What do Google's Android, Meta's Llama and the Tingong robot have in common?
Open source. The move to open Tingong could reshape robotics, just as Android changed mobile tech.
But is this genius?
Or risky business? And does birth order determine how successful, creative or rebellious you'll be?
First born advantage, or middle child syndrome, what is the truth?
Coming to you live from Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm He Yang. For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yuxin in the studio.
First on today's show.
With China's electric humanoid robot Tian Gong going open source, a new chapter begins in robotics.
This move that marries what we've seen in AI with models such as Meta's Llama and Google's Gemma, but contrasts this with OpenAI's chat GPT and Google's Gemini, which keeps its full capacities behind closed doors.
In the world of operating systems, Apple's iOS is famously locked down, while Android thrives on its open source foundation.
What drives these different strategies and how do they shape industries and user experiences?
Well, let's sort of fast forward to today.
Tell us about how Tian Gong, the robot stole the show.
So we can see that this story was all over the internet, both domestic and global media outlets were reporting this.
The developer China's Embodied Artificial Intelligence Robotics Innovation Center launched this open source initiative for Tian Gong, which is the world's first full -size, purely electric humanoid robot.
And this Tian Gong boasts an average speed of 10 km per hour and can reach a top speed of 12 km per hour, setting a benchmark in its class.
It is capable of navigating various turns with ease, including many scenes like slopes, stairs, grass, gravel and sand.
Yeah, pretty talented robot actually.
Did you see the news as well?
This robot was in because it was running a half marathon here in Beijing.
Not fully, which is what I thought when I saw the headline in the story.
It did the final 100 meters.
OK. Otherwise it's going to be a huge battery on it.
Yeah, exactly right.
It was funny. The picture from the Global Times had the finish line and it had Tian Gong going across the finish line looking very comfortable.
And next to Tian Gong was a human man who had just run a half marathon looking like he was about to breathe his final breaths.
But anyway, you know, a little promotion there.
There were also four legged robots serving as official paces at the Hangzhou Marathon and they were setting the pace for the other runners.
So we're seeing robots taking place in marathons these days.
But back to Tian Gong, 163 cm, so about 5 '3", 43 kg, so around 94 pounds.
Yeah, full sized. The size of an average sized human adult, I would say.
Yeah, and just looking at the photos, yeah, it's great promotion for any type of robot, I suppose, in that setting.
But also there's a slightly queasy, creepy feel, you know, if you're someone who's a little suspicious about how all this high tech is going to lead us, that kind of thing.
And today we're talking about this concept of open source.
And what does it mean in the context of tech and maybe even beyond?
Yeah, I think the key point is about open.
The term open source refers to something, you know, people can modify and share because its design is publicly accessible.
And also this is also the reason why the project or the initiative at Tian Gong is open source because, you know, it aims to propel humanoid robotics forward by making crucial technologies widely accessible.
And this term, open source, originated in the context of software development to designate a specific approach to creating computer programs.
So most likely, when like coders or they're doing these codes and they're making the set of this codes open and publicly released and people can use this and maybe do edits on these.
Yeah, open source software is software that anyone can inspect or modify or enhance the way that they want.
The source code is the part of the software that most computer users don't even ever see.
It's the code that computer programmers can manipulate to change how a piece of software like a program or an app, how it works.
Programmers they have access to the source code.
If they have access to that, then they can improve on that program, they can add features that they want, they can fix parts that don't always work correctly.
Basically they can manipulate the source code to how it works best for them.
All right. Well, much of the digital world relies on open source software in which the underlying code is published to the internet and made free for developers to tinker with and build upon as they see fit.
Mozilla's Firefox browser, the publishing platform WordPress and the operating system Linux are just three examples along with many other lesser known programs that essentially keep the internet running.
Right before the show, we kind of had a group chat about what is a good analogy to make open source more accessible for everyone listening to this show who might have zero knowledge about tech.
Sure. Do you want to go first or do you want me to?
Give it a stab. All right.
I think you can go first.
My analogy, we'll see if this makes sense.
I have two analogies.
One I call the chicken breast analogy.
All right. Sorry. So a farmer, now remember the analogy is to open source tech.
So a farmer feeds a chicken, raises a chicken, puts a lot of work into the chicken to finally get the chicken breast.
Now the chicken breast goes to the Mart.
Now the Mart, anybody can go to the Mart to buy that chicken breast, anybody at all.
They take that chicken breast home.
And if we think about the chicken breast as a blank canvas, then they can make any dish that they want to.
They can add spices or sauces.
They can add different vegetables to make their own chicken dish.
And every restaurant that you go to will have a different chicken dish.
Now imagine that the tech, the open source tech is the chicken breast and the app developers are the chefs.
So the chefs, the app developers, go buy that chicken breast or go get it for free, the open source tech, and then they can make their own dishes.
They can make their own apps.
I'm sorry, but that's like the most Western example I can ever think of because Chinese people, we prefer wings over breasts of the chicken, but that's okay.
Fair enough. That's okay.
That's a really, I think it's a telling example and it explains it really well.
Do you want to have a go?
Of course. So let's make a Chinese cook example then if we're talking about chefs.
