Billy Riggs (00:41)
Welcome back everybody to Rewiring the American Edge. I'm Billy Riggs and this is my good friend, Vipul Vyas. And we are good and happy to be back here. And today we're talking about something that's both a bit urgent and uncomfortable. Vipul, what are we talking about?

Vipul Vyas (01:00)
robotics, AI combination.

Billy Riggs (01:02)
Yeah,

I think so. And how do we keep up? And particularly some of the stuff we've been seeing in the media about China's acceleration in this space and how does America keep up? What folks don't know is

And what Vipul and I've been talking about before we jumped on is that I've been traveling a little bit and we've been leaking out some videos that we pre-recorded while I've been on the road working on some projects in the EU. And we've been talking about some of the political fear and distrust and cultural experiences we had as kids. But during my travels, we've talking about

China moving full speed ahead with state support and massive industrial deployment of AI and robotics. We've seen a bunch of reporting on this. And I think both of us really concerned.

I'll leave that as a little intro and I kind of structured a couple things, but I just wanted to say, Vipul, do you want to add anything to start us off other than what I just said?

Vipul Vyas (02:02)
No, I think the only thing I would add is that people have been thinking about demographic shifts as having big implications in terms of the growth trajectory of nations. And that's still obviously quite relevant. But, I think some of that gets negated with robots and with AI. So you have both, intelligence and

physical capacity, the combination. And so I think it was going to be an interesting time. Now, I would argue that conceptually and sadly, this is not the first time that's happened. There have been many societies that have had the majority of their population being indentured servants. And so we've had these kinds of structural economies before with organic intelligence, if you will.

So it's maybe something to look back at to say, what are some interesting analogs or unfortunate analogs, maybe a better word.

Billy Riggs (03:01)
Yeah, that's a good historic anchor to put in the ground. And maybe that gives us an entree to break up our

dialogue today into three segments. So I'm going to start off with a little personal vignette and then we'll, think what we'll do is go to the three articles that we keyed on that you and I were batting back and forth over text,

while I was away working on some European Commission oriented projects that were related to automation and innovation. And one was from the Carnegie Endowment. One was from the Washington Post, and another was from the New York Times. We'll provide those to you in the notes. And then I think we'll close up on with another segment on,

Vipul Vyas (03:29)
Thank

Billy Riggs (03:40)
where's the US on this? And I think we can say that there's some fear and paralysis. And I think those are the three kind of structural, pieces I want to provide to our conversation today. So just to start off, you know, I think when you travel, when you go global, cause we are a global,

conversation and I say the American edge is not I keep on repeating this is a part of this this dialogue the American edge is not American. It has less to do with America than it has to do with everywhere else in the world it is not local it is glocal. It is global in nature. You know one one thing that struck me as I was coming home to the country I love; to the United States;

as I was going through Global Entry recently, (which you know, as we as we are aware, the global entry program is the program is supposed to speed up security and customs with technology, I scanned my face. Instead of scanning my passport, looked into the camera, which is supposed to bring up my identity on the computer and allow me not to have to answer questions. It's supposed to just

allow me to tell the security officer that I don't declare anything to customs; and not have to just kind of verify who I am with technology.) But, you know, I think what I've seen happen right after that, I was sent to the customs officer and what happened was it basically, I repeated the entire process that the machine had already done. Now,

I don't want to politicize this or anything else, but I would just say on the surface, we could just call this harmless. But what strikes me is it's "make work." It's a job created out of distrust of technology. Instead of embracing technology that's already doing the heavy lifting, it's already doing

the heavy lifting of a human and could enlighten us, we later on redundancy and double check it. And for me, I thought it was a good starting point for a recent experience and maybe a metaphor for where America is right now. We were building in distrust. We're building out science. And when you combine

political attacks on research, canceled grants, cultural fear on automation, you see a country that's hesitating while China is accelerating. And Vipul, maybe you could talk about as a part of segment two, how is China accelerating?

