It’s much easier to fund a promise than a real business

Om Malik’s interview with Rodney Brooks.

Om: It’s much easier to fund the promise than a real business, because real businesses have limitations on how fast they can grow. Whereas if you don’t know, you can live (and fund) the dream. There’s nothing wrong with living the dream—that’s how you get to fund crazy things in this industry. But people doing more rational things do pay the price.

You’ve been in robotics for a long time. There are misconceptions about robots and robotics. The biggest fallacy is that we think of them in human form. Ten years later, that idea of a humanoid has become so pervasive. We don’t think about things that do robotic tasks, like ad systems that serve ads constantly—they are also robots.

Rodney: The robots—they’re not embodied. I always say about a physical robot, the physical appearance makes a promise about what it can do. The Roomba was this little disc on the floor. It didn’t promise much—you saw it and thought, that’s not going to clean the windows. But you can imagine it cleaning the floor. But the human form sort of promises it can do anything a human can. And that’s why it’s so attractive to people—it’s selling a promise that is amazing.

Om’s statement highlights the current state of AI. Everybody is funding the dream.

Rodney’s statement highlights the business idea which actually needs funding but isn’t getting one.