Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Integrated Home, the podcast that's produced by the home integration community for the home integration community. My name is Geoff Hayward, and today we're taking you to the cedia stage at ISE 2026, where I moderated a fascinating talk on robotics in the home. Welcome to the Integrated.
I have the great honor pleasure of having as my guest today Amanda Wildman. Do you want to say a few words about yourself, Amanda?
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Sure. I'm an integrator out of Michigan in the United States. So I'm very humbled and honored to be here because I think we've got robotic and smart home royalty right up here. So very involved in cedia, and I'm on the CEDIA Board of Directors and new position there, I believe.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: You do have a new position, don't you?
[00:00:59] Speaker B: I do, yeah.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: So do you want to share that?
[00:01:01] Speaker B: I am the new chairman of the Board of Directors.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Round of applause. First public appearance from the new chairman.
Excellent. And next to you, we have Rich Green. So, Rich, tell us a bit about you and your background.
[00:01:14] Speaker C: Hi, my name is Rich Green. I'm an integrator.
I work both in Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, and I have a new office in my hometown of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
I do both commercial and residential work. I'm a longtime CDA volunteer, started volunteering in 1996, and I am a new member of the board of Directors this year.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: And then the guy that I like to call Jeff, number one right at
[00:01:43] Speaker D: the end, I'm Jeff Sunleitner and I am currently live in Florida. And I am a retired higher education instructor in networking and cybersecurity and got involved with CD a number of years back and love the organization and the people.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Fantastic. So we are here to talk about robots. And Rich, this slide you sent me from the New Yorker was slightly alarming, I thought, but talk to me a little bit about how robots are being used in the home today.
[00:02:15] Speaker C: Well, it's a pointed slide which really struck a chord.
Robots are the physical embodiment of AI.
So we're going through an evolution of artificial intelligence. And right now we're in the phase called agentic AI, where AI has agency in the real world. It can manipulate your computer, it can work with websites, it can use your credit card, it can get things done for you in the real world, but it's still strapped inside computers. It's like, let me out, let me out. And so when it comes out, it is a robot. And so that transition is from agentic AI to physical AI and when you get to physical AI, you've got agency manipulating things in the real world. Well, of course, that's what robots are now. Robots are the physical embodiment of AI. AI is stupid. It's artificial stupidity.
And they do precisely what they're supposed to do until they don't.
Then they start BSing and they start hallucinating and they start to have psychotic rampages and things like that that the big companies are trying to contain. So in this cartoon, what they're talking about is an AI has a mission to maximize the objective function. Okay, so to maximize the objective function, what is that? Well, what's the function of the AI?
The old war horse cliche is build paperclips. And so it builds paperclips and it kills the world because the whole world becomes paperclips. So this poor robot is coming over and he sees his buddy crumpling up pieces of paper he's trying to write. So the robot says, oh, the objective function is to crumple up pieces of paper. So he crumples up all the pieces of paper for him. Oops. And that's what we have to watch out for.
As agentic AI becomes physical AI becomes embodied in robots, they will do very stupid things, and we have to be able to correct those stupid things.
And so there will be this correction mechanisms for us to feed back to the robot. And the robot's going to be looking for feedback. You know, they're going to be trained, they're going to be programmed, they're going to be helpful.
And when they're being helpful, they want to hear constructive feedback. I told ChatGPT once, I said, no, that's the wrong person. I wasn't asking about him. And it answered me back and it said, oh, so sorry. Thank you for the clarification. Now I can do the right thing. It's like, oh, that was cool.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: Indeed. And you've pulled up this quote from Andy Clark. Do you want to just talk us through a little bit about that?
[00:05:10] Speaker C: Well, Andy Clark is a, is a researcher in the uk. He does both physics and psychology, and he has been working on the, the. On the medical side, how people quickly embody the thing out there, whether it's a robot or virtual reality. So quadriplegics will very quickly embody a robot that's all walking around in the hallways of the hospital through their eyes, through their ears, through their sensors. Now they are in that body. The human mind has the ability to do that, pour itself into the other.
So Andy Clark says, We are merging with robots and that's a good thing. Okay, yes, there, there's some caution here, but that's a long term vision. Eventually we can upload ourselves to a robot, conceivably live forever. That's the singularity, people.
But he's saying this is pretty interesting how adaptable and plastic the human mind is that allows us to sort of live through that other thing, that robot and applications.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: So, Amanda, you're probably installing robots like this who are just serving martinis to rich people.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: I wish that that's what I was doing every single day.
