#331 Sergey Levine: The Robot Revolution Nobody Is Talking About

This episode is sponsored by Modulate. Most voice AI focuses on transcription. Velma takes it further by actually understanding conversations, analyzing tone, timing, stress, and intent using its Ensemble Listening Model architecture. Explore the live preview: What does it actually mean to build a foundation model for robots? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Sergey Levine, co-founder of Physical Intelligence and professor at UC Berkeley, to explore a fundamentally different approach to building robots, one inspired not by programming a single perfect machine, but by training AI on the broadest and most diverse data possible so robots can learn, adapt, and operate in the unpredictable real world. Sergey explains why the secret to general-purpose robots isn't perfecting one single machine, but training on massive, diverse data from all kinds of robots and even humans. The more variety the model sees, the better it gets. Just like ChatGPT learned from all the text on the internet, robotic foundation models learn from every robot that has ever moved, grabbed, or interacted with the real world. We also get into the big humanoid robot debate. Are they the future, or is it mostly hype? Sergey gives an honest and technical take on why the form factor conversation is changing now that foundation models exist, and why that actually opens the door for more creativity, not less. Finally, Sergey shares what he's most excited about next, building a true data flywheel where robots get smarter the more they are deployed, creating a continuous learning cycle that could change everything.

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#331 Sergey Levine: The Robot Revolution Nobody Is Talking About is an episode from Eye On A.I. by Craig S. Smith.

This episode is 58:48 long.

This episode was published on Apr 12, 2026.

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