Pieter Abbeel — Robotics, Startups, and Robotics Startups

Pieter is the Chief Scientist and Co-founder at Covariant, where his team is building universal AI for robotic manipulation. Pieter also hosts The Robot Brains Podcast, in which he explores how far humanity has come in its mission to create conscious computers, mindful machines, and rational robots. Lukas and Pieter explore the state of affairs of robotics in 2021, the challenges of achieving consistency and reliability, and what it'll take to make robotics more ubiquitous. Pieter also shares some perspective on entrepreneurship, from how he knew it was time to commercialize Gradescope to what he looks for in co-founders to why he started Covariant. Show notes: http://wandb.me/gd-pieter-abbeel --- Connect with Pieter: 📍 Twitter: https://twitter.com/pabbeel 📍 Website: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pabbeel/ 📍 The Robot Brains Podcast: https://www.therobotbrains.ai/ --- Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:15 The challenges of robotics 8:10 Progress in robotics 13:34 Imitation learning and reinforcement learning 21:37 Simulated data, real data, and reliability 27:53 The increasing capabilities of robotics 36:23 Entrepreneurship and co-founding Gradescope 44:35 The story behind Covariant 47:50 Pieter's communication tips 52:13 What Pieter's currently excited about 55:08 Focusing on good UI and high reliability 57:01 Outro