Vipul Vyas (06:21)
I think there's a few things going on. One is, and I haven't been to China in any recent timeframes, though I can't speak with great authority, I should say that upfront. But from just following things and at least following things here, I think there's a little bit more confidence right now in China. And that should never be underestimated.

which is great, like, you know, for the Chinese economy, have a lot of pro, there's challenges and there are problems and there's the whole life flat movement and a of youth unemployment, but there's a spirit of, you know, we can kind of work our way through this despite some of those issues. Whereas I think in the political process and climate here, there's a little bit of hopelessness that's set in.

And then that usually breeds a little bit of inertia.

lack of movement or lack of progress. But that being said, I don't want to sort caveat everything and give you a bunch of contradictions, we're getting some of our mojo back, if you will. You see the sort of emulation of the 9-9-6 culture, know, nine to nine, six days a week that was heralded in China and now you're here heard in San Francisco, 007, which is midnight to midnight, seven days a week, kind of some level of one-upmanship.

And the difference in terms of AI development, we obviously have access to some of most advanced hardware with Nvidia chips and whatnot. But one of the big differences is that we deploy capital, private capital, where we think there are reasonable bets or opportunities. Whereas I think in China, there's a little bit more state direction of let's just sort of peanut butter AI everywhere. So in the US, you have a lot of specialized

development around AI optimized for certain very specific problems that make sense to try to tackle. Because there's a return there, there's a significant issue that needs to be addressed. So you get capital deployed in ways that are focused. Whereas I think in China, you don't have the same mechanisms to determine where those bets should be placed.

and how much of a bet should be placed. so what you get instead is a sense that this is important and I'm going to just put a lot of chips down everywhere. And that's sort of what you know a little bit you would know more about this about the EV market. The Chinese knew they needed to do something and they made lots of subsidized bets. And now you have all this ground cover if you will that's

come up and now choking itself off. There's too much competition and too much capacity and whatnot. So what the Chinese Long Story Short are doing is actually implementing AI and everything and everywhere. So from the traffic cop AI robot to the hotel reservation or receptionist to drones that deliver your food, it's just ubiquitous. Yeah.

Billy Riggs (09:32)
Yeah. And I think that's, that's a good

point. It's that the Carnegie piece references 90 % of his economy is on track to integrate AI. And the question is whether or not that's sustainable. but, you know, I think the, the counterpoint is whether or not it is sustainable, it signals a total commitment to

Vipul Vyas (09:54)
They're all in.

They're all in.

Billy Riggs (09:55)
a

transition, right? Yes, they are all in. the but the other thing is that they're all in on robotics. And I think that's where, you know, I think if you combine robotics and AI, this is where it really could become a sustainable pathway to a different, a different position on what is work.

And that's where at the same time, we saw this Carnegie Endowment piece kind of came out. I sent you this piece from the New York Times that says that Chinese factories are now leading the world in robotics. And in some industries, up to 90 % of production lines are automated.

Vipul Vyas (10:43)
Yeah, it's dark factories.

Billy Riggs (10:45)
And

so you start thinking about that and are we even close to that? And, I think we have to really get serious about reshaping the norms for how we're thinking about, are we going to continue to think about these incremental strategic and investment uses? And maybe we should start really thinking about more

blanket oriented. And I think we've brought this up a couple of times in our, in our dialogues is that maybe we need a strategic government goal. Maybe we need, and we've said, is there a government, a strategic government US strategy or AI? Is there a, is there a US strategy for robotics? And I don't know the answer.

Vipul Vyas (11:32)
Well, you're seeing it a little bit now in terms of the current administration's made bets around Intel. And they've made a few other investments, basically investments, where they have a seat at the table. And they're using, obviously, the negotiation position of the tariffs to get

lower end ship manufacturing here, generally more manufacturing. I think one of the things that you said earlier in terms of, do we have the same kind of robotics and factory that type of presence? I think say no, mostly because we don't have many factories to begin with, comparatively speaking. So, you know, what the Chinese have done is said, look, we can have high, increasingly valuable, increasingly well compensated labor.