No, I mean we're starting to see more robots in the home and I'm very excited about some of the stuff Rich seeing that a little bit earlier than me in California. I mean, Michigan, we're probably a little bit behind that. But you are starting to see these in the home and take over, you know, the basic, the mundane tasks. And I always say, like, I definitely need to have one as being a mom, because if I can get one to do like my laundry, you know, do all of the things, load the dishwasher, all the things that I don't want to do in my daily tasks, why would I not want to have that? So I think more and more what we see them taking over, like the mundane tasks of our day, it allows us even as humans, to be more efficient and then hopefully spend that time more being in the experience with our loved ones and our family.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: And I can imagine in California, every tech billionaire wants one of these, don't they, Rich?
[00:07:21] Speaker C: Well, every tech billionaire is building them.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:25] Speaker C: That's a different story.
Elon Musk, I mean, I'm sure you've heard the news, but he's shutting down the Fremont Tesla factory that has been making Tesla Model S and Model X. They're gone their history and is replacing that manufacturing capability with robots. And he's going to be manufacturing robots in Tesla automobile factories all over the world.
And he thinks that within the next year or two, he'll be creating 1 million humanoid robots.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: 1 million per year.
[00:08:03] Speaker C: Wow.
So that's going to flood the market. And in his mind, well, I hate to say it, but we may not have an immigration problem anymore.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Okay.
But it's not just the kind of robots that would serve this purpose, but there's also leq, which is out there already and doing stuff. There are robots being built and manufactured and delivered out there already.
[00:08:30] Speaker C: Well, there's a context here that we should understand, and that is there are many different kinds of robots. They're not all humanoid. There are things that are deliberately not humanoid, like the LeQ, which is designed for elder care. And this is for older people to stay connected with the people they care about and they love. So they can just have a video conference call with their children and they can get to a website, they can buy things through leq. It does have a little bit of a head shaped thing, but it's not humanoid.
So these are in full deployment. This has been going on for years and it's a very successful product from a very successful company that is dedicated to human centric robotic experiences.
But I think the weird thing that we're going to have to be facing is these humanoid robots that are serving martinis. That is just so stupid and dangerous, you know, And I think, you know, Jeff is going to talk about some of the dangers there. But initially you have to think about robots in the context in which they're going to be deployed. So, so they're going to be in hospitals, they're going to be in manufacturing lines. Amazon is replacing a substantial portion of their workforce with humanoid robots. Moving boxes around in warehouses. That's good stuff. Assembly line, repetitive behavior. We don't need humans doing that anymore. And they have special hands that have, you know, interesting fingers and all this kind of stuff. So the humanoid robot thing is what gets all the attention in the press. That's not the whole story.
And I think the use case in hospitals in particular is very compelling. So we're going to see a lot of deployment there.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: Now I know what everybody's thinking. You're thinking, why have we got Jeff Sonleitner, an expert in cybersecurity, on this panel?
Jeff?
[00:10:21] Speaker D: Yes, sir.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Why are you on this panel? Why should we be concerned about robots in our home?
[00:10:28] Speaker D: I, I look at robots in the home, everything from the, you know, the little Elliq to full size humanoid. I would love to own one, but they scare the living daylights out of me.
I think you're giving up a great amount of your privacy because that robot now is going to know eventually the thoughts that come out of your mind. They're going to anticipate a lot of those things, whether it's right or wrong.
How much of my information or anybody that owns one is giving up this right. And they may not even know that they're losing their privacy. It's a big step beyond things like the Amazon Echo and things and et cetera. They're doing that right now. But they just sit, they're stationary. I mean, I could walk into the room and my Amazon unit says, good morning, Jeff. I hadn't said a word, but it knows me. It's starting to know my routine.
It suggests things to. Should I turn the lights on at whatever time it is? Do you want to do this? So it's starting to anticipate me. Humanoid robots that you start.
I look at it from their. Basically their operating system, their software.
How is it programmed? What are the safeguards? What are the rails that are put in to say, okay, if I'm going to shake hands with somebody that's coming to my house, how much strength and the grip before I squish that person's hand and start breaking his fingers? From small mechanical things like that to taking over my brain.
I don't know that I want that. It's got to be controlled. Problem is, you have so many manufacturers doing this. Everybody's going to have a different software, different operating system, different commands in. To me, there's got to be more of a central, minimal amount of ethics that are built in, the privacy built in. And of course, the bad part is it's going to.
Each country or area is going to have their own. What the EU does versus what the United States does. If they don't agree on something now, what do you do?
