a scary

Ejaaz:
thing to see knowing that none of those robots belong to us

Josh:
So when i'm looking at this i'm thinking okay we know china is obviously very

Josh:
advanced compared to the u.s but which companies in particular in china are

Josh:
they private? Are they public?

Josh:
Like what's so special about them? What are the name brands that we need to

Josh:
kind of like bring ourselves to be aware of?

Josh:
The winner, the winning brand is this company called Tiang Gong.

Josh:
I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but Tiang Gong.

Josh:
And it's basically a startup from Beijing, China. And no one kind of like knew

Josh:
about their name very well outside of China, at least.

Josh:
I think the name brand was basically Unitary, which placed second across all

Josh:
the medals that were won so far.

Josh:
Remember, it's still going on as you're listening to this right now,

Josh:
you can probably catch the live stream.

Josh:
But Tiangong, it's a small startup.

Josh:
And they crushed it at the 400 meter, as well as a number of other track events.

Josh:
And the reason why they're getting a lot of the glory right now is,

Josh:
to your earlier point, any kind of flat surface events had to be completely

Josh:
autonomous. So there was no human controller at all.

Josh:
So it's a much harder feat to teach or train an AI robot to basically run around

Josh:
a track or kind of like maneuver around various different obstacle courses.

Josh:
And Tiangong had the best AI model paired with their hardware,

Josh:
right? So it was very kind of like pliable.

Josh:
Now, when you look at Unitree, Unitree is a name brand that I mentioned earlier,

Josh:
that IPO last week, and their stock is up like something like 600%.

Josh:
And I think they're valued at like $55 billion, where they initially IPO'd up

Josh:
like $2 billion. So you're seeing these crazy multiple returns in China as of

Josh:
recent. And it's not just in robotics. It's happening in the semiconductor space

Josh:
with memory stuff. I think they had the CXMT IPO.

Josh:
China's having a bit of a moment with their AI models and with their robotics

Josh:
side of things. and I just want to spend a quick moment kind of describing what

Josh:
those conjectures sort of look like.

Josh:
On the AI model side of things, they have kept up in open source and now they're

Josh:
kind of putting out models that are competing on the frontier.

Josh:
There's this model, I don't know if you've seen it, being tested recently,

Josh:
Josh, but it's called Ox Alpha and many people think that it's meant to be GLM's

Josh:
next model, 5.3, and it's a flash model.

Ejaaz:
Stay tuned for that episode once we know.

Josh:
It's going to be a banging episode, hopefully, once they officially release it.

Josh:
But that is competing at the level of a Fable 5 or a GPT 5.6 Sol.

Josh:
And it's a hell of a lot cheaper. So somehow Chinese have been able to keep

Josh:
up on the software model side.

Josh:
But if you flip over to the hardware side, which it is my strong belief is going

Josh:
to be the next kind of phase or frontier of AI, we're talking about world models,

Josh:
visual intelligence, all that kind of stuff, we see a flow.

Josh:
Where China actually might have the more advanced models and advanced hardware

Josh:
and the scale to pump these robots out. Remember, China has,

Josh:
I think, something ridiculous, like five times more robots.

Josh:
Oh, they produce five times more robots than the US did in all of 2025.

Josh:
And that's scaling on an exponential curve where the US just can't compete.

Josh:
Right now, it's just like two startups.

Josh:
So China's having a bit of a moment and it's something that we need to keep

Josh:
an eye on, both from an investment perspective, but also from like protecting

Josh:
the frontier if the West wants to stay ahead. of, you know, their main adversaries.

Ejaaz:
And it also, it feels like it's private industry versus the government in the

Ejaaz:
US versus China. Like this is interesting.

Ejaaz:
Yeah. The Beijing government, they poured $20 billion in subsidies into the

Ejaaz:
sector over just the last year alone, and reportedly is planning a 1 trillion yuan fund.

Ejaaz:
I'm not sure exactly what that translates to, but that is like a tremendous

Ejaaz:
amount of money that they're putting towards these companies to push the frontier forward.

Ejaaz:
And this is in a way China's advantage

Ejaaz:
where they are able to just force progress by any means necessary.

Ejaaz:
We've seen this many instances with Frontier AI labs where they will just subsidize

Ejaaz:
price or even prior to AI.

Ejaaz:
If there was a competing product from China and a competing product from the

Ejaaz:
United States, what they would do is the Chinese government would step in.

