"You will be able to program a robot to follow a track on the ground and manipulate a hand. You can also write little programs that will give the robots goals"
About this Quote
There is a quietly radical promise tucked inside Budge's plainspoken forecast: the real leap in robotics isn’t the hardware trick of following a line on the floor or gripping an object, it’s the shift from obedience to intention. “Follow a track” and “manipulate a hand” are the comforting, demo-friendly primitives - the kinds of capabilities investors and managers can picture without having to learn new language. Then Budge pivots to “goals,” a word that smuggles in an entire worldview: robots as agents, not tools; software as the place where value concentrates; management logic translated into code.
As a businessman, Budge isn’t marveling at machines so much as outlining a product trajectory. Tracks and hands are features you can sell. Goals are the platform. Once you can specify outcomes instead of step-by-step instructions, you move from labor replacement to process ownership: the robot stops being a single-purpose device and becomes a system that can be re-tasked, optimized, audited. That’s the subtext - scalability, repeatability, control.
The phrasing also betrays an era’s optimism about legibility: the assumption that “goals” can be written cleanly, like a memo, and the robot will simply pursue them. It anticipates today’s tensions, where goal-setting turns into edge cases, unintended behavior, and questions of responsibility. Budge’s line reads like an early mission statement for automation culture: don’t just mechanize motion; mechanize decision-making, and the business model follows.
As a businessman, Budge isn’t marveling at machines so much as outlining a product trajectory. Tracks and hands are features you can sell. Goals are the platform. Once you can specify outcomes instead of step-by-step instructions, you move from labor replacement to process ownership: the robot stops being a single-purpose device and becomes a system that can be re-tasked, optimized, audited. That’s the subtext - scalability, repeatability, control.
The phrasing also betrays an era’s optimism about legibility: the assumption that “goals” can be written cleanly, like a memo, and the robot will simply pursue them. It anticipates today’s tensions, where goal-setting turns into edge cases, unintended behavior, and questions of responsibility. Budge’s line reads like an early mission statement for automation culture: don’t just mechanize motion; mechanize decision-making, and the business model follows.
Quote Details
| Topic | Coding & Programming |
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