For example, there are so many ways to cook noodles.
And then let's see, I think in my understanding, the open source means a chef developed his own way of making a bowl of noodles.
And then he's publishing this recipe of this noodle and people think it is very delicious.
And then that's why he's publishing this recipe.
And then the world knows the recipe, but maybe different regions, people have different tastes or different favor of noodles or the way that they eat noodles.
So they modify the way that they maybe boil the noodle or just put toppings on the noodles.
And then people have different types of noodles, but they're making noodles based on this recipe.
Yeah, exactly. So that is how I understand people develop an app or product and making it open source and people can use it for their own product.
Okay. In that sense then, is open source pretty much synonymous to free of charge?
Not necessarily. Open source software programmers, they can charge money for the software that they create or to which they contribute.
But in some cases, because open source licenses might require them to release their source code when they sell software to others, some don't want to do that.
So they find that charging users money for software services and support rather than for the software itself is a better way for them to make money.
So it's a big misconception and there's a lot of stories, a lot of articles written about this on the internet.
It's a big misconception that open source means free, but it doesn't necessarily mean that.
Yeah, I used to have this kind of misconception actually.
The first or one of the first examples that I get to know about open source is AOSP, the Android open source project.
It's basically the system.
You can use this AOSP to modify and put different themes on your own Android version, but it is still based on Android, the operating system.
So the noodles, the noodles.
And that is completely free and you can download a package on the internet.
So I was thinking, wow, this is probably just a, you know, good will that these developers are doing.
They're developing something good and published it on the internet and people can use it for free.
But actually, if we imagine that a lot of operating systems are based on Unix or Linux and these, if everything is free and all of these companies can develop their own operating system based on these and these are all free and how can this company survive?
So what I saw is that a lot of these companies, they are of course publishing open source products and then they can charge for maintenance for their products.
Yeah, they're called maintainers.
I think like troubleshooting, fixing bugs within it and things like that.
Yes. And, okay, it's good to get that out of the way.
And what are some of the prominent discussions surrounding open source?
Well, we've talked about the latest, which is, you know, in robotics, Tengon is a really good example.
But what about in other areas?
Other areas where people are having discussions about it?
Well, first of all, I think we need to understand that not all tech is open source, right?
Companies have a choice whether to release it as open source or not.
Closed source software would be the opposite.
Open source often free, but not always, as we just discussed.
The closed source tech is what they call proprietary software.
And the source code of those programs can be inspected or altered by its owners, but not by anyone.
Microsoft, for example, Adobe, for example, Apple, for example, that's proprietary software, meaning it belongs to the company, meaning that's not open source.
We can't go and know what their source code is.
Otherwise, they probably wouldn't do very well internationally if everybody had access.
So going open source or not going open source, that's that's an issue that pops up sometimes.
Yeah. And all of these tech companies, as you said, Microsoft, Adobe and Apple, they are developing more functions that letting users customize their own products.
But it's not open source because you're still just changing a little bit of options that these companies are offering you.
So I think that is the biggest difference that when we're seeing it is open source, a closed source.
And just like chat GPT, it is an closed source.
It is open source. No, it's not.
It's one of the prominent examples of a closed sourced A .I.
model, if I may jump in.
And it was really, I suppose, a big irony here is that open A .I., which is the company that owns chat GPT, actually has the word open in the company name when you're doing is exactly the opposite.
And yeah, closed A .I.
Pretty much doesn't have the same ring to it.
Yeah. But it's really interesting that, you know, this has been a big debate within Silicon Valley and among policymakers over in the U .S., whether companies should make artificial intelligence open source and chat GPT being, you know, firmly in the camp of we're closing everything off to everybody.
Plus, Google's Gemini is also closed source, but Google, which is a fascinating company, that it's got this other part of its A .I.
system called Gemma, which is open sourced and also what made news earlier this year is Meta made its LAMA A .I.
model open source. And a lot of people were rejoicing because it means a lot for those who work in the downstream of this A .I.
ecosystem, meaning that there are plenty of small companies which don't have the money to come up with their own A .I., large language models, LLM systems, and they can just rely on this free A .I.
system to build their own businesses.
And that's just a yeah, that kind of echoes back to, you know, sort of the original philosophies of being open and getting everybody on board and exchange ideas, sort of that idealistic philosophy of at the inception of the Internet.
So, guys, what do you think about, you know, all these different areas, all these different, you know, in A .I., in, you guys mentioned Linux and Android and Apple, you know, in the smartphone models as such, you know, of this open source concept in play?
Well, if we talk about Android, for example, Android is open in a variety of ways.
For one thing, the Android operating system is based on code from the Android open source project.
They call that AOSP.
And it's open source so that people can take that source code and then they can create custom operating systems from it.
Like you said, Amazon's FireOS, that's used on the Kindle Fire and the FireFoam.
That's also based on this open source Android code.
If we don't have, if we don't have open source tech available to other companies, then think about how slow, number one, how slow the development would be.
And number two, if certain developments would be possible or not, think if every company had to create their own Android operating system or iOS, then not every company would be able to do that.
Yes, app developers would be stuck moving nowhere.
