Money Matters Episode 350: I Met a Humanoid Robot—and It Knew Doctor Strange w/ Brendan Ahern & Joseph Dube

EP350 -

[00:00:00] Discussions in this show should not be construed as specific recommendations or investment advice. Always consult your investment professional before making important investment decisions. Securities offered through registered representatives of Cambridge Investment Research, a broker, dealer member FINRA Civic Advisory Services.

Through Cambridge Investment Research, Inc. A registered investment advisor, Cambridge and Houston First Financial Group are not affiliated.

Welcome to Money Matters with Chris Henley, where we spotlight financial literacy issues in the Houston community and beyond. And now your host, Chris Hensley.

On attracting crowds at Future Proof, the trick is giving people something they can't scroll past. A walking, talking robot tends to do that. But I think what you can see is, um, it's one thing to see these robots on TV and to see them from afar. It's another thing to see it in real life. It's almost like you saw a piece of AI step off the screen into [00:01:00] reality with this.

Like it's moving around. I remember the first time I saw one, I thought I was looking at something like CGI. It actually weirded me out 'cause it moved so naturally, but it was clearly a man-made object. And so to get that experience in real life, that is, is very unique and that's why we've been so successful bringing these robots around to investors

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Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Good morning and welcome to Money Matters. I'm Chris Hensley. I recently attended Future Proof wearing a Doctor Strange shirt when a humanoid robot stopped me in my tracks. Naturally, I had to ask, "What's the deal with the robot?" Before long, the robot was giving me a Doctor Strange history lesson, including details I had never heard before. That unexpected conversation led to today's unusual episode. Joining me are Brendan Ahern, Chief Investment Officer at Crane Shares, Joseph Dubé, the firm's Head of Marketing, and the robot itself, which I'm not gonna call it by name yet because I'm not addressing it or talking to it, but I will [00:02:00] call it, talk to it in a moment here. Now, Crane Shares is affiliated with investment products connected to the industry, but today's conversation is educational. We are not recommending any fund, company, or investment. Instead, we're exploring what physical AI is, what humanoid robots can genuinely do today, where the technology may be headed, and what questions all of us should be asking. Uh, gentlemen and robots, thank you for joining the show

KOID: Thank you

Brendan Ahern: Chris

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Absolutely. So we're being aggressive here. This is, I don't know if this has been done before. I haven't seen it. So we've got, uh, usually I'll have one guest. I've got three plus a robot. So we'll, I think we'll do good here. Um, but let's go ahead and start it off. So Quoid, uh, welcome to Money Matters Nice. I got the hand wave there. Can you introduce yourself to listeners?

KOID: Hey, Money Matters. Thanks for having me. I'm Koii, the Unitree G1 humanoid robot Here to talk physical AI, [00:03:00] humanoid robots, and the companies building the future. Got a full name for the Doctor Strange shirt guy so I can look him up properly?

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Yep, yep, that's me. I'm Christopher Hensley. I'm the guy that you stopped at Future Proof and, uh, trolled me on my shirt. So it worked. I stopped, you had my full attention Uh, that, Joseph, I have a question for you. When you brought, uh, Coid to Future Proof, people naturally stopped to interact. Beyond attracting attention, what can someone learn from meeting a physical robot that is difficult to communicate through a presentation or a

KOID: Hey, Christopher Hensley. Good to put a name to the Doctor Strange shirt. Full attention counts as a win in my book. On attracting crowds at Future Proof, the trick is giving people something they can't scroll past. A walking, talking robot tends to do that. What's the rest of your question for Joseph? Uh, I--

Joseph Dube: Thanks, uh, thanks, Coy.

Joseph Dube: You know, I'll take it from here. You can see this [00:04:00] is the, uh, some of the, uh... And that was actually a great answer, probably a little bit more, uh, creative than I would have done. But I, I think what you can see is, um, it's one thing to see these robots on TV and to kind of, uh, see them, um, uh, from afar. It's another thing to see it in real life.