Billy Riggs (12:07)
Yeah. Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (12:18)
and still have relatively cheap manufacturing. That's sort of the thing they're doing that we're going to probably get a little bit flat-footed on because now you're able to bridge your labor cost advantage to your production cost advantage by virtue of these investments they made. It's pretty smart, right? And so how do you interject yourself in there? So...

Billy Riggs (12:40)
Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (12:46)
Basically, we a situation where the Chinese can produce very high quality goods, high end stuff, not, know, kind of what people's old perception of as inferior quality, cheap goods. They are the factory of the world and they can build the best stuff that's out there, it's possible. And they can do it cheaply and at scale. I mean, what we invent is often perfected and scaled in China. Like, you know, look at just the...

Billy Riggs (13:06)
Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (13:13)
Speaking of robots, let's talk about the most simple robot that many of us interact with or have interacted with if we're going to, and that's a Roomba. The Roomba was invented here decades ago. And now, if you look on Amazon or anyplace, it's mostly Chinese manufacturers that dominate the home robotic vacuum market. Roomba's kind left in the dust. In fact, I think Roomba's moved manufacturing over to China, and probably their stuff is built in the same factories.

Chinese manufacturers built their goods in and they're always a day late, a dollar short, it seems like in terms of features. Hopefully that's a temporary position. But yeah, I think this is something that we're falling behind on.

Billy Riggs (13:47)
Yeah.

Yeah,

But also Vipul, you sent me something really cool happening in LA and also in your work world because I don't think folks know that

that Vipul has a has background in LLMs, but also in speech recognition. And there's a lot of language recognition stuff happening in the city world. And our friend Matt Mahan

has launched an AI initiative to improve language access at city council meetings in San Jose. Huge opportunity there for access to government documents, government policy, government data and what's happening in civic meetings, et cetera.

very, very, very exciting application of AI. So I don't know if you want to add anything else about those, if you've been following any of that.

Vipul Vyas (14:45)
Yeah, I mean, outside the context of the University of San Francisco, I think that there's, Matt Mahan down in San Jose has noted that he is embracing AI just like, you know, we're seeing with some of the folks overseas and instead of looking at it from a distance and admiring it over there, he's essentially said, look, we need to embrace this stuff right now.

especially given the position geographically in people's minds that San Jose has, doesn't embrace AI, specifically for the purposes of inclusion and accessibility from a language and abilities perspective. So they're essentially using AI to real-time translate and caption all of their city business, their council meetings and whatnot. And so...

what that's enabled them to do, as he's remarked in a variety of public appearances and statements he's made, is that it's increased the city's engagement with its Hispanic population by 13%, which is notable. So the city is more relevant to more people and more accessible to more people. And this is where you're seeing that whole notion of abundance in AI, is AI is making a lot of things that used to be hard a lot easier.

Billy Riggs (16:02)
Yeah. Well, see, I'm going to, I'm going to role play here for a second, Vipul. I'm going to, I'm going to play a, different role. You know, what if I'm on the right. And I say that, you know, we are a country that is English speaking and we should not be doing that.

We should not be catering to this. This is not, this is not appropriate spent of taxpayer dollars. And what about this kind of mentality where the increase of multilingual access

just feeds the fear of people that are afraid of immigrants who will take jobs, people who are afraid of that people that look different from them are somehow more likely to commit crimes. All of that is irrational. It is not real.

But those are tropes that are put forward by some people in our country that are perpetuated and people make, some people make sophisticated.

debates about them and or rhetorical debates about them. And so how do you how do you when we have cultural distrust that runs so deep? How do you how do you counter that in our political environment where

fear and paralysis is so pervasive. I think my worry is that AI may be many times equated with job loss, for example, rather than productivity. And then so what happens when we end up with people that want to slow down this progress as opposed to people that want us to compete

on a global scale with our peers in China.

