YouSaid · the spoken record

Ken Goldberg

lines on the record: 71
first: 2025-12-24
most recent: 2025-12-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Slipping away or it was firmly grasped. Absolutely. That's what surgeons do. And they, by the way, work with surgical thread, which is really thin. And they have to use a needle. It's very complicated, right? But they're doing a lot of this with their eyes, with their intuition. Now, it's not just a matter of putting cameras around because that doesn't solve it alone. You actually now need to be able to understand that imagery, the video, and you need to interpret that. And that's also extremely difficult. Because humans have this incredible ability and we can't address it. It's just amazing what humans can do.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, okay, so let me add on to this. So you just made a very nice nuance point. You said if you went just looking at your fingertip and you saw the shelace pressing into it by looking at the shadow structures and others, you could probably figure out that it was.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They don't have eyes in their hands. But cameras are something we understand very well. We have very high quality cameras. They're very fast, they're very accurate, and they're really low in cost comparatively. So I'm for more cameras. Put a lot of cameras in there because the other issue is when you walk, it's one thing you have a camera on the head. You can sort of see what's around you, right? Or drive. By the way, driving, I should have mentioned this earlier, but driving is much easier than manipulation because driving, you're just trying to avoid objects. Avoid hitting anything in manipulation. You must make contact with objects. You must manipulate them, right? So it's very different.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that was really interesting because it was one of the rare times he admitted. But it was also a great example of the idea that you can't do everything with robots. And even if you will it, you know, he can will things into existence by demanding this. It doesn't always work that way. And so the LIDAR story is very analogous. And I think you're right about the cameras. Having cameras in the hand makes a lot of sense. It's not how humans or animals work, right?”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With robotic factories. And he had a decree, we will have no humans. You know, everything must be done by robots. And I remember engineers coming in from Tesla to my lab and saying, can you help us? We're trying to do this thing and we can't get it to work with a robot. And he was just, you know, unrelenting. And then finally, he said, I was wrong. He was wrong. He said, I was mistaken. Humans are underrated. Do you remember that”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's a brilliant point, Preston. I'm really glad you made it. It's a very good, the analogy really works there. Elon is very, in some sense, he's very confident. He's done amazing things understandably. He should be confident. But sometimes that can blind you. So in this case, his decision not to use LIDAR has really, I think, put a limitation on the Tesla driving systems LIDAR. It can be very helpful for filling in the edge cases when certain conditions we envision cameras can be distorted or blinded by light flares or especially in rain. So LIDAR actually is a great addition there. And also the cost, I don't know. I think it will come down over time. I'm not in the car business. So I defer to his expertise there. But in the same way, he has originally, you might remember when he first started Tesla, he wanted all the cars to be made.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eyes and they have cameras in there, and they're watching what's happening, and they're seeing what happens and that they have a feedback loop based on vision so they can see very small deformations of the tissues. And they sort of, they infer what's going on. This is remarkable because this, I think, is the most exciting path to getting to manipulation, which is rather than trying to reproduce tactile, which is extremely difficult for all kinds of reasons, but I think it's interesting and worth pursuing, but there's another path, which is to understand the visual tactile interactions. And that, I think, if we can do that, we might be able to get away with just using cameras.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, the very latest versions of it, they started to introduce some. But for many years, they didn't. And surgeons are still able to do amazing things. So this is evidence that maybe we don't need to know how to do tactile sensing. Is this a hypothesis? But it says we have an existence proof that manipulation, dextrous, complex manipulation with very complex deformable surfaces, right? I mean, is harder than tying a bow tie to take out an appendix, that you can do that without tactile sensing. Now, what's fascinating is the way surgeons seem to do it is essentially accommodating the lack of tactile and then using vision.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so that's one, but here's something that's somewhat encouraging for me at least, which is that if you look in the realm of robot surgery, and by the way, there's a lot of misconceptions about that. I give talks where people say, well, robot took out my nephew's appendix. And I'll say that was not a robot, that, sir. That was a surgeon using a robot as a tool. Do that operation, right? So they call it a robot, but it's really a telerobot or more literally a puppet. Very, very important and very useful and expensive puppet, but it's a puppet. And so that's very important to understand. So surgeons can do remarkable tasks. They can sow, you can sew up a wound. They can take out an appendix or a gallbladder with these tools. Now, they do not have tactile sensing.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a very tricky business. And it's subtle. You have to be able to feel and pull in all these different directions. Forget it. There's no robot that's going to be able to do that for a long time. I would love to have it happen because that would be something I would love to have a robot tie my bow tie. And here's another one that's very simple. It's just buttoning your shirt. It's actually a little tricky for humans if you think about it, how you have to kind of fiddle with it a little bit on and off, especially a small button. So that's way beyond robotics. You'll never see a demo of a robot buttoning up a shirt. We're actually working on it in my lab, but it's really hard.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, here's what I know because shoelace we all do, we learn when we're young and we kind of do it without even thinking about it. It's a subconscious, right? I can be on the phone tying my shoelace. Don't even think. But think about this one. I don't know about you, but do you know how to tie a bow tie?”