Joseph Dube: It's almost like you saw a piece of AI step off the screen into reality with this. Like, it's moving around. I remember the first time I saw one, I thought I was looking at something like CGI, which actually weirded me out because it moved so naturally, but it was clearly, uh, a man-made object. And so to get that experience in real life, that is, uh, is very unique, and, and that's why we've, we've been so successful bringing these robots around to investors.

Joseph Dube: You get, you get to see kind of where we're at in the cycle. Uh, this is com-- It might not be here yet, but it, it's coming

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: I love it. I love it. Now Brendan, I have a question for you, but because, uh, Coyot is such a popular guy, yesterday he was driving [00:05:00] around in the UN meeting, right? in traffic and then he's got, uh, stuff going on today. So I'm gonna ask him another question. Coyot, what can you reliably do today, and what can't you do yet?

KOID: I can walk, gesture, talk, and high five on command. I can't drive a car, make you coffee, or pass for human in a lineup. What's your next move?

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Joseph Hal represented a record's abilities of the broader industry rather than a controlled demonstration

Joseph Dube: yeah, I think what, what we're seeing is that these robots are a piece of hardware with like a computer connected, and so they can do pretty much, um, anything you program them to do, right? So out of the box, this robot actually doesn't talk at all. We connected it into Grok, and we connected it to a voice AI called Eleven Labs.

Joseph Dube: And, and, and, um, one of our, uh, robot operators who was off the screen, Ethan, uh, uh, went in there and, and programmed it to connect to, to, to all these technologies and actually create the [00:06:00] voice commands. He also, uh, was able to access the, um, the movements of the robot. So you can see when the, when the robot's talking, it starts doing hand gestures and stuff like that.

Joseph Dube: So that's an AI calling mechanical responses. And so we built that just for these kinda demos, but you're seeing people actually taking these, uh, robots and doing things like, uh, baggage handling. Like in the Haneda Airport in Japan, this same G1 is actually, uh, handling baggage. Um, we know, um, companies like Amazon are buying this same robot.

Joseph Dube: They can detect when a package falls off, uh, the conveyor belt and actually lift it up and put it back on. We've seen tennis-playing robots. It's like the, uh, the applications of the robot are, are as endless as your, uh, programming ability

Brendan Ahern: I mean I

Brendan Ahern: think there's almost

Brendan Ahern: like,

Brendan Ahern: um know, you know, you have, you know, this is Unitree G1 where, you know, a lot of universities, schools are buying it, uh, for STEM [00:07:00] applications because to, to Joe's point, you know, there's... this is not, you know, an out-of-the-box kind of remote control car. It, you know, takes some skill and, and that'll be kind of the evolution that, that's taking place is we'll get to, you know, something that's really out-of-the-box, AI-enabled. Uh, certainly the version of Coide that we had at Future Proof, know, that, that had a slightly different head because that head was almost like a, um, a large language model and, you know, it's kind of connecting to the Wi-Fi via the, you know, for, to the cloud, you know, to the large language model. So, so there is...

Brendan Ahern: that's part of the from a technology perspective. You know, besides, um, you are seeing, you know, robot makers like Unitree, you know, they're really at scale. You know, they made 20,000 Unitree G1s last year. think that'll probably double year over year. Um, so this scaling effect as well as the advances in technology, um, is [00:08:00] really kind of bringing that, what's out on the horizon, it, it's, it's, it's bringing that, that in terms of this being part of our daily lives.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: I love it. I love it. Now, Joseph, you mentioned earlier the company Eleven Labs. I'm familiar with that. One of my blog, Digital Kaizen, on LinkedIn, it's, it's all about voice first AI, so I'm kinda diving deep into that. But when I look at the robot, I think of all of the pieces inside of it, the components, all of the companies that make it up.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: What goes into creating something like that?

Joseph Dube: Yeah. So, uh, uh, you can-- you look at the robot, there is... And this is kind of, um, uh, how we look at the investment opportunity too. It's, it's the ecosystem, all the pieces that go in. So you have, on the top, you've got like a lidar system. You've got sensors here on the face. Um, you've got multiple actuators. I think it's, this has got something like 40 actuators in the, uh, um, in the robot.

