Formic’s Saman Farid: “A robot arm can do the work of eight humans”

The Times Tech Podcast

Will Morley

Business, Unknown, Technology

4.9 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2023

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Saman Farid, founder of Formic, to tlak about why we need more robots (3:40), the labour shortage (7:20), the growing universe of jobs that are automatable (10:00), the latest AI bubble (13:45), growing up in China (21:20), being inspired by China’s rapid industrialization (23:30), how AMerica is losing 10,000 factory workers each day (25:20), starting his first couple companies in China (29:30), the deep learning revolution (31:15), convincing factory owners to install their robots (36:40), why he thinks more robots is better for society (40:00).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Yeah.
0:01.9	Technology.
0:02.9	What is it all about?
0:04.4	If the question is, well, what will all the people do?
0:07.0	I think it's kind of sad to ask that question.
0:09.5	I think human creativity and human potential is so much more than stacking cookies in a box.
0:15.5	Like, there's creativity, there's ideas, there's intelligence.
0:18.4	And like there's so much more that can be unleashed
0:21.0	by using that intelligence in a more effective way.
0:23.9	So it's because I believe in the potential of humans
0:27.1	that I think we need much more robots. Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley.
0:45.8	How is everybody doing?
0:48.3	This week, we have a very special, special guest.
0:52.4	So, just to take you guys back in the time machine, the first
0:56.6	episode of Danny in the Valley was May 12th, 2017, almost six years ago. How wild is that?
1:04.4	Anyhow, my first guest was a guy called Saman Farid. So I was, you know, just to give you
1:10.3	a context, I was still relatively
1:12.2	recent arrival to the Bay Area. I was really fascinated about robotics because there's a ton
1:17.0	of investing and really interesting stuff happening around that time. And I thought he would be
1:21.3	a great first, yes, to talk about everything that might be possible out here, the present
1:25.2	future of the kind of the state of the technology,
1:28.8	the rise of the machines, which is this idea that really inspired a lot of breathless
	...

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