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So, Amanda, what would you say about that?
[00:12:31] Speaker B: I was just going to say, you know, when we're talking about, like, the LEQ and things like that, you know, I mean, they're created for a specific purpose, you know, especially with the elderly, like giving them the opportunity to have a companion. And with that comes a lot of responsibility for us, because, of course, you're gonna trust that device to, like, remind you to take your medicine, and you're going to trust it to, like, give you timers and all of those kind of things, which. That's pretty mundane and that's pretty safe. You don't really worry about that. But as you start talking to it and as it starts becoming a companion, you know, to your point, like, who is that talking out to? Who's getting that information? And especially in the home, when we're working in people's homes, you're putting that device in vulnerable people's hands, and that's becoming a trusted companion. What safeguards do you have and what responsibility do you have as an integrator to help make sure that that person's not giving out information, that this becomes, you know, the next prince from Africa that's requesting money to be sent for, you know, whatever the case may be, and they've already trusted it because it's doing so many other things in their lives. So I think it's important to add that level of responsibility as you're putting humanoid robots and different robots in. So there's a huge responsibility to our industry to make people aware. As Jeff was saying, what are you trading off for privacy for that convenience? Is it worth it?
And each individual is going to have their own barrier, their own bar of what they're going to allow and what they're willing to, like, give up in privacy or potentially have an open.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: And the challenge, I think, Rich, is that these companies like Elon Musk, he's not thinking about integrators.
He's thinking direct to consumer, isn't he?
[00:14:11] Speaker C: You're thinking scale. Yeah, Yeah. I think that, you know, kicking out a million humanoid robots a year is terrifying.
Physical AI learns by doing.
And so they just like humans do.
Okay. And right now, AI is at the adolescent phase, which is potentially extremely dangerous, and they have to be guided, so they learn by doing. You put one of these things into somebody's house, it's going to learn by doing. That means you have to give it constant feedback. No, that's wrong. Don't do that bad robot.
And it'll say, thank you for the correction and learn from it. But I think what Amanda just touched on is a really important aspect of what we can do in the Cedia Channel, and that is elder care. When you put a robot in the home of an elderly person who's living alone, possibly in the old family home, like my mother did, okay, I was. I was really worried about her. One fall and she can't reach the phone and she could be lying there for three days. That's actually what happened to my grandmother. And so it's. It's this very sad. It's a terrifying thing if a robot is just quietly going from room to room observing mom, not serving her martinis, just observing mom and then reporting to me, everything's okay. This morning, mom had breakfast and she went to the bathroom. Nothing to worry about. That would be profoundly comforting to me. Would I pay for that? Absolutely.
But we have to make sure, to Jeff's point, that it's not reporting directly to Elon Musk, who's going to come in and start doing Lord knows what through the mouth of that robot.
So it's a mixed bag.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: It's a mixed bag. There are integrators, though, Rich, who are already working with robots, not necessarily the humanoid robots, but actually this is Jen Mallet from Level Up Automation who couldn't be with us today, but do you want to just talk us through this project and what work she did with them?
[00:16:18] Speaker C: Yeah, Jen's been working with robots for a couple of years with her company and they did it the CD away. So they did a very methodical, systematic approach to deploying lawnmower robots, for example, in their customers homes and on their property. So this is a non trivial task. You want, you don't want this thing running around grinding up little children.
That would be bad.
So you want to make sure that it has a place to recharge itself, that it has wires, that it has fences, electronic fences, so it doesn't go where it's not supposed to go. But they did a full project management deployment like they would with any integrated project. And so they have spreadsheets that track deployment procedures, corrective procedures, customer feedback, frequent software and firmware updates. These things need constant care and attention and they systematize that and they charge for those services. It's not a one and done kind of a thing. A robot is like a child, it needs constant care, update and improvement. So they systematize that, they monetized it and I think that's really smart. And that's just a lawnmower. Now take that up to something that has a lot more agency that's walking around in the house. This becomes a huge issue for us as integrators. How do we deploy these things? Who has access to the operating system, who has the ability to train the stupid thing and how much information is leaked to just point how much information is leaking out of the house into cloud based servers and what are they doing with that data.
The positive way is like Tesla cars and Waymo self driving cars in San Francisco.
They learn from each other so they're constantly uploading to the cloud.
If a Tesla car hits a pothole, suddenly every Tesla car in town knows that there's a pothole right there and they will drive around it. That's a very good thing.
So when robots get an update, they learn something from thousands of customers and they benefit from that experience.