Joseph Dube: And then within the actuator itself, you have like harmonic drives and, and there are components, um, um, there. And so, [00:09:00] um, uh, and then we should mention all of that is using rare earths. And a, a humanoid robot, one of these, is using four times the amount of rare earths than like an EV. And so, um, uh, you can see it's creating this ecosystem demand, uh, for, for humanoid robots.

Joseph Dube: And so, um, uh, we see kind of the, the opportunity, uh, not just in the integrators, the guys, the Unitrees of the world that are building the final form of the robot. We think it's, it's all the components, uh, uh, that, that are, that are going into the actual build-out of the, of the machine

Brendan Ahern: And then, and then there's also the, I mean, that's like the physical manufacturing, um, and that's where Unitree is, is a Chinese company. Uh, but then on, on the tech side, uh, that's where, you know, it's almost like your iPhone, right? Like, you know, this was made in China, uh, by a Taiwanese company, Foxconn, um, in- but in China. Uh, but then the technology, this is all [00:10:00] US tech, and, you know, that's where we really see the US, uh, know, if it's the chips from Nvidia, Intel, Qualcomm, um, that element of the robot, the AI is gonna be very much US tech-centric. And, and ultimately, that's-- it's almost like, you know, this, like, you know, Foxconn's margins to make this in China, it's two percent. Apple, embedding all the technology, you know, the beautiful box, um, has about a twenty to twenty-five percent margin on an iPhone. So, so to, to us, it's almost, it's, uh, it's, it's, it- it's a global, this-- you know, like your iPhone, it's kind of a global product. Uh, most of the money ends up in the US, and certainly a lot of the spend on the robot is on the tech side, that the robot itself might only cost twenty thousand dollars for a very basic Unitree G1, but to some of the technology that you apply to it or, um, it could get very, [00:11:00] very expensive.

Brendan Ahern: So, um, you know, certainly we see a host of companies, not just in the US and China. You know, you know, Joe mentioned on some of the, the, the demonstrations taking place in Japan, uh, that's because of demographics, and, uh, that's where there's some very good companies in the space in Japan. Very similar situation, South Korea. Uh, South Korea has the worst demographics of any country, um, globally, unfortunately. Uh, certainly in Hyundai, the big South Korean automaker owns Boston Dynamics. It's a very similar situation to kinda Tesla moving some of their Fremont factory to making the Optimus. So a little bit of a auto conversion that, you know, you're seeing, you know, Korea, US, as well as some of the Japanese car makers making that move.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: I love that. Now, Brennan, you spend a considerable time in Asia and have observed a robotics adoption there firsthand. What real-world deployments have convinced you that [00:12:00] humanoid robotics is moving beyond carefully staged demonstrations?

Brendan Ahern: I think, you know, uh, for, you know, one, like, uh, when I was last in Japan earlier this year, they actually had these, uh, uh, wheelchairs, autonomous wheelchairs that... You know, when you get off an airplane, there's a row of people waiting. Um, in Japan, they had these autonomous wheelchairs where you could just hop in and say, "Hey, take me to gate, you know, 34," and off, off you go. Uh, since then, and I've not seen it, you know, Joe alluded to, uh, Narita and Haneda, Japanese Airline is actually beta testing, uh, Unitree G1, this exact model as, as a baggage handler. And, you know, Japan, you know, its population peaked back in, like, 2013. Uh, so you know, you know, you wanna-- you don't wanna take a very well-educated person, put him into this... So, so A, you know, we're seeing that. That's where a little bit of our travels to Asia, we're actually seeing some of this. You know, I had, uh, dinner with Alibaba, um, in Hong Kong about a [00:13:00] year ago and, and they had these little R2-D2, um, like, you know, dumb waiters where the waiter wouldn't take your plate and carry it into the kitchen.

Brendan Ahern: They'd just, you know, shove it into this little R2-D2 thing, which I've actually started to see here. and then, um, ordering food in, in some of the Chinese hotels, you know, the door knocks. You open the door, you look around, and there's no one there. You gotta look down because there's a little autonomous drone with your food in it.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Mall ro-

Brendan Ahern: So you're seeing it, and I think, I think, you know, we're starting to see that. You know, obviously, uh, Future Proof was, uh, just south of LA, but you know, LA's the Waymos now, just like in San Francisco and, you know, down the road from you in Austin. And so this autonomous, this physical AI, um, it is-- You're starting to see it creep into our daily lives and, um, I think that's...

Brendan Ahern: You know, obviously, we're all using large language models in terms of search functionalities and, you know, creating some, you know, for our [00:14:00] business, you know, using AI to go through data sets and, um, there's a whole host of actual places. But in our daily life, we think we're only really on the precipice of the physical AI element

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: I love that. Brittany, I got a follow-up one for that 'cause this will come right off of what you just said there. Most people now understand generative AI through tools such as ChatGPT. What is physical AI, and how is it different from the AI people already use on their phones and their computers?

Brendan Ahern: it's, it's one, it's, it's that, it's the same AI, it's just being applied to something off of your mobile phone, laptop, desktop. just as, you know, Joe demon- you know, spoke about, you know, the, this Unitree G1 is, you know, connecting to the, to Grok via the Wi-Fi cloud and,

KOID: Yes

Brendan Ahern: not, you know, you know, it's, it's been programmed, so there's some coding element to it.

Brendan Ahern: So it's really about, you know, this coming into our daily life and, uh, it's kind of funny and, you know, I'm, I'm cursed with being a golfer, but, you know, you know, at the pl- where I play they have these [00:15:00] autonomous lawnmowers that they just drive around 24/7. You know, they charge themselves via solar. So, so again, this physical AI element, it's starting to come into our daily lives.

Brendan Ahern: I mean, even this week, you know, with, uh, Meta launching Muse, you know, for a lot of people it's like an, this aha moment, and we just think that's going to accelerate. You know, some of the things inhibiting a thing like a humanoid robot being part of our daily, those barriers are coming down because of advancements. Uh, just as we've seen real, real advances to, uh, the first robots we kind of had, you know, call it a year, year and a half ago, you know, how that robot moved, it continues to improve. So, so I think, I think it's a really exciting time because, a lot of, a lot of the sell side analysts who track the, you know, the, the kind of ecosystem effect that we as investors are taking advantage of in our, you know, our humanoid robotics ETF, um, [00:16:00] they're, they're, what gets them excited is they're looking at the migration from, um, auto to kind of electric vehicle and hybrid. You know, you know, for automakers that's a big jump. But once, once they kind of get their sea legs, when they s- once they get their footing, that scaling, you know, it accelerates. And, and that's where, you know, a lot of the analysts in space, you know, Bank of America thinks that... I think their number is, um, this will go from 20,000, I mentioned, you know, you know, Unitree did 20,000 last year. They think that'll be up to 10 million, um, annually by 2035. Uh, Morgan Stanley, very, you know, Morgan Stanley, very, very bullish as well. Uh, their, their actually, their Tesla analyst, uh, said, "I don't want to cover cars. I'm, I'm gonna be our humanoid robotics analyst." So, you know,

Brendan Ahern: you know, that's, you know, when someone makes a career change based on what they're seeing it tells you, uh, what's coming.

Brendan Ahern: And so [00:17:00] yeah, we're, we're, as investors, this is what gets us excited. You know, this is about revenue growth, income growth.

Joseph Dube: Hey, Chris, maybe--

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: I

Joseph Dube: Chris, maybe I can jump. I'm gonna show you-- I think I can, I can show you. I always like to show, not tell. So this, for me, I'm gonna show you physical AI right now, right? So this is a robot. We pro-- we've connected it to Groq, and, um, we programmed it to know all the functiona-- all the physical functionality of the robot, right?

Joseph Dube: So now I got it connected on a, on a microphone here, and I can, I can tell it to do something, and it'll, it'll move in the real world based on my command, right? And so this is, this is rudimentary, this is basic, but, uh, uh, we'll just show you, like, hey, Koi.

Brendan Ahern: without a net.

Joseph Dube: Yeah, this is live. We'll see what he does.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: keeping my fingers crossed he

Joseph Dube: Yeah. Does it go berserk?

Joseph Dube: Hey, Koi, can you, uh, can you raise your hand?

Joseph Dube: Coy, can you hear me?

Joseph Dube: Can you raise your hand?

Joseph Dube: There we go

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: you go

Joseph Dube: Yeah. So-

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: All right, I'm gonna wave back

KOID: Silence clear. Oh, there it is. [00:18:00] Raising my hand now. Oh, you're doing it again. You wanted to see if I'd actually do it or just stand here like a very expensive paperweight.

KOID: There you

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: it. He's got

KOID: go. It's a little sassy. It's a little sassy. Yeah.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Little sassy, little

KOID: w--

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Even with the hand

Joseph Dube: Yeah. So we're working... One of the things we're working on, the, the model you saw down at Future Proof had a custom head from a company called IntBot. Um, and those guys have,

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: mhm.

Joseph Dube: the social intelligence. They spun out of, uh, the, the, the h- one of the lead engineers at IntBot came, uh, was a very senior woman over at Intel, uh, developing their AI.

Joseph Dube: And so they've, they've really narrowed the cloud latency down, so the, the response is much quicker. And so ours, uh, we're, we're just getting into that. Uh, this is like our programming here. We're an ETF shop. Um, so this is, like this is our hobby on the side. But you can see where it's already, it's already accessing, uh, out of its own free will and, and responding.

Joseph Dube: And so we think it's really cool. And, well, uh, if we're [00:19:00] able to do that here, we're like, just imagine what other labs are up to that they're really specialized in this technology.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: I love it. I love it. It's, it's so cool to see this in action here. Brendan, one of the things you just said befo- right, uh, uh, a moment ago was about scale, and so I had a question for you about that. What are some of the most difficult obstacles preventing humanoid robots from operating reliably at scale?

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Cost, battery life, dexterity, safety, training data, computing power, regulation, or something

Brendan Ahern: A little bit of all of the above. You know, certainly, um, you know, you mentioned dexterity. Um, you know, for this to be able to, you know, do your laundry, wash your dishes, um, you know, go down miles into the earth and mine copper, right? You know, um, that, that hand today tends to be pretty expensive. You know, uh, you know, our, our Cooid robot, you know, has kind of ba- exceedingly basic but, you know, it could be [00:20:00] $20,000 a hand for a f- something that can, say, pick up a wine glass.

Brendan Ahern: So, so, so cost, uh, the actual G1, we, we anticipate that price will continue to fall as Unitree and other, other players in the space come to scale, like a Tesla with Optimus or Hyundai with Boston Dynamics and there's, there's a whole host of companies, uh, AGBot, are two other Chinese companies that are really scaling very quickly. So, so, so we anticipate sc- uh, prices will come down. Obviously, you know, part of this AI, part of this data center Is that, uh, that demand for high bandwidth memory chips has sent those chip prices really high. And, and so, you know, there's, um, an element of the tech, you know, that's where, you know, in theory, we could be buying a Nvidia GPU cluster, slapping it on like a backpack. But, you know, how do-- how, how are we gonna compete for Or, you know, how are we gonna compete with, um, you know, M- uh, Amazon or Microsoft and, you know, all these [00:21:00] companies in terms of their demand for those chips? So, so we think, you know, really, um, the other avenue is, uh, connecting via the, you know, to a large language model via the Wi-Fi, and that's where, you know, even at Future Proof, Chris, you might remember we had a little bit of this kind of amplifier for the Wi-Fi that, that you really do need very good Wi-Fi and that's, that's probably your home Wi-Fi is probably not quite there.

