It's actually really hard to make a robot, guys

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Robots have been a thing for a long time, but they've never quite met expectations. While AI has changed the game for chatbots, it's not quite so clear for robots. NPR science desk correspondent Geoff Brumfiel spoke to our colleagues over on our science podcast Short Wave on how humanoid robots are actually developing with the help of artificial intelligence. It was a fascinating discussion and so we are sharing that conversation with you today on the Indicator.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:01.0	This is the indicator from Planet Money.
0:13.2	I'm Darym Woods.
0:14.3	And I'm Jeff Brumfield, one of NPR's science correspondence.
0:17.7	Jeff, you recently went down a rabbit hole into artificial intelligence. Yeah, I feel
0:23.5	like I'm always down a rabbit hole in artificial intelligence, actually. It's a confusing place to be.
0:28.7	It can imagine. Recently, I have been sort of looking at how AI has been moving out of the online
0:35.8	world and into reality.
0:38.1	I don't know if you caught Tesla's big marketing event last year, but AI was there.
0:42.9	Tesla, the car company, of course, led by CEO Elon Musk.
0:46.4	Speaking of robots.
0:48.1	Yeah, a big part of that event was about a humanoid robot powered by AI called Optimus.
0:54.5	The software, the AI inference computer, it all actually applies to a humanoid robot.
1:02.0	Are we meant to be like cheering this on? I don't know. It sounds scary to me.
1:07.0	Yeah, I mean, robots have been around for a long time in sci-fi as technological marvels, and sometimes they're the villains.
1:15.1	And that's been true long before AI came around.
1:17.9	But they've never quite met expectations.
1:21.0	Yes, exactly.
1:22.0	And that's why I set out to understand the truth about this new AI revolution in robotics.
1:27.8	And I think I found it in a bowl of trail mix.
1:31.5	An intriguing hook.
1:33.6	Today on the show, what happens when artificial intelligence moves into the meat space world,
	...

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