This week on press here. Good morning everyone. Im scott mcgrew. You are a long time viewer of this program. You know, we are fans of the artist agnieszka pilat, the polish born american artist uses robots to create her works for years, boston dynamics spot was her go to partner. These days, shes learning to interact with the more humanoid digit from agility robotics. So we thought we would check back in with her and see how she was progressing. And thats good. Good morning. So you taught a robot dog new tricks. Hows it going with the humanoid . Hi, scott. Great to be back. Well, humanize much different. Actually. Spot ui is so easy to operate with humanoids. Like with humans, it takes more understanding of technology. So its a bit more challenging for me as an artist who is not really a technologist. How does that work . I mean, are you is it mimicking you . Are you doing hard coding in it . How do you teach a robot to make a painting . This is great. So this is actually a kind of a watershed moment. So two years ago everything would have to be programed, meaning i was actually using whats called snap, which is a software thats for nonprogrammers. And think about it like you look at it, you have a digital twin and you kind of animate it, in the metaverse, and then you hope the same thing you will see the robot executes. And ive made mistakes and weve had problems when the robot would pour red paint all over itself, which was very stressful. But its been a big moment right now because, because of progression of ai, robotics finally are merging. So right now, theres many ways to interact it in including actually language. So they start understanding language and they transfer to lms and they, they, will imitate your wishes or trying to do what you told them to do. Now is it is the robot generative . Is it painting the painting it wants or is it painting the painting it was programed to paint. I, i think of myself as a helicopter parent, so i think so. I dont let them do whatever they want to do. I think its still kindergarten or the nursery. So everything my robots paint is still, delegated to them by me. It would be easy to do generative art, but it just i think its too early now. Im. Im guessing a humanoid, robot is easier to work with than a than a than a dog robot. As far as painting and other human tasks go, well, yes and no. So again, theres such a moment in technology. Everything is changing so fast. But i think about this, for example, when it comes to stability, a quadruped robot is very stable. So even if i make a mistake and tell it to turn very violently, it will still do it for digit, which is a tall robot. Its about five nine, so its like a tall person. Its pretty heavy, 140 pounds. So if the robot falls, its much more bigger consequences. So i would say its harder to work with them than with the quadrupeds. Now, the quadrupeds, the dogs, the spots, you had a project in which you had them paint for four straight months, right . Yes. We had i automated myself out of being an artist and transferred the brush to them. Yes National Gallery of victoria, we just closed the show. We had a Million People pass through the exhibition and see the robots autonomously for months. Painting . Yes. So i one of the reasons i ask is, what is it . Anthropomorph is the word, right is we attribute, you know, human or in this case, dog characters onto a robot. It seems like almost mean to make for a couple of little dogs, you know, paint for four months. But of course, our robots, theyre machines. But you do it too, because you gave the names. Where . Whats the balance between these are machines . And also im sort of projecting my own beliefs on on top of them. Well, this is very interesting because im going to of course, they are just machines and its new technology. But historically, you know, as humanity, we, we had we were very certain about many things also treating other species. Probably not the best way. So i dont know, maybe, you know, maybe historically, people will look back 500 years from now and they will think it was very cruel to keep these these, you know, these robots, without any ability to leave for four months. I dont know, do you do you see that people have a different, reaction to a humanoid robot over a dog shaped robot, yes, definitely. I think with. I mean, they both people are confused by both. I think my First Encounter with a bipedal from my experience, was actually atlas at boston dynamics. Digit came later, and it was really a spiritual experience because it got up without me expecting it. And it really felt like it has had its own, agency. And now i want to point out also one more thing. So from my experience at agility robotics, especially jonathan hurst, who is the cto, he prefers the term bipedal to humanoid, which goes to your point. So, you know, its not a human, its not trying to mimic to be human. Its built like a human because we want it to