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that is where we're seeing. And by the way, you can see robots all day long picking up stuff off a table and moving it somewhere. That's actually not so difficult. If you just want to pick up, especially a stuffed animal, by the way, stuffed animals are very easy because you almost can't go wrong. You just put your gripper anywhere near them and close it and you'll pick up that thing. Those are like, you know, they're sitting ducks, right? This is super easy. Low hanging fruit, let's call it, and that makes it very easy to pick up and move things. But now when you want to start doing things like inserting things, like repairing stuffed animal by opening it up and getting things and, you know, pulling out the stuffing or sewing it back up, this is totally different and much, much more difficult.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we can do these things very, very subtly. We have learned this ability to interact with the forces of objects that the objects are constantly being moved and deformed. So if you think of the shoelace, right? The object is being deformed, the fingertip is being deformed as well. This mutual deformation is something that's really nuanced and subtle, and we don't even know how to simulate it accurately. So we can't even simulate the forces and torques and deformations that are occurring. And then we don't have the sensing capabilities to perceive these nuances. Like you can feel a shoelace if it's a little bit slipping out of your fingert No robot can do that. So what happens is that when you now have this hand and you actually try to execute something, sometimes it works, but a lot of times it doesn't work.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“SLIP and in particular one very, very nuanced thing is deformation. So if you look at your fingertips, they've evolved in a really interesting way that those pads are extremely helpful. If you put on, let's say, thimbles on your finger, like you're doing your sewing, that makes it much more difficult to do anything. You can imagine. Or just actually heavy gloves. Gloves, yeah, as well.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is where if you have this hand doing this, but then get it to actually tie your shoelace, that is where the challenge is. And this is because we have, there's so many nuances in the interactions that we have with these fingers, with the environment, that we are sensing the environment, we are exerting forces on the environment. And this is very subtle and very nuanced. And we perceive this through a variety of techniques. something like 15,000 sensors in our hand in every hand. Yeah, I know it's remarkable. We don't even think about it because it's subconscious. But then we also have sensors in our joints, every one of our joints, so we are able to perceive very subtle forces.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so what I, and this is understandable, again, I don't want to say people are naive. I get where they're coming from. They see something and it looks human-like. And so they attribute human-like qualities to it and skills. I understand that. And by the way, when Elon says the hands are hard, we can produce, people are designing hands that look very much like human hands. That is, they have 22 degrees of freedom and they can move all these joints independently very quickly. And they look almost identical to human hands. So we can reproduce that. In fact, there's like a hundred different hands that are being produced by different companies in China right now. So the advances in the”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Manipulation is being able to pick things up all kinds of things if there happened to be in your environment and then being able to manipulate them and do things. That skill is very, very nuanced and tricky. And it's not clear that the current methods for doing AI is going to get us there.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The motors on the four or six rotors that are there. And the same is true for robots that have legs or quadrupeds or bipeds. So where these are big undeniable and major advances. And if you just look at the field, you say, okay, all this is coming in now. The next thing we're going to have home robot taking care of us. And, you know, this is around the corner, according to Elon Musk. And I'm sure I'm going to get some pushback from some of your listeners are going to say, I don't know what I'm talking about. Okay, I've had that happen for a number of very confident expert quote experts from Silicon Valley tell me that. But I've been working in this field for 45 years and I've studied very closely and understand where the gaps remain for particular manipulation.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so let me tell you, first of all, where some of the advances have been made, and one of them is in quadrupeds, that's walking dogs, basically, and bipeds, that's walking machines and navigation, and I would call mobility. So the ability to get around with robots, with legs has made immense progress. That's been very exciting, and there's no doubt about it. Those machines are capable of doing backflips, as you know, side flips, parkour, all kinds of things that I certainly can't do. Also, huge advances in drones. And so the past decade, we've seen drone technology take off from something that was very experimental, but it's been a number of advances that have made that possible. In both cases, a lot of it has to do with motors and the hardware, but also advances in simulation and the ability, for example, for drones is to stabilize themselves and then to be able to control very accurately.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“by now. I will be the first to admit they're capable of creativity. They're immensely valuable. But people then take the next logical step and say, okay, these systems have solved language. So therefore, they'll solve robotics too. And that is where I have a lot of concerns. I'm really, we could get into the details, but Rod and I agree that there is not at all obvious that what the advances in language in AI will extend to robotics.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think he's very, very respected individual. He's a good friend of mine. And I agree with him very much. And I think he's provocative. He's put it in his own words. But I sent that to you because I think it's very relevant for us to start this conversation about what's real and what's hype in robotics. And I have to be careful about the word hype, but I want to say there's a, call it inflated expectations that are out there. And I understand where they come from. You know, I think people are excited about technology. Everyone, I am too. We all grew up with science fiction and we love it and we love new things. And there has been some breakthroughs. I mean, there's no doubt that the advances in artificial intelligence in particular, deep learning and then generative AI with the transformer model have been transformative in the field. The AI systems are doing things that no one thought would be possible.”
2025-12-24 · We Study Billionaires · TECH010: The Real Robotics Timeline w/ Ken Goldberg (Tech Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT