AIP Podcast EP 64 - Next-Gen Humanoid Robots for Social Interactions from Realbotix

This episode's guest, Andrew Kiguel, Chairman & CEO of Realbotix, shares his journey from co-founding a bitcoin mining company called Hut8, one of North America's largest bitcoin miners, to now leading Realbotix in creating next-generation humanoid robotics powered by AI made to improve the human experience through learning, connection and play. Realbotix boasts patented technologies and proprietary AI that they leverage to deliver lifelike humanoid figures with realistic silicone skin, movements, and facial expressions for the healthcare, education, and entertainment industries.

Follow AIP Affiliate, Realbotix
Website: https://www.realbotix.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/realbotixcorp/

Follow AI Partnerships
Website: https://www.aipartnershipscorp.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aipartnershipscorp/
X: https://twitter.com/AIPartnerships

The AIP Podcast is hosted by Anne Cheng, on behalf of the AI Partnerships, a Railtown company

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

The topic of technological singularity has somewhat faded into the background once again. The idea that AI could one day be so intelligent and advanced that they can no longer be controlled by humans. In an age where AI agents and robots are becoming more advanced than ever, we're going to be speaking to Andrew Kegel of RealBotics that acquired Samularka Corp. The company that produced ARIA, an ultra-realistic humanoid robot that has made waves from Netflix to healthcare at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Well, hello everybody. Welcome to yet another episode of the AIP Podcast. And on behalf of the AI Partnerships Corps, it's Anne, your host, about all things AI. Today, you'll be the judge. Is relationship AI the future, or is it the beginning of the end? Today we are going to be speaking to Andrew Kegel. He's the CEO of Realbotics AI Investment Banker, EndofTokens.com, and Heart Eight Fame. He's currently chairman and CEO of Realbotics, a company that creates customizable human-like robots with AI integration that improve the human experience through learning, connection, and play. Realbotics boasts patented technologies and proprietary AI that they leverage in order to deliver lifelike humanoid figures with realistic silicone skin, movements, and facial experience for healthcare, education, and entertainment industries. Thankfully, today we are speaking to Andrew and not Aria, the Realbotics latest humanoid creation. So, Andrew, welcome to the show and super good to have you here with us today. Tell us a little bit about your story from investment banker to blockchain and tokens and now humanoid robots. What a journey.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Yeah, it's been an interesting career that I've had for sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Yeah, tell us more.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Sure. You know, I graduated with a business degree a long time ago. And like most graduates of business degrees, I wanted to get into investment banking. Um I liked finance, numbers, and accounting. And so I built a good career out of helping entrepreneurs build their dreams. And I did that for 20 years. But towards the end of that journey, I got fascinated primarily with Bitcoin at the time. And I started thinking of ways to bring Bitcoin to public market investors. Because, you know, this was before ETFs and funds and companies that would be holding their Bitcoin. And so myself with some partners pioneered a Bitcoin miner. We took it public, it's called HUD 8. Um, I believe it has about a $3 billion market cap on the NASDAQ today. Wow. And the basis of that business, at least at the beginning, was to mine Bitcoin and hold it on the balance sheet. And that was a way of getting people exposure. Subsequent to that, I moved into other areas of crypto. I started tokens.com as a way of holding uh cryptocurrencies that were used for staking. And so that was a way to earn a yield in a sort of environmentally safe way from those cryptocurrencies. And then now have evolved into the CEO of Realbotics, which I think, as you said, we create humanoid robots that are meant more for emotional and social purposes as opposed to what some of our peers are doing, which are robots to replace physical human labor.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

That's really quite a journey, Andrew. But onto Robotics. Tell us why Realbotics focuses on relationship-based AI.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

So really it was a function of what we were good at. And the the company and its sort of predecessor businesses was making what I would call humanoid products for movies, for people who needed companionship in various uh areas of entertainment. And the idea of starting to develop these to be robotic and AI-powered, to continue to focus on that area of connecting to people made sense. And when you look at the market, like you know, I was reading some studies yesterday that they say up to 50% of people in the United States suffer from loneliness. And loneliness is more than just feeling alone, but you know, that can impact your immune system, it can, you know, create diseases, it you know, create a lot of negative emotions in people and behaviors. And so our view has always been hey, if we can create a lifelike piece of hardware and integrate it in with AI software that's meant to be kind to you and loving to you and form a bond with you, but there's a really great use case for that, not just in the US but all over the world.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

