The global economy is physical AI—digital AI is about building software and optimizing ads, but physical AI is where manufacturing, mining, logistics, and transportation live.
The speaker draws a sharp distinction between digital AI (software, ads, videos) and physical AI, arguing that the latter encompasses the core of the global economy. ✦ AI generated
Speaker 2 · a16z Podcast · 2026-07-21 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 5:10
If you split AI into digital AI and physical AI, right? Digital AI of course is building software and optimizing ads and creating videos, that sort of thing. Uh that's all interesting and good, but really where you talk about the global economy, that's physical AI.
verbatim transcript · starts at 5:10
5:10>> Yeah. I think if you split AI into digital AI and physical AI, right? Digital AI of course is building software and optimizing ads and creating videos, that sort of thing. Uh that's all interesting and good, but really where you talk about the global economy, that's physical AI. And then we're talking about manufacturing and uh and mining and logistics and transportation, all of these things that >> supply chains.
5:32>> Yeah. Supply chain. Exactly. Well, I mean, let's build on that though for a second, which is like so things that move today or you know, historically things that move are things that have human beings at the wheel or at the controls in some form, right? Um, and so and you know, airplanes have had to get designed around a human in the cockpit. Uh, boats have had to, you know, get
5:47designed around a human, you know, steering things. >> Um, like in a world where in a world of autonomy like do we already know what the things are that move or are we going to discover that there are a lot of new things that are going to get built uh when you don't need a human in the in the driver's seat? I think both. Uh be well the the
6:03the the thing that you have to remember is like you take like a a holage system that's on a in a in a port um like a catap kamasu the dirt mover uh in a mine those are made for 20 25 years. >> So the buyers of that of those products they're they might not have gotten their full cycle you know uh uh ROI on them. So they're not immediately going to buy
6:26something new no matter how much better it is. So one part of our strategy is you got to make those things intelligence because they're not going anywhere. The second is what you're talking about which is well that depends on a human in a cab. If you don't have a human in cab you can run the the machine can be smaller. It can be shaped in very different ways. You talk about mining
6:44underground, >> right? >> The constraint actually is the human because the human needs to breathe and it's very dangerous and so you can build a very very different machine. We're doing both of those things. And um and then the thing that we're not talking about is we're all talking about intelligence almost like within a system but the system level intelligence is where the unlock is and we're already
7:05doing work like that where you say hey let's take an entire port let's take an entire mind let's take an entire query and this heterogeneous mix of machines they're all can talk to each other and they can optimize and be efficient when one machine goes down or one machine has an issue the rest of the mind doesn't have to stop when it's human-driven. event we don't even know the machine's
- ·Digital AI: building software, optimizing ads, creating videos
- ·Physical AI: manufacturing, mining, logistics, transportation
- ·The global economy lives in physical AI, not digital AI
- ·Digital AI is "interesting and good" but narrow
- ·Physical AI covers the core of the global economy
- ·Speaker draws a sharp distinction between the two