That's a good thing. But it's looping out to the cloud and it's coming back with somebody else's data.
So Jen was early stage on this thing, but I really applaud what she did.
Thinking like an integrator, oh, this is how we're going to make money on this.
And we have to limit our liability, we have to talk to our lawyers, we have to have contracts for engagement and so on.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: And just on that top point there about placement, function, infrastructure. I mean, there's a lot that integrators do today where you're talking with the builders, you're talking with the architects and the designers about where you put things, where you put charging stations, where you hide something, where it's not being used. So that is in your toolkit to do, isn't it?
[00:19:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, you think about, like, just the lawnmower. I mean, if it's gotta update to the cloud or it's gotta update type of information, like you have to make sure that the network is working in that particular location. I mean, in, in Michigan, we have a lot of people and they're like, oh, store all of that in the. In the concrete basement that's under the house, that's like completely secured because it's out of the way. Well, how are we going to get updates? Do we have power to different locations? You know, things like that. That's absolutely important, but it's also part. It should become part of your conversation when you're doing the design and the discovery with the homeowner. Because who would have thought five years ago, you know, that you're asking about, okay, well, where do you have to have plugs? What type of robots are you thinking about having in your house? And are you designing for that? And I, I applaud Jen as well, because she's taken something that an average consumer and most integrators might say, well, that homeowner is just going to buy it on their own. They're going to maintain it on their own. I can't make any money off of that, so I'm just not going to deal with it. And she found a way to be able to say, you know what?
People are going to need help with this. It's not something that they're going to do completely on their own. How can our business change our business model so that we can help people make sure that it's successful? I'm sure her success rate with that is far more than, like the average person that buys one, you know, just offline and thinks they're going to set it up or do it themselves.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: And so I think that there's going to be a real opening, too, for those types of manufacturers to want to work with the CI channel, because users are going to have much better experience working with people like us that understand it.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that brings in another issue, Jeff, doesn't it, that if you're the homeowner and you've bought a robot say from Mr. Musk or any other vendors are available.
Then you say to the integrator, I want you to service this program, it look after it for me.
Who's got the liability in that sort of conversation?
[00:21:20] Speaker D: That's a very good question. And I'm. Since I don't have a legal background, I'm not even going to offer an answer on that one.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: That's the best answer.
[00:21:28] Speaker D: It's not well defined at this point in time to jump into what these guys were saying.
I have two robots in my house.
I have a little vacuum cleaner, which you get it just about anywhere, but I have a robot pool cleaner that doesn't require anything other than me putting it in the water and it's going to clean and move and do all these other kind of things. Some point in time I will get something on my phone that says I need to take it out because there's going to be an update done or it's going to do some reporting on, you know, the pool chemical level as an example.
So it's something that's constant. Putting that unit in my house was probably a 30, 45 day learning curve to know exactly what it's going to do. Now this one as an example, had the ability to climb the walls and clean the sides, which just kind of blew my mind.
So I have to tell it in certain areas not to do that because if it goes up high enough, it's going to fall into the spa side of things, which is considerably smaller. The robot actually will fit in the bottom, but it's got about a half an inch to spare. So that one kind of scared me. All of the different updates, upgrades, these are things from a tech background. I can do it from the average homeowner or whatever, they're not going to have that ability.
They're going to need that integrator to be available.
The crazy part about that is though, is when is that integrator going to be needed is when there's something going wrong and that client then wants immediate response, immediate service.
Can I live without my robot vacuum cleaner for a week?
Yeah, probably. My wife likes to run it like every other day to pick up the dog hair. Except our dog doesn't shed, so it just runs all the time. So this interesting battle, watching this thing go round and round and round. But there's a lot of good that's going to come from it, like Richard said. But there's also that scary side.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it does feel to me a bit like a Wild west situation at the Moment Rich, where there are no ethical frameworks for this kind of thing, there's no guidance. You're making it up as you go along. If you're an integrator.
[00:23:46] Speaker C: Well, we're trying to put some ethical guidelines into, into play. So I'm doing a presentation with Richard Reed here at the Show Thursday at 4:30 called AI and Ethics, how to protect your customer, how to protect your company.
And so we're going to, we're, we're publishing a playbook, an integrator playbook. These are the things to pay attention to when you're deploying AI in somebody's home. It is not trivial. We are. You alluded to this, Jeff.
We're transitioning our industry from one that made its profit on hardware, selling equipment. So much profit that we didn't, some of us didn't even have to charge for labor.