Vipul Vyas (17:43)
I think you said one of the key words was distrust. And I think anytime that you make institutions, organizations more accessible and understandable and relatable to people, the better off you are. think the US didn't really have an official language until March of this year, I believe. And that's because it, conceptually, think one of it is promote fluidity.

adaptability, non-entrenchment to anything specific that's historically rooted. The US was meant to be highly adaptable, whether that's with language or not. I that's more just the theoretical kind of thinking around why that was the case. But in general, think, regardless of the political debate around

some of these issues that you're alluding to, these cities are going to have to deal with people that live there. Whatever the political differences might be, there are constituents, are residents, there's just people who are there. And if you make it, you know, harder for them to

Billy Riggs (18:39)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Vipul Vyas (18:53)
know what's going on, I'm not sure that serves anyone. And so I think the other aspect of it is beyond that one dimension of the capability that you're opening up. It's really the notion of how can the city be more efficient and better at serving its constituents and stakeholders. And this is just the example of AI is addressing that pretty squarely. The city is just now.

Billy Riggs (18:57)
and

Vipul Vyas (19:23)
much more approachable and is better at its job in terms of servicing the people that it's responsible for, responsible to rather. And so what you want to see is where appropriate AI being adopted for the purposes of making it easier to interact with government and have government do the things that it's supposed to do. That's what comes up.

Billy Riggs (19:48)
Mm hmm.

Vipul Vyas (19:49)
Like it's just that simple. like, can this help government do its job better?

Billy Riggs (19:54)
Yeah, yeah. And I think this is also where the differences we have make us stronger and can help us compete more.

And there is another kind of heinous story there, China broken a lot of environmental rules. They have exploited people. They have broken labor standards. They have

ruined a lot of natural ecosystems and done things that we would never do here in the US. And if we applied the same story in the US we would hold ourselves to incredible environmental standards, labor standards automation would equal progress, competitiveness, it would equal national pride

and national togetherness. And I think that narrative really matters. And that story matters. But we we can't just sit on the sidelines.

Vipul Vyas (20:46)
We haven't kind of had our Sputnik moment really.

We literally have not had our Sputnik moment, and it's because we're distracted. Now I'd say that look in the fifties and sixties, were, that was not exactly a politically calm period, especially going in the sixties. There's a lot of social division.

Billy Riggs (20:49)
Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (21:05)
I mean, people remember. I wasn't there, but I've so I've heard. And so we still went to the moon. It was the most tumultuous decades in, in the recent history. And so it means it's possible even in the context of division. Now, I think, you know, lot of people try to emulate JFK and saying, we're going to do this. It's going to happen.

Billy Riggs (21:05)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (21:33)
But no one's kind of been believing him for a while, you know, so I'm not sure how you rally people Like he did at the time that's sort of what's needed

Billy Riggs (21:43)
Yeah. Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (21:45)
Sputnik was singular. was like, you know, this globe with these, you know, sticks or whatever, poles sticking out of the back of it. And it was, it was a thing. You could see it, visualize it, and you could look point out and go, we are behind. We, we could, we didn't do that. Whereas I think with the AI stuff, it's very diffused.

You can't point to a thing. It's just sort of like a gurgling like lava field and you don't, it's, it's, you can't go that is what we should be worried about. Probably deep sea was like the first moment where that was becoming more real with the little whale they've got there almost as a symbol, but someone needs to crystallize and catalyze something that's happening in China to say that.

is what we need to be worried about. And not that we have to worry about China, you know, menacing sense, it's more...

We can't, we have to have a lot more humility in understanding where we are relative to the rest of the world. And it's not just gaping lead and top of the heap, mountain top with everyone else, you know, at the very base. That's not what the situation is at all. And I think, you know, how do you demonstrate that to people? I don't know, because I think most people's impression of what some of the first tier Chinese cities are.