They need a base to work off of.
If you open up your phone and you look at the various applications on your phone, well, you can thank open source for that because those app developers are able to use that technology.
And that's the biggest benefit for us.
The Internet itself, as far as I understand, was built with the idea of open source in mind.
So therefore, when we open our phone and we go on to websites and we do everything that we open our phones for, use applications, then we can thank open source for that.
Yeah. And also based on these things at least we can see a lot of these technologies, they are good enough.
And if we can develop based on these things, maybe we can develop even more and more modified products that we can see.
For example, a lot of these TV smart TVs, they are actually running Android system, but they don't look like a phone, right?
They have their own themes on TV sets.
So that is how open source is working, because in the core set, it is still an Android, but it is modified by the developers.
But what we can see is that it is not like, OK, these developers are just all doing the good things.
It is actually there are some strategic things or plans I could see, you know, open source plan for companies.
And the example of Android is also one of them, by open sourcing and leveraging viral distribution.
Actually, back then, iOS and Windows 1 were dominating the market.
And how can Android quickly expand?
That is their strategy, I think they are making this Android open source and then all of the developers or all around the world can develop based on this.
And it is how it expands.
They can develop on it and they can train on it as well.
Right. Because when something is open sourced, that means it's publicly accessible.
So students can easily study it so that they can learn how to make better software.
So, yes, we can experience the benefits through app developers.
But also there is a large number of people who are studying the source code and thinking, OK, what can we learn from this and how can we improve on this so that five years later, 10 years later, the tech is even more advanced.
And that sort of rings true and also echoes, you know, the what we alluded at, which is, you know, the original idealistic philosophy of the Internet.
And, well, speaking of Android, yes, there's that whole wide world of it.
And if you look at internationally, Android phones are more popular than Apple.
But the other side of the camp could have this prominent example or representative of Apple, which is also a company that's done superbly well when it comes to, you know, keeping a closed system of their smartphones, as well as the whole sort of Apple universe in that sense.
And open source offers wide reaching benefits such as collaboration and innovation.
But for creators who invest heavily in R &D research and development, how do the well and also for other entities involved, how do the pros and cons balance out in your opinion?
Well, pro some of the pros, it promotes secondary development, right?
So if other companies have access to the platform, to the base, to the noodles, if you will, or to the chicken breast, then like we talked about extensively here, they have the opportunity to build on that.
And going back to the beginning of our story, talking about the world's first fully electric robot, humanoid robot, that that robot is the noodles, right?
That robot is the chicken breast.
The base is there. And now other companies will have access to that.
You know, we're using terms like source code and things like that, all these confusing terms.
But basically just think of it as a blank canvas.
Think of this robot as a blank canvas.
Now all these other tech companies have their opportunities to build upon that canvas, to paint the way that they want to.
They're all collaborating together.
And that's part of the beautiful idea of open source.
And one of the biggest pros is a community of people all working towards the same goal.
This company here in China said, here's our robot.
Here's what we've come up with.
Here you go, world.
Now, how can you improve on this?
And actually, I think this is a situation that is more reflecting a company's perspective.
But there are different situations in the open source world, because most likely the developers or the coders, they will put their codes or their products onto some platforms, for example, GitHub.
They they put their codes on that and people can actually see their codes.
And in this way, it is actually a way of improving their code quality because people can see it and maybe suggest improvements.
And also, this is also a way of showcasing your code and building a kind of personal brand when maybe some tech companies see saw your codes on the platforms.
And and then in this way, from the perspective of big companies, you know, they are also building up, I think, a good image of, OK, I am making my product open.
Yep. And it is encouraging and inviting people to help us.
And we can do this together.
Yep. And that's one of the big benefits of why companies open source.
They get a lot of attention for for this.
And another big advantage, sorry, just one last one, is that when all of these companies are working together on the open source tag, then it helps to build a unified platform.
Maybe the platform isn't perfect in the beginning, but when everyone around the world is working on the same thing, then they can build that unified platform.
Then they can take it to the next level, be unified there, and then just go until it's perfect.
And also on top of that uniform platform, actually, this could encourage a whole community to sort of scrutinize and have a look at what's going right and wrong.
And if there's a security vulnerability, the global developer community is there to spot it.
And speaking of the possible economic strategies behind the mindset of going open source for these mega companies, one example could be, let's say, Meta, when it planned to spend, well, when you wonder why it planned to spend tons of money, I'm talking tens of billions of dollars developing its own
A .I., but only to give it away for nothing.
Well, the strategy behind it could be called commoditizing the compliment.
Let's say you are a hot dog producer.
Hot dog buns are completely free as you've made it so everybody can get their hands onto the dog buns.
But then they'll need to buy your hot dogs.
In this case, Meta's free hot dog buns could be its open source A .I.
And when it may be too early in A .I.'s development for Mark Zuckerberg to know exactly what his money making hot dog would be, those future hot dogs could be data sets.
Meta will sell you to train it or Meta hardware that its A .I.
runs on. And it's so interesting to talk about open source that you could say that maybe the other side of the coin is IP law, intellectual property law, which protects the creators.
So it's really a delicate balance in this world of tech.