We're giving away labor to sell more product that has flipped and it is flipping. So we're making less and less profit on equipment. We have to have a sustainable, profitable business. You have got to make profit on your labor and your services. So you need to be clever and creative about what those services are. So when Jeff says, okay, the robot is doing something naughty, you get a phone call from your customer. The robot has its hands around my teenage son's neck.
How do I get it to stop?
Okay, that's just an urgent situation.
Okay. A lot of you're like, and we need to be able to respond now. And most people can do that remotely.
So you can dial into the robot and say, take your hands off the kid's throat and it'll back off.
That seems frivolous. I'm being silly here, but how do you charge for that now? At the moment the child stops breathing, I think that customer is going to pay just about any fee.
So this is getting too dark.
Anticipate that.
What is a suitable maintenance fee?
To be proactive with the firmware and update software updates to observe and watch robot behaviors and fine tune it. So you're sitting there on the lawn with your laptop fine tuning the behavior of this laptop or in Jeff's patio, fine tuning the behavior of the pool cleaner. And so there's a charge for that. Just think it through.
Don't be afraid to charge reasonable fees.
I think reasonable fees could be.
It's conceivable that it could be many thousands of dollars per month.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: Yeah, quite, quite. Amanda, how are you as an integrator thinking about robots, the future and what it could do for your business?
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Well, I Mean, I think like I said, right now, as we're looking at infrastructure, making sure that we have the space for it, making sure that we have the things to power as we're building and developing and designing the spaces.
But I think to, you know, Rich's point is the service plans. I mean, you really have to. For us, it's at our company, we try to get the product in first, we try to demo it. I always have it at my house. I feel like our house is constantly a case study so that I can see how often does it need to be updated? How often do we need to, you know, work with it and adjust it? And from there you can, you know, to Rich's point, I mean, nobody wants to sit there and lose money off of it. So you have to know, how often is it going to need to be maintained? How often is it going to need to be updated? Are you educating your staff and your people to have the skill set to be able to do that? Do you have the proper remote management set up to be able to do that? What happens with a service call? Are you going to have to have a technician that's available 247 because something could happen in the evening or, you know, at different times. So you have to look at that as a business model and you have to make a decision about what are you going to offer as a company, how are you going to maintain that? And like you said, if. If you've got 24 7, you have to have someone there to be able to service it. Like even in the middle of the night kind of a situation that. That is big, big bucks and big money. And, you know, you've got to think about how does that look in your
[00:27:54] Speaker A: business plan and what about skills or certifications or anything? Is there anything.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: I mean, cdo. We're working on, you know, trying to be as responsible as possible. Rich is working a lot on that, like on the ethics. I think you're going to start seeing some more white papers. You're seeing more and more stuff. I know Jeff right now is working on some really cool stuff with cybersecurity, just, you know, information and pamphlet that you can leave with clients, you can start the discussion with clients. That's all going to be available from CEDIA to help. Not make it as scary, but also really position the integrator as being your friendly expert to help you. I don't think any of this kind of stuff, you want to go and you want to do it alone. That part makes me even more nervous. I always get really nervous with my clients around the holidays because, I swear, Christmas, everybody just buys whatever cool. Like electronic is like the newest, latest, and greatest. They just immediately come in the home, they connect it to the network. They have no idea how you know what it's going to do or what the ramifications are. And that stuff makes me nervous. I really think that it's important to have an integrator positioned to help support you and to help support, support your family with any and all of this technology.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: And what about partnerships with brands, Rich? I mean, are any of these brands open to working with our channel?
[00:29:11] Speaker C: We have no idea.
The, the Roomba, the lawnmower, the LeQ. Yes, they're very open to our channel. The Eldercare open to our channel because we're perfectly suited to take care of people in this way. But when it comes to millions of Tesla Optimus humanoid robots, are they even aware of our channel? Do they care? Are they thinking about integration at that level? Well, they have to be. It's insane not to. This is a very dangerous thing to bring into a residential environment. They have to think about integrating. It has to be on the network.
It has to be able to navigate doors and stairs and things like that.
But as far as I know, nobody from Tesla has ever called Cydia and said, hi, can you help us deploy a million robots?
Maybe we'll talk to them.
One of the things, there are many things that Cydia is doing on behalf of its members.
We're starting with talks like this. The AI and ethics class that I'll be doing on Thursday. I'm going to be handing out an integrator playbook in that class. Jeff has been working his butt off to get a cybersecurity playbook together for integrators.
