Gecko CEO: Physical AI Needs Humans in Control

This was our top story today. Right? Part one, make an agent fit within parameters that you set in a box. Right? Part two, a security guard for when that agent misbehaves or acts suspiciously. How does that work in your physical AI world? Yeah. Well, thanks for being able to, have me on talk about this. What's so important and we're all talking about today, is the criticality of these agentic tools being able to be deployed in the real world, especially being deployed in such important environments, but doing so in a way that's safe and ensures that we have the utmost standards as it relates to safety, quality, especially with some of the most critical sectors, whether it be on the military side or on the commercial side with energy, mining, and manufacturing. And that's exactly what this partnership is all about is ensuring that we keep humans in control, but also supercharge the benefits of these eugenic tools coming out of the of the foundation lab. So really exciting announcement, and it puts safety in humans first. This is, a partnership NVIDIA has with about a 100 different entities across software and hardware robotics companies. Give me a case study that can make it real for the audience. Right? It does all sound a little bit abstract. So how an AI agent in the context of, something like a robot in the industrial and and defense settings that you work in? Well, what's, what's becoming very clear is that, I think impressive and then critical these, models are to such an incredible ecosystem of tech. What's what's becoming really clear is that deployment into the real world on the physical intelligence side, that's where real large moats are coming from by gathering information. Data sets never exist before to power these abilities to model and simulate what the real world looks like and and how to make sure it optimizes for better. A way to understand one of the use cases is actually with the military con contracts that we have. One of our robots, Komodo, is actually using this this partnership and the system that the open agent safety platform that NVIDIA and Gecko are pioneering to actually ensure that we're gathering information and datasets by letting agents run the robots. By ensuring that parameters are set and humans are able to control certain sorts of actions that the robots are taking in the real world. And so the agents need to be able to path plan and gather information and supercharge where they're taking actions and getting data, but do so in a way that doesn't compromise safety and quality standards that humans set and and prioritize. And this is exactly the key to ensuring that we can get as much information and data as possible at low cost, and do so in a way that keeps humans, in control and safety paramount. Take me into the backstory here. Part of this platform, NVIDIA talked about at GTC earlier this year. Right? There has been so much in the in the in the headlines about AI safety, models misbehaving, agents going rogue. Like, was there a frantic phone call from Jensen Huang last week saying, okay. This is what we're doing. Everyone get get get on board. Yeah. I'll keep the phone calls, between the two, confidential, but and and you're just a 100% right, which is that you need to prioritize safety, but you also need to be moving at a pace that's really, bringing to bear the best technology in the world for the people keeping, our borders safe and keeping freedom, for the world. Know, it's it's so exciting that, that Jensen, NVIDIA, and myself at GECO are able to, you know, be doing the partnership like this for the military, as the first, example, of many to come as it relates to the technology that's being deployed to ensure that we keep ships out of dry dock and in the fight and ensure that we can, deter conflict around the world. And this, this is putting, such a positive spin on the benefits and impacts that, that this technology stack is able to have. Right. And also the the the game plan of how robotics has to be used to give us the advantage, on in the West. And so it's a exciting partnership because it pushes the frontier and makes, and ensures that, technologies and technology companies like Echo and NVIDIA are leading the way in creating the rules. You know, school of thought is that the safety of a of a model and and and a issue of alignment, does does the the the AI do what it's intended to? That's an engineering problem. Is that what you see in in your physical AI realm? It's just an engineering problem that you can now solve for because of what NVIDIA has has made open source. Yeah. It it also is ensuring that we put into perspective the power of these tools. I mean, we we we hear so much conversation, you know, from, certain CEOs about the doom of AI, but I think what's important is this partnership highlights, how, these technologies, robotics and artificial intelligence models, are actually being used for good, for keeping humans out of harm's way, to ensuring that we get critical assets and components back up and running, ensuring that they're deterring conflict or keeping lights on, empowering homes for heating and cooling. This is the kind of way that we want to imagine the future looking like for robotics and AI, and not some, and not some, tumorism that can be sold, to assist, whatever is trying to be pushed by these companies. And so similar to to Jensen, what we're here talking about is such a positive impact that these technologies are having for real people, and ensuring as well that we keep those real people with those civic better expertise, in control. And we're building technology stacks right alongside them, and that's what's leading to such incredible outcomes.