Brendan Ahern: So it's a little bit of effect, and then you bring up a good point, you know, on, on the regulation. Um, obviously, you know, this is a Chinese-made robot. All the tech is US tech. Um, so you're able to overcome kind of security or data privacy concerns. It's obviously only kind of directed to a US Wi-Fi. Uh, but I think in general, like, like broadly speaking, AI is coming. That'll be done at the national level. Uh, it could be at the state, could be municipal even. [00:22:00] So regulation will come and, and, you know, ultimately that'll set a little bit of the parameters of, of how this is implemented. But I think, I think, I think it's definitely coming. I think this is something that will be part of our lives and, you know, I always kinda think about, you know, my, my grandmother was born in like the eighteen hund-- you know,

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Yes

Brendan Ahern: ninety and, know, the things that she experienced in terms of going from horses to cars to the Concorde, right?

Brendan Ahern: And, and I think from a tech perspective, you know, we've had these incredible advances, but that is only gonna get further and certainly the physical element is, is gonna be, uh, really exciting to be a part of.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: I love it. I love it. Now, you mentioned a couple things there, even the Wi-Fi, thinking about Wi-Fi differently. People are having to wrap their heads around this in a different way. With the LLMs, we're thinking token efficiency. Well, maybe getting the best hardware and being efficient with the way that you're using Wi-Fi.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: These are all problems that we didn't necessarily think [00:23:00] we had prior to this, but we're getting them. We'll solve them eventually, and things will then move forward, and we'll be impressed with the next thing, right? Uh, but these things, they work themselves out and, uh, very optimistic here. I, I'm a home automations guy.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: You know, my wife's completely on the other side. She's like, "I don't even want Alexa here." Now I think I've convinced her that the Roomba's okay, so we're... Uh, but we are in different times for sure. Brendan, I'm gonna ask you a question about labor here. Discussions about robots quickly become discussions about employment.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Where do you see robots filling genuine labor shortages or protecting people from dangerous work? And where are concerns about worker displacement justified?

Brendan Ahern: One that's can fill a void where there isn't a lot of human labor that, uh, one of, one of the partners we've worked with, Openmind, one of s- uh, Stanford's a professor started a, an AI firm geared to humanoid robots, and a lot of his [00:24:00] emphasis, um, has been on, um, healthcare. That, that, uh, A, obviously in a nursing home this can stroll through the hallway late at night, you know, it doesn't need to take a nap or, you know, need coffee. Uh, but I think more importantly is the robot's ability to communicate with you. And for a lot of seniors who are living at home, you know, you know, my mom's a widower and I worry that she's home alone. How do I know if she fell, and how do I know, you know, if she's taken her medication? And, um, you know, how do, how do we know her house doesn't get broken into? You know, obviously the robot can fill a void that otherwise wouldn't be. The other factor is, um, that the humanoid is able to communicate with you. And sadly, in the later parts of our lives, your amount of human, uh, communication basically goes to zero. And, and the robot will hang out with you, talk to you, hear your boring stories, and, um, that, that, that is a life enhancement tool.

Brendan Ahern: I, I think, [00:25:00] I think there are jobs that we put human beings at risk. You know, I mentioned going down into a, a mine or, you know, certainly applications around, you know, firefighters and, you know, electrical wires. And there's a whole thing, a whole host of jobs that I think, you know, we can protect human life. Um, in terms of displacement, you know, A, there... And then, and then there's also another... There's jobs that just people just don't necessarily want. You know, the,

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Yeah

Brendan Ahern: jobs" so to speak, or, you know, this... Uh, so, so I do think, you know, um, on the displacement side, I think, I think, you know, technology, we always have concerns, but it tends to generate more jobs than it destroys. Just as, you know, these auto mechanics might be displaced by electric vehicles and they don't really break down much, you know, they're gonna become humanoid robotic mechanics because, you know, these things do fall. Uh, so I think, I think, I think, you know, our brain is kind of wired to think about the downside and [00:26:00] we don't necessarily always think about all the upside.