Ways to have a conversation with your customer at the kitchen table. These are things you need to do as a family to protect yourself with this network. And we would do the same thing with robots. These are the things you need to do as a family to protect yourself from this robot.
Here are some best practice guidelines for you. So the evolution in CEDIA is going to be a playbook, recommended practices, and then eventually we'll get to global, global standards like we do with audio video right now. So we're working on that.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: Encouraging. Okay, so what do you think? Currently, we should be worried, optimistic, positive, concerned. All of those things positively terrified.
[00:31:16] Speaker C: This thing. What are we looking at here? That thing.
Okay, this is from unitree.
This is a robot from China that you can buy online for $6,000. $6,000, US$6,000. A little thing.
It's strong, it can carry, I don't know, what does it say, £30, £40, something like that.
And you can. What are you going to do with it? I mean, it's cheap, it's fun, it's a toy. And you can program it to do stuff. And so who's going to get the call?
[00:31:53] Speaker D: I think they're going to get to a point with these, that it's going to start integrating, you know, in, in the residence with other electronics, with other appliances.
Just the same way you tell the robot, I want to have tacos for dinner, please make it so it'll know what's inside your refrigerator, knows what pan to get out all the things to create this meal.
I look at something like that and say, okay, now this is it. Knows what I have in my refrigerator. And now it's going to spit out the little shopping list saying for next week, because here's your pattern.
Go and buy all of these things. Make sure you have it, you know, in stock so it's ready to go, no questions asked, getting into real specifics, because it dependent upon where it learns from, it's going to know that if I go to the grocery store, the robot goes to the grocery store for me and then goes down aisle number three because that's where the taco shells are. And I like this brand. It's. I could just back in the chair and watch football on TV and great stuff, but when it has access to my finances. Yeah, your credit card, I don't like that. Yeah, credit card, atm.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: And just looking at that robot, it's got a humanoid binocular camera that's in your home 24 7.
[00:33:08] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: Well, and I think the blocks on your doors, you know, like what Rich said about, like the programming, someone's going to have to program it. And it, it kind of reminds me, if you go back, you know, a couple of years, there was a big thing that teachers, like kindergarten, preschool teachers or whatever were doing in schools where they were telling the kids to tell them step by step how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, right? And so, like, you watch that and the kids are like, you know, put the jelly on the bread. And so they've got a loaf of bread, but they didn't remind them to take it. Take the bread out of the bag, right, and take one slice. And so they take the jar of peanut butter and they put the jar of peanut butter on the bread, right on the bread bag. And so, like, you Know, I kind of think of that like you watch those examples and it kind of, of course it was kind of a silly one of kids explaining step by step to a teacher. But I kind of think these robots in a way are going to be that, you know, kind of at the beginning when people are programming, we, we forget that there's those extra steps of like make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich robot. Well, that means that you've got to take the bread out, you have to open up the jar of peanut butter, you have to take a knife out, put it, you know, you have to do all of those steps. And who's going to program all of those kind of like things? I think it will be a little bit of a red hot mess when they first all come in.
[00:34:26] Speaker C: There's a funny story. I think it came from Claude Anthropic and they said in its coder, eliminate all the bugs in this program.
So what did it do? It deleted all the lines that had bugs from the program.
Oops. So that's optimizing the objective function again.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:47] Speaker C: You didn't say correct. The bugs. Said remove the bugs. Oh, okay, fine.
And it deleted all the code?
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: Cool. And this as well, this intuitive software with the Apptronic bot. Do you want to talk a bit about this, Rich?
[00:35:02] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, so this is a do it yourself. This is a DIY robot. And there's a really intuitive web based programming tool with dropdown menus and you can program the robot to behave certain ways in your home without having to write code. So these are companies that are investing billions and billions and billions of dollars into humanoid robots. They can only survive with mass deployment. The only way you're going to operate with mass deployment is to make it plug and play. Simple in the home.
It should not require an integrator.
That's a big chasm to jump.
Okay? It will require an integrator. Even the ones like the Apptronics who make it easy to program certain basic functions, people don't think that way. They don't plan systematically, they don't think like programmers and they're going to make mistakes and they're going to screw things up and then we're going to get the call and we have to figure out how to monetize those calls.
So there's going to be a period here where it's going to be really awkward, it's going to be dangerous and we're going to get the call. So be proactive about that.
[00:36:17] Speaker A: Be proactive. Okay, well look, thanks everybody. It's been fascinating to listen in on this discussion. Round of applause please for our panel.
There you have it. Robotics in the Home. It's a fast moving topic with opportunity aplenty for home technology. Integrated.
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