Ejaaz:
They're going to say, hey, we're going to subsidize you.

Ejaaz:
We're going to make the cost lower so that you can outcompete everyone else.

Ejaaz:
The entire market will go to you and then we'll gradually raise the prices up.

Ejaaz:
But they're willing to step in and put their hand on the scale to make meaningful

Ejaaz:
change in the progress of a specific division. And it's very clear that robots

Ejaaz:
is one of their top priorities.

Ejaaz:
And this is interesting. It's happened in the past around manufacturing.

Ejaaz:
I know China has this like requirement for a lot of ships where when they're

Ejaaz:
made, they must be made to a size in which you could fit a tank on top of them.

Ejaaz:
Like you need to be able to roll a tank on top of your boat for it to be classified

Ejaaz:
as a specific type of boat that you could then go off and build and use and

Ejaaz:
get permits for because they they're thinking in this like almost military sense

Ejaaz:
and they have the control over everyone where they can do that.

Ejaaz:
So I think it's really interesting to see the dynamics of kind of like private

Ejaaz:
government versus public industry at play

Ejaaz:
um here in the u.s versus china and so far like capitalism kicking ass but man

Ejaaz:
like china with their subsidies and their

Ejaaz:
their ability to manufacture things at scale it seems like a legitimate concern

Ejaaz:
and sure a lot of this is staged a lot of the software is like pre-coded but

Ejaaz:
the robots are real like those things are

Ejaaz:
real they're produced at scale they're doing the flips they're running the things

Ejaaz:
and they're getting better much faster so if we gauge this on a rate of progress

Ejaaz:
which is all we can ever do

Ejaaz:
uh year over year i'd say they're up like what is this a 10x i remember last

Ejaaz:
year as we were sitting here talking about this it was mostly a joke we were

Ejaaz:
just kind of laughing like hot look at that robot like falling sparks flying everywhere

Ejaaz:
just like dropping dead and totally blanking out but this year it is a very

Ejaaz:
different story and like next year

Ejaaz:
Man, you got to imagine it's just going to be even more slightly deranged than this.

Josh:
I'm not even sure how much of this year's robots were hard-coded.

Josh:
Like when I look at that 400 meter race and that robot kind of developed that

Josh:
weird sideways swinging movement by itself, I think like, wow,

Josh:
okay, so next year's robots are probably going to come up with completely new

Josh:
performant ways that humans

Josh:
probably could learn from at the actual human Olympics.

Josh:
So I'm curious how that develops.

Josh:
But your point around kind of like having a nation state influence and dictate

Josh:
how a certain technology progresses, in this case, robotics,

Josh:
it has had meaningful impact.

Josh:
And listen, like on the West, when I compare it, right, we are arguing to ban

Josh:
data centers almost everywhere in every single state in the US, at least, right?

Josh:
And that is going to hinder progress in massive ways.

Josh:
And listen, some of the reasoning is very valid around electricity concerns.

Josh:
But I know that a lot of the AI labs are taking very meaningful steps to subsidize

Josh:
that and also pay a much larger tax so that it goes to the local community so

Josh:
they can get much more benefits from this kind of stuff.

Josh:
There's a lot of pushback. The general feel and vibe in the Western Front,

Josh:
or I'll speak for the US, is AI is bad. It consumes a lot of water.

Josh:
It is bad for humans. It is taking our jobs. It is replacing us.

Josh:
And I'm not saying that's right or wrong. But when you compare that to China,

Josh:
which is so AI forward, it's just so robotics forward, they are obviously going to get the leap on us.

Josh:
The US government comparatively is like, hmm, should we ban open models?

Josh:
Should we ban some of these other frontier AI models? And China,

Josh:
meanwhile, is like, we're going to do anything and everything to get ahead of

Josh:
this space because we know it's going to be incredibly transformative technology

Josh:
and we'll make it safe when we can.

Josh:
I don't know what the right path is forwards, but we are going to see a stark

Josh:
contrast over the next year is my guess if the two countries don't change their

Josh:
kind of ideological views on how this pans out.

Josh:
What I would like to see, Josh, next year is Tesla Optimus compete in this.

Josh:
I'm sure or I know Elon Musk is looking at this and thinking,

Josh:
hmm, I think I have a card up my sleeve and I can do this.