Billy Riggs (22:55)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (23:10)
is very different from what they really are, which is really advanced.

Billy Riggs (23:15)
Totally, and I think this is where,

we haven't had this moment and it's important that we acknowledge the industries where China is poised to overtake us. And I keep on saying in a number of my talks, and I think people know that a lot of my work is in this autonomous vehicle space. And like I am

very afraid, for example, in my own research that we are overestimating and being extremely overconfident of our American expertise in this space where we are excellent. have some of the best global companies in autonomous vehicle space. And I am extremely worried that we are going to get blindsided by Chinese technology because I believe there's likely better technology in China that we aren't even aware of. And it's because we don't have access to it.

And, from what I've seen from people who have been to China, because like Vipul, I have not had access. I have not been able to travel, but I have seen video. I have talked to people who have been there. I have a light awareness and I believe they may be ahead of us and.

particularly that is on the advanced AI combined with robotics. I think the risk there in my mind, Vipul is becomes strategic. And I want to bring this up because I actually think it's beyond. It's, beyond the topic we were talking about with regard to just AI and, and robotics.

It's about values because when you, when you lose the ability to frame the norms and the norms of work, China begins to establish what are the democratic values by which you work. And my fear is that we will then

succumb to non-democratic values around transparency, privacy, and equity related to AI.

I think there are, there are a lot of democratic values we may lose if we do not think about the strategic consequences of our actions if we do not claim leadership on this issue.

Vipul Vyas (25:26)
Yeah, you know, I think the one thing that is heartening is that people recognize the importance of this and there is at least some notion early as it may be of a national strategy and there's obviously an AI czar. So there's some efforts around that.

Billy Riggs (25:44)
So Vipul, where does this leave us? mean, if I were to go back to kind of get my time machine and go back to Global Entry, you know, I think we can, in my mind, can, you know, do we spend our time double checking the global entry machines?

Or do we build machines and trust them in the future? What's the vision for the US going forward? Do we build trust in our machines and our AI? What's up with the future of how we rewire robotics and AI? And what decisions do we have to make?

Vipul Vyas (26:22)
I think trust is earned is not conferred. And so I think we have to see things make sense and work. mean going back to the Roomba example, Roombas are great conceptually, but they never quite worked quite right. But you always wanted to give them a chance. And that eroded some trust in that brand. And that's why other people could sneak in that actually could live up to that brand promise. So my point was saying using the Roomba example was

get anything malicious. It just didn't do quite what it said it was going to do as well as we thought it or hoped it would. And so the same thing will happen, I think, with AIs. We're going to see it. you know, when you use chat GPT or something, you know, at some point it's going to do some hokey stuff. It's not going to give you the best answer, but it gives you something at least decent enough to start with. And you know, you can't trust certain things about it. And so you kind of have a feel for, I know what I

I know what it's good for, know it's not good for. And that's a function of lived experience. I think that's how this is gonna go. You gotta trust things based on what it ends up, how it self declares to you. Like, this thing's pretty reliable. Like, I don't really worry about my credit card working or not. That's technology. Just miraculously works. Wherever I go, I just tap my card, it works. It's never not worked.

rarely not worked. So you assume you kind of build a lot of confidence and trust in that system. I think the same thing is going to happen slowly, know, with autonomous vehicles, with drones, with all sorts of technology in our lives. It's like we're going to feel it, live it, see it, and then we're either going to start to believe in it or not.

Billy Riggs (28:05)
Lots we can talk about there. And I think the key word there is building trust. And I feel like I've been saying that a lot recently. There's another conversation we're going to have on that. And it's probably going to be our next conversation. But if you found this discussion useful, please share

in our ongoing conversation about automation innovation and global competitiveness. Thanks for listening. We really appreciate it.