Want to create a robot snowman?

Nvidia had it all at its GTC conference: trillion dollar sales projections, graphics technology can be yassify video gamesbig statements that Every company needs an OpenClaw strategyeven a robot version of the beloved snowman Olaf from Disney’s Frozen.

In the latest release TechCrunch’s Equity podcastTechCrunch’s Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I recap CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote and discuss what it means for Nvidia’s future. Yes, a large part of our discussion was on poor Olaf, who had to have his microphone turned off when he started rambling.

Even if the demo went flawlessly, Sean might still have some reservations, noting that these demos always focus on the “engineering challenges” rather than the “really messy gray areas” on the social side.

“But what happens when a kid kicks Olaf?” Sean asked. “And then every kid who sees Olaf being kicked or knocked over has ruined their entire trip to Disney, and that’s ruined the brand?”

Read a preview of our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Anthony: (CEO Jensen Huang) basically said that every company should now have an OpenClaw strategy. I think this is a very grand statement designed to attract attention; I think it’s also interesting for OpenClaw to come at such a transitional moment.

The founder went to OpenAI. So now this open source project can potentially grow and develop or falter beyond its creator. If companies like Nvidia invest heavily in it, then (it) will continue to grow. But a year later, it seemed like a visionary statement, or everyone was like, “Open what?” It will be interesting to see what he has to say.

Kirsten: In Nvidia’s case, it costs them nothing in the grand scheme of things to launch what they call NemoClaw, an open source project they co-founded with the creator of OpenClaw. But they have a lot to lose if they don’t do something. When Jensen said, “Every enterprise should have an OpenClaw strategy,” as I translated that message to me, “Nvidia should have a solution or strategy for enterprises, because if it’s successful, it’s one way or another for Nvidia to be part of numerous other companies.” So doing nothing is a bigger risk than doing something that goes nowhere.

Sean: The real question here is why we haven’t talked about something that is the end game for Nvidia and will make it the first $100 trillion company, which is Olaf the robot.

Anthony: How could I forget?

Kirsten: Anthony, just go to the end of the two and a half hours to watch it.

So out comes Olaf the robot, which is something Jensen loves to do. He loves having these demos and some go better than others. It’s also to showcase Nvidia technology in robotics, and I don’t know if Olaf actually talks in real time or if it’s programmed – it felt a bit programmed or if there are special keywords he uses.

But the great thing about it is that they had to cut his mic at the end because he just started rambling and talking to the crowd. Then he moved to his small passage and was slowly lowered. And you can see it in the video. He was still talking, but there was no microphone.

Sean: Now we just need to give this little robot a wheel base. I know perfect founder who can provide.

I mean, these demos are always stupid. I don’t want to get on my soapbox because I know we talked about this a bit earlier this week, but it was an impressive demo until it fell a little short.

It’s another good example of robotics (how to) have a really interesting engineering problem and a really interesting physics problem and a really interesting integration problem and all of that, but it was presented in partnership with Disney and was presented as the future of Disney parks and things like that: You’ll be able to walk around and take pictures of Olaf in Frozen and everything.

But those efforts never take into account—or certainly don’t take front and center in events like this—all the other things you have to consider when distributing this kind of material. There’s a really good YouTuber, Defunctland, who did this very good video on this – four hours, not too long – about the history of Disney trying to get these kinds of robots into their parks, these automatons.

The engineering challenges are really interesting and it’s fun to see the history, but it always comes back to the same question: Okay, but what happens when the kid kicks Olaf? And then every kid who saw Olaf get kicked or knocked over ruined their entire trip to Disney and that ruined the brand?

There’s a lot on the social side of it. It sounds silly, but it’s the same question we ask about humanoid robots. There’s a lot of hype about all these other things, and we don’t hear a lot of talk about the really messy gray areas on the social side of these things and also how they integrate into people’s lives. We only really hear about the engineering challenges – it’s still really impressive.

Kirsten: I have a counter point and then we should move on to the next (topic). This works because Olaf should have a human nanny at Disneyland, probably dressed as Elsa or something. You can imagine that what we are actually doing is creating jobs with this engineering experience.