Josh:
So I'm hoping that the Chinese Olympics, Robot Olympics will be open to taking

Josh:
a Tesla Optimus because I kind of want to see how badass it is compared to it.

Josh:
Now, China, granted, has all the data and information that is required to train frontier robotics.

Josh:
If you look at any of the hardware components, like the actuators,

Josh:
the rotator cuffs, they produce the majority of it.

Josh:
I think actually Tesla Optimus sources a bunch of this from China,

Josh:
But I want to see the Western front kind of like compete on this because right

Josh:
now this feels like the GPT-3 moment Where China had nothing and American had

Josh:
all the frontier AI models, but swapped the other way around.

Ejaaz:
As you're saying that I'm like man, why is it China versus Elon?

Ejaaz:
Why is it not China versus US? Why do we only have Elon and Optimus to put up against him?

Ejaaz:
Maybe the figure robots It is also important to note to play both sides of the

Ejaaz:
coin here that the United States is

Ejaaz:
trying very different strategies than China in the most cases.

Ejaaz:
Like Optimus and the figure robots are general purpose humanoid robots that

Ejaaz:
are met for very different use cases than the ones that we're watching on screen today.

Ejaaz:
The ones on screen today are very narrow purpose. They're built for a singular

Ejaaz:
specific thing, whether it be racing, all these things are within a closed loop

Ejaaz:
system. So we're seeing pickleball so crazy too.

Ejaaz:
How long do you think, or is this tennis? I can't even, it's tennis.

Ejaaz:
How long do you think until a robot can like, EJS, I know you play a paddle

Ejaaz:
all the time like yes what would you give the over under on like say two years

Ejaaz:
before a robot can kick your ass oh

Josh:
Well i mean i would probably give it,

Josh:
two maybe three years because like look at look at how well okay right now this

Josh:
is like the equivalent of me laughing at this right because it looks like there's

Josh:
a young kid playing tennis over here but i said that last year

Josh:
for all the track of it's and now they're beating the world record so if i assume

Josh:
in a year's time this is going to beat like say carlos alcaraz or djokovic then

Josh:
yeah actually maybe even a year it could.

Ejaaz:
Happen could happen it could happen and the thing with these systems is like

Ejaaz:
humanoids that we're trying to build at tesla or figure those need to work for

Ejaaz:
the real world those need to be trained on everything because they need to be prepared for

Ejaaz:
the unknown variables that occur on a day-to-day basis that

Ejaaz:
no computer can really predict what these are doing is they're being trained on very narrow focused

Ejaaz:
versions of that so like this is a ping pong trained robot this ping pong robot

Ejaaz:
cannot go and play tennis it cannot go run the 100 meter dash and win gold it

Ejaaz:
is specific for this one use case and it's very cool to see but it is just a

Ejaaz:
totally different strategy and when i think about

Ejaaz:
where value is going to be derived from humanoids it's certainly across or from

Ejaaz:
just like robots in general it's certainly across the stack but a general purpose

Ejaaz:
humanoid who can do useful productive tasks is going to generally be more productive than a

Ejaaz:
humanoid robot that can like kick like oh my god did you see

Josh:
That do you see that that's great can you rewind that for everyone.

Ejaaz:
For those of you listening this is like a full 360 roundhouse kick and kicked the robot's head off.

Josh:
This is not AI. This is completely real.

Ejaaz:
That's so sick, man. This is basically the- You're like walking out of a bar

Ejaaz:
or something and a robot starts picking a fight with you.

Josh:
And it starts hitting the emotes. The Fortnite emotes.

Ejaaz:
Look at this. It's so insane. I do appreciate that they're having fun with it.

Ejaaz:
But yeah, like that's it. That's what's happening. Like that is the robot Olympics

Ejaaz:
summed up is like, it's scary. Like robots don't suck anymore. Robots are-

Ejaaz:
Clearly the future, they're clearly being produced at scale,

Ejaaz:
and they're clearly finding these emergent properties of human beings that we

Ejaaz:
have not even considered to try yet.

Ejaaz:
And like, this is so cool. If anything, just a really fun visual event.

Ejaaz:
I really enjoyed scrolling this weekend, seeing all the videos from it and just

Ejaaz:
kind of watching in awe at how much progress they've made just in the last 12 months.

Ejaaz:
It's pretty sick. And what's also sick is agents, because if you are not fully

Ejaaz:
operating humanoid robots, chances are you're running agentic robots.