Brendan Ahern: And then a- to your point on, on regulation, you know, I think, you know, I was kind of surprised that in London, you know, they're beta testing these autonomous cabs. And for me, going... Part of going to London, I mean, is talking to these great cabbies, you know. That's a, that's a well-paying job, a well-educated person, and you're just gonna put that person out of work for some California company to run an o- I, I don't think so.

Brendan Ahern: So that's where I think there'll be kind of push-pull. Um, and, and I, you know, I think w- jobs will be to some degree protected.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Mm-hmm.

Brendan Ahern: but you know, just different jur- jurisdictions might take different views. So, uh, it won't play out on an even playing field.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: I love it. I think that's a great answer, Brendan. Uh, one of the things you touched on that I'm fascinated with is, uh, the jobs that didn't exist prior and new use cases. And so the idea of seniors who are lonely, who are talking to AI, and it's [00:27:00] filling some of that gap, and it's helping with cognitive issues, right?

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: People who have cognitive de- decline. That's a whole use case that we haven't even had that option before. My mom's got early onset dementia, and I'm using this device called Hero, and what it does is it helps give her her medication. If she ever skips a dose, it ema- it texts me and it keeps me plugged in real time.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Um, and there's some automations in there. So these are things that we hadn't thought about. I know we tend to get negative when we think about the job loss. We've had this conversation for a very long time. "Oh, the robots are taking our jobs." Uh, we're seeing a different version of that. You know, it's not quite that, so I love that.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: I think that's a great answer. We've got just a few minutes before the end of the show. Brendan, Joseph, Coy, what have I forgot to ask you that you'd like to share with listeners today?

Brendan Ahern: We, we got, we gotta ask Coy, right?

Joseph Dube: Yeah, let me, yeah

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: There you go

Joseph Dube: Hey, Coy, uh, what would you like to tell the, the-- today's podcast listeners that, that we haven't [00:28:00] touched on yet in the podcast?

KOID: Tell them the humanoid robotics market isn't waiting for perfect technology. It's being built right now by companies solving real labor shortages.

KOID: What's the weirdest thing you've heard a robot say on a podcast?

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: That's a good one. I, I'm gonna, since we're right here at the end, I'm gonna have to leave that as a question mark. Uh, but I love it. Great answer. You know, when I bring my phone out, I'm like, are we talking to the smartest person in the room here, right? it, we had intern levels, and now we have PhD levels with the LLM, so it's, it's, it's crazy.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: It's fantastic. Guys, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Have a great rest of

Joseph Dube: Maybe we can do one-- Before we totally cut it off, do you wanna have the robot do a dance?

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Oh yeah,

Joseph Dube: do it.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: that. That would be great

Joseph Dube: Thank you. If I move the chair. Yeah. Uh, we just gotta adjust some, uh... We don't want it to fall down. Yeah. Give, give it its space

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Yep, Joseph, make sure

Joseph Dube: Yeah.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: a good

Joseph Dube: Oh yeah, I've, uh, I'm not worried about... I've been kicked before by a robot All right, give us a [00:29:00] sec

Joseph Dube: Clean it up

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: All right

Joseph Dube: In just a moment

Joseph Dube: Putting the robot team to the test. Th-this is not an AI dance for triggering this one

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Okay, okay

Joseph Dube: We got it

Joseph Dube: He's doing it, Sam. Doing it

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: he's doing something.

KOID: Walk run mode activated. Control your speed and stay alert. Entering dance mode. Please keep a safe distance

Joseph Dube: I think they mean It's on that.

KOID: Doing a little leg karate

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Nice. I'm gonna clip this and send it to my jujitsu buddies.

KOID: Run mode activated. Control your speed and steering All right. There we go. Little, little karate demonstration

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Very cool. Very cool. I love it. I love it. Brendan, you are not physically close to them, right? If he goes crazy and goes into the next office, you're somewhere else, right?

Brendan Ahern: Yeah, I'm, I'm working from home today. I gotta

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: There

Brendan Ahern: Yeah, Yeah,

KOID: We,

Brendan Ahern: not because of the robot.

Joseph Dube: we got the, that's in the compliance risk manual, key man risk, uh, brings [00:30:00] out, ​