Exponential Curves: Supercomputer to Smartphone to Singularity | Turn the Lens Jeff Frick Ep39
Release Date: 11/05/2024
Jeff Burnstein: Robotics Imperative, Standards, National Strategy | Turn the Lens Ep49
Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick
Jeff Burnstein, President of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), reveals why eight countries have national robotics strategies while America doesn't—and what four decades of industrial robot history teaches us about humanoid adoption. In this interview from Humanoids Summit SV 2025, Jeff explains the critical role of safety standards in commercialization, why Japan's 1960s strategy created sustained leadership while China dominates today, and how A3 is reframing "robotics" as "embodied AI" to gain traction in Washington D.C. Key Topics: • Why national robotics strategies drive...
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Ed Colgate: Soft Hands, Dexterous Robots | Turn the Lens Ep48
Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick
Ed Colgate, Northwestern University, and Director of the HAND ERC reveals why the secret to dexterous manipulation isn't precision engineering, but something surprisingly simple: softness and large contact areas. In this conversation from Humanoids Summit 2025, Ed explains the fundamental difference between human and robot manipulation, how AI finally enables control of complex hands, and why artificial muscles might solve the chronic overheating problem. Key Topics: • Why large soft contact areas matter more than finger articulation • How softness enables sensing and control, not just...
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Nic Radford: Declining Labor, Generalizable Skills, Ready Market | Turn the Lens Ep47
Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick
Nic Radford, Co-founder and CEO of Persona AI, sits down with Jeff Frick at Humanoids Summit 2025 (presented by ALM Ventures) to unpack a hard truth: robots aren't difficult to build—they're difficult to make useful. Radford's career arc reads like a tour of extreme environments: NASA space robotics, deep ocean exploration, and now shipbuilding automation. Each demanded solving communication, distance, and harsh conditions. This time, he's focused squarely on commercial viability from the start. His framework for finding the right market is brilliant: look beyond the traditional "3Ds"...
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Pete Florence: Generalist, Scaling Laws, Train One Improve All | Turn the Lens Ep46
Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick
What if training a robot to do ONE thing automatically made it better at EVERYTHING? Pete Florence, Co-founder & CEO of Generalist and former Google DeepMind Senior Research Scientist, joins Jeff Frick at Humanoids Summit 2025 to reveal a breakthrough that fundamentally changes how we think about robot intelligence. The big discovery? Robotics has finally found its scaling laws—just like large language models. At 7 billion parameters, models cross an "intelligence threshold" where more data predictably equals more intelligence. No more hitting walls. No more plateaus. Just continuous...
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Stop the Slop: Five AI Fundamentals, Smarter Prompts, Real Results | Turn the Lens Ep45
Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick
Five game-changing AI tips from my training with Kyle "KMo" Moschetto. Discover the RGCOA framework for prompt engineering, why paying for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini is essential for serious work, and how understanding tokens, context windows, and temperature settings can dramatically improve your results. Practical, tested insights you can apply immediately to get more from generative AI tools. Stop the Slop: Five AI Fundamentals, Smarter Prompts, Real Results | Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick Ep 45 Transcript and Show Notes
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Carolina Parada: Embodied AI, Gemini Robotics, Delightful Surprise | Turn the Lens Ep44
Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick
Carolina Parada and the team have delivered Gemini Robotics, Google DeepMind's vision-language-action (VLA) foundation model. Gemini Robotics provides the general-purpose 'understanding' enabling robots to go from pixel to action. How do you teach a machine to understand the physical world well enough to move through it, manipulate it, and help people in it, when every case is a corner case, never experienced in training? Embodied AI. AI with arms and legs and the ability to interact with the real world. Gemini Robotics is designed to generalize across platforms, so it works for robots that...
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Welcome Back: New Technology, Horizon Explorations, Human Lens | Turn the Lens Ep43
Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick
Welcome back. The world has changed quite a bit since we launched Turn the Lens. And in 2025, my new episode frequency was not as high as I'd like. For a bunch of reasons, some in my control and some not, I haven't been as consistent as I want to be. And I know consistency matters. I appreciate it in the creators I follow, it matters to me, and it matters to you, our community. My commitment for 2026: More. More frequent, more consistent, more solo segments, same interesting guests and topics. More Turn the Lens. Part of that means new tools. Not only desktop tools like Claude and...
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Andra Keay: Robo-Pragmatist, Humanoids, Technological Shifts, Laws | Turn the Lens Ep42
Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick
Andra Keay, Managing Director of Silicon Valley Robotics, has been at the forefront of robotics research, commercialization, and policy for decades. A self-described “techno-pragmatist,” Andra has her pulse on the robotics industry, in the San Francisco Bay Area and around the world. Importantly, she is conscious and intentional to try and get ahead of the big issues we face down the road with the societal shifts coming as millions of robots, humanoid and other form factors, populate more of our world and interactions. Andra is pro RoboTopia, and against an AI apocalypse. And...
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Salvatore (Sal) Mercogliano: What's Going on With Shipping, YouTube Show Review | Turn the Lens Ep41
Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick
Salvatore (Sal) Mercogliano (Sal), has a Ph.D. in Military and Naval History from the University of Alabama. He served in the Merchant Marine, has been an Adjunct Professor of History/Engineering at the US Merchant Marine Academy for over 17 years, and Chairs the Department of History, Criminal Justice, and Political Science for Campbell University for over 14 years. So when something happens with ships, shipping, the US Navy or other major maritime news around the world, I go to Sal to find out what’s really going on. Welcome to the first in a series of YouTube Show reviews that I hope can...
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Project 2025: Briefing doc, FAQ, Study guide, Podcast | Turn the Lens Ep40
Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick
Trump 2.0 starts tomorrow. 2025 started 19 days ago. Remember Project 2025? Might be a good time to study up on the subject, at least the basics. Not ready to read the full 920 pages? Google NotebookLM can help. I encourage you to upload the PDF yourself, and start asking questions. Sharing mine to help get you started. This is the Podcast Google NotbookLM created from the source material. Project 2025: Briefing doc, FAQ, Study guide, Podcast | Turn the Lens podcast with Jeff Frick Try it yourself - Transcript and Show Notes -
info_outlineRay Kurzweil recently released his new book, *The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI*, a follow-up to his 2006 blockbuster, *The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology*. I had the chance to see him speak at our local bookstore as part of the launch event.
A central theme of Ray’s talks is the exponential growth of computing power—how we’re constantly achieving more computations per second at a constant cost. While exponential curves are easy to discuss and graph, understanding these transformations on a visceral level is challenging. How can we fully grasp the scale of change that exponential growth reflects?
This episode tackles that question, showing the exponential advances in computing power at a fraction of the cost, using examples and everyday objects that everyone can relate to, regardless of technical background.
We’ve all heard that the smartphones in our pockets are far more powerful than the supercomputers of the past. But what does that really mean? How can we quantify, visualize, and bring this leap in technology to life in terms that feel real and relatable? We delve into comparisons—RAM, storage, and power usage—to illustrate the mind-blowing scale of progress and explore what these advances mean for the future of computing.
More importantly, we examine the impact of this rapid growth as we move forward along an ever-steepening exponential curve. Join me as I use everyday items to help us better grasp this extraordinary rate of change, connect with our technological past, and imagine the future as exponential progress continues to shape our lives in profound ways.
Exponential Curves: Supercomputer to Smartphone to Singularity | Turn the Lens podcast with Jeff Frick
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meqrxgy435g&list=PLZURvMqWbYjk4hbmcR46tNDdXQlrVZgEn