That's for sure. And for sure, you know, loneliness is epidemic, but of course, you are definitely bound to get detractors. Do you think that training AI about human and social interactions comes with, you know, a whole host of ethical issues?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

There's for sure ethical issues, but I think there's ethical issues with every any new technology. So, you know, there were ethical issues at the outset of the internet. There's you know, ethical issues with respect to even robots used for physical labor, and now with AI taking such prominence over the last few years, there's there's a whole host of ethical issues around that. But ultimately, humans have been very good, you know, even with relation to social media platforms. And I mean, you I'm sure you use social media platforms, and there's a whole bunch of ethics around that. Like, what do we expose our kids to? What level level of free speech should be allowed? Um, you know, is is hatred allowed? Is false information allowed? What is classified there? And so I think that the area that we're dealing with here, which is using AI for companionship and friendship, is probably less of an issue than some of these other areas. We obviously add in lots of guardrails. I think that one of the biggest issues is privacy. And so, you know, Ann if you're having a conversation with your AI robot friend, where does where does that information reside? Um, our perspective is that that information should reside with the the owner of that product, and they can choose to store that on a private cloud. Um, but it's certainly not for us to access. And that's maybe a little bit different than Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or these other platforms where once you start interacting with those, your pictures, your conversations, everything are really a property of the company operating it. And so, really, I think there's a philosophical difference for us in that you know we respect privacy.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

That's um amazing. But let's dive a little bit deeper. Um, we talked a little bit about guardrails. So, what are the kind of controls and safeguards that you've put in place with realbotics to safeguarding literally the understanding of human behavior? For example, would a you know a third party one day use your intellectual property or your algorithms to um perhaps direct it for less than ideal or beneficial use?

SPEAKER_01 7:42

So a lot of our AI is built on top of open source LLMs. And so you could use Chat GPT as an example, and a lot of guardrails are already built into that. The areas that we build, our proprietary AI is really the conversational turns and the memory aspect so that when you go onto it, it remembers, hi Ann, and it keeps track of your prior conversations. We don't want the AI, and we're we do a lot of testing, but we don't want the AI to ever instruct anybody to harm themselves or to harm other people. We don't want the AI to ever provide information that would allow anybody to do things like that. And so we don't build it that way. Our AI is meant more like, hey, if somebody is feeling sad or you can the robot can even recognize that they're looking sad, can say, like, what's wrong? It's around empathy and building that type of connection. And so we feel pretty good that the guardrails of what we're programming to do are strong, and we're constantly doing testing to make sure that it uh it aligns to what our vision is.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Well, this has been amazingly enlightening, Andrew. Where do you think the industry of humanoid robots with relationship-based AI is headed?

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Oh, I think it's gonna be a massive market. Um, you know, don't just think about it, you know, Anne, from perspective of your household. Think about a senior's care facility where you could have a humanoid robot going from room to room and having a conversation with the residents there, but also communicating information back to maybe a doctor or a nurse, maybe dropping off medication, but really just being there to provide company. Think about schools having you know teachers' assistance that are robotic AI-based where students can access those 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There's a lot of areas that I think this market, I mean, it's endless. You know, from an entertainment perspective, imagine going to a hotel and dealing with a robotic AI-based concierge that can book your dinner reservations or you know, recommend a movie. We can really do a lot. And I do believe, and you know, Elon Musk has echoed this, there's gonna be a lot of robots, humanoid robots that we're interacting with in 10 years. Um, this is a massive opportunity for a company like ours.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

That's amazing. Well, Andrew, thank you so much for your time today. I am I surely had a lot of fun, and I hope you did too. So, to all our listeners and subscribers on Spotify, YouTube, and LinkedIn, your support has always been incredibly valuable to us. So don't forget to like, share, or follow us. It helps us so much more than you'll ever know. Once again, my name is Anne. I am your host from Supercharged Lab. And on behalf of the AI Partnerships Corps, I've been speaking to Andrew Kegel of Realbotics AI. Thank you for sharing your time with us, Andrew.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

No problem, thank you.