Sergey Levine [https://x.com/svlevine], one of the world’s top robotics researchers and co-founder of Physical Intelligence [https://www.physicalintelligence.company/], thinks we’re on the cusp of a “self-improvement flywheel” for general-purpose robots. His median estimate for when robots will be able to run households entirely autonomously? 2030. If Sergey’s right, the world 5 years from now will be an insanely different place than it is today. This conversation focuses on understanding how we get there: we dive into foundation models for robotics, and how we scale both the data and the hardware necessary to enable a full-blown robotics explosion. Watch on YouTube [https://youtu.be/48pxVdmkMIE]; listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fully-autonomous-robots-are-much-closer-than-you-think/id1516093381?i=1000726524050] or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/episode/1WpOKLN3vSvvWjrVDIJAyy?si=0925369fae944722]. Sponsors * Labelbox [https://labelbox.com/dwarkesh] provides high-quality robotics training data across a wide range of platforms and tasks. From simple object handling to complex workflows, Labelbox can get you the data you need to scale your robotics research. Learn more at labelbox.com/dwarkesh [https://labelbox.com/dwarkesh] * Hudson River Trading [https://hudson-trading.com/dwarkesh] uses cutting-edge ML and terabytes of historical market data to predict future prices. I got to try my hand at this fascinating prediction problem with help from one of HRT’s senior researchers. If you’re curious about how it all works, go to hudson-trading.com/dwarkesh [https://hudson-trading.com/dwarkesh] * Gemini 2.5 Flash Image [https://ai.studio/banana] (aka nano banana) isn’t just for generating fun images — it’s also a powerful tool for restoring old photos and digitizing documents. Test it yourself in the Gemini App or in Google’s AI Studio: ai.studio/banana [https://ai.studio/banana] To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise [http://dwarkesh.com/advertise]. Timestamps (00:00:00) – Timeline to widely deployed autonomous robots (00:17:25) – Why robotics will scale faster than self-driving cars (00:27:28) – How vision-language-action models work (00:45:37) – Changes needed for brainlike efficiency in robots (00:57:59) – Learning from simulation (01:09:18) – How much will robots speed up AI buildouts? (01:18:01) – If hardware’s the bottleneck, does China win by default? Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe [https://www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]