Ejaaz:
And security is a fairly big concern when you're working with agents.

Ejaaz:
And we have a solution for that, which comes in the form of Ledger,

Ejaaz:
our friend and sponsor of the show.

Ejaaz:
If you are building with agents, you are probably worried about security.

Ejaaz:
Ledger has an agent stack that fixes this. It does it in three steps.

Ejaaz:
The agent proposes, the humans approve, the Ledger signer enforces.

Ejaaz:
And it comes with this entire stack of software that's open source fully available

Ejaaz:
and helpful for you to navigate your security concerns as it relates to engaging

Ejaaz:
with agents it works with cloud code codex cursor basically anywhere that you

Ejaaz:
integrate and work with ai and it's fully open source and linked in the description

Ejaaz:
below so if you are in need of security for agents go check out ledger and thank

Ejaaz:
you to ledger for sponsoring this part of the episode and with that

Ejaaz:
i think we have described the robot olympics

Josh:
The great part about just seeing these robots perform like people might think

Josh:
this is like novel and like kind of stupid.

Josh:
It is sort of a real physical benchmark. Like you can't game this benchmark.

Josh:
This isn't like an AI model that kind of like fakes its scores and kind of like

Josh:
scores really well against some

Josh:
kind of like arbitrary exam where you can kind of see the answer sheet.

Josh:
This is if a robot can jump high enough, you're going to be able to see it.

Josh:
If it can kick a free throw or penalty and hit a Sue afterwards,

Josh:
hell yeah, it can do that as well.

Josh:
Like the point is, I like that with robots in particular, there is no kind of

Josh:
like hidden in plain sight type of thing.

Josh:
If a robot is good, you'll be able to see it performing as well as it can.

Josh:
And I think China right now, if I was to summarize, is taking the number one

Josh:
spot from the US and it's the US position to respond to.

Josh:
And two, it's broken a number of the human Olympic records. Again,

Josh:
just to recap, 1500 meter record is now owned by a humanoid robot.

Josh:
The 100 meter record, Usain Bolt, sorry, goodbye, mate. Like it's owned by Tiangong, right? 400 meter.

Josh:
Sorry, it's owned by a robot that runs like this with its arms swinging side

Josh:
to side. It looks stupid, but they're taking over, right?

Josh:
Now, imagine if you retrofit a robot that is as agile as this to your manufacturing

Josh:
plant or to a factory or to any kind of manual labor job.

Josh:
If it can do this, it can probably do some simple kind of movement,

Josh:
such as packaging and stuff like that.

Josh:
And my expectation is this is just the chaser. This is the advertising to say,

Josh:
hey, don't you think we're cool?

Josh:
Now let's have a serious business chat around what these robots can do for you.

Josh:
And so, yeah, it's fun and novel, but I think we're going to see some real progress

Josh:
in robotics going forward.

Josh:
And I am pumped to see it. So if you've listened to this episode,

Josh:
that is the robotics download. There's anything and everything you need to know.

Josh:
In the last year, China is winning very effectively. If you're listening to

Josh:
this on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you're listening to, please give us a

Josh:
thumbs up. Leave us a comment.

Josh:
It helps us out massively. We read every single comment. There are a lot of

Josh:
newbies, Josh. I think it's like 1,500 over the last couple of weeks.

Ejaaz:
Welcome to the party.

Josh:
Welcome to the party. It is lovely to have you here. We post around four times a week.

Josh:
We love talking about AI, robotics, and any kind of frontier tech.

Josh:
If there's anything that we've missed over the last couple of weeks that you

Josh:
think we should include, let us know. Reach out to us on our personal profiles.

Josh:
Josh, any final concluding thoughts?

Ejaaz:
Yeah, don't forget to share with a friend who you want to terrify.

Ejaaz:
You know who you could share with?

Ejaaz:
There's a lot of people who still use AI as a Google search,

Ejaaz:
and they're not really sure about what's going on.

Ejaaz:
Just send him a video from the humanoid olympics be like listen this is where

Ejaaz:
we're at it's a lot farther along than you think and maybe he'll give him a little scare

Ejaaz:
before the end of the day but yeah it's it's nuts it's not so we're going to

Ejaaz:
be following along with that as well as all the other fun and exciting topics

Ejaaz:
on the frontier of technology of ai and thank you just so much for being here

Ejaaz:
with us for the journey so with that we will see you guys on the next one