operate in environments. The world was built for humans, so we built robots that look like humans, but its more because thats what necessary for them to do the tasks we used to do. Well, i think that leads me to my last question is, now that youve had some time with a bipedal robot, you what . What can you imagine it doing . Is it going to be able to . I mean, maybe not this version, but its going to fit into society and do the things we need it to do to take care of an old person. For instance, in a home that kind of thing, this is this this sounds possible to you . Yes. Well, this i think that the Main Business model and it makes sense is to replace this repetitive, boring tasks. And we see this. So, of course, digit is being tested pilot at amazon. We know other companies, agility robotics. Its this agility excuse me. Then we have apollo adaptronic mercedes is doing a, a test run with them. So its a lot of jobs that when automation came in 1920s with ford factories that was happening with robotics right now, its cool stuff. And i and i so enjoy watching those robots paint. Well, and jessica pilot, thank you so much for joining us. And press here. Well be back. Looking for fitness that fits your budget . Join Planet Fitness now through may 10th. Save 5 a month when you join for 1 down and just 10 a month. Cancel any time. Thats a savings of 60 per year. Get Big Fitness Energy without the big investment. Never intimidating. Always free Fitness Training equipment for every workout. Dont miss out. Join the judgment free zone today and get energized for 1 down 10 a month. Cancel anytime. Deal ends friday, may 10th. There you go again. Looking so handsome. Oh, you have your way. The car accident burger wins. Im not sure i can afford a lawyer. Burke wins. What if the Insurance Company offers this . But my medical bills are. This burg wins. I need somebody to deal with the Insurance Company. Burg wins. Im william burg. When the Insurance Company tries to pay you less, we fight to win you more. And with our no fee guarantee, if you dont win, you pay nothing. My wife and i called my cousin called. My mom called. All right, im ready to call. Are you . Call one 800 400. Burg. Welcome back. Press here. I am sure you are aware by now that california requires fast food restaurants, or at least most fast food restaurants in the state, to provide a 20 an hour wage. Its an unusual law. It applies to just one industry. And if youve heard the objections from that industry, its that its too much. Itll drive up prices and it will force stores to close. But kareem nasser says higher wages can be helpful to the industry. Hes acquired more than 100 fast food restaurants popeyes, burger king, dennys and wendys, among them kareem. Right off the top, i do want to point out you are definitely an expert in fast food. You do not currently have any stores in california, is that correct . I do not okay. Very good. So before we talk about the benefits of higher wages, do you agree with the idea that there should be a different wage for each industry, or at least for fast food . It strikes me as unusual. I dont agree with it. I think its a little awkward and, drives away, costs up in the industry that shouldnt be up on the fast food industry. So now as we talk about, the fast food industry, i should point out our minimum wage in general, for that matter, oftentimes when we talk about minimum wage on television, what we dont point out is a lot of people dont make minimum wage. They make a lot more than that. So the walmarts of this world and whatnot, at least in california, have been paying more than minimum wage. And i would imagine thats true of some restaurants as well. Correct . Thats absolutely correct. What are you paying only minimum wage in your restaurants or do you pay more . We pay a little more to stay competitive and get the great people that we want in the restaurant. So you pay a little more, you get the best. Best, the best team members you can hire. I read a cal study now before the, you know, the 20 an hour, california law. But that higher wages discourage turnover and turnover is one of the big costs for business, i would imagine thats true for you. Can you expand on that . Absolutely. Its true, you know, the turnover is the biggest part of controlling the minimum wage increase. So keeping your team for multiple years versus 4 or 5 weeks is a big game changer for you. It actually drives the cost down. A minimum wage helps you recoup some of those costs. Youve got, what, more than 100 restaurants, i would imagine youve got a new employee at least every week. If not more. Every day, every day, every day. Yeah every day. That person is a huge cost. And of course, its a slowdown as well. That person is not going to know the grill or the cash, the cash station. Absolutely and it costs, you know, upwards of 60 hours to train someone one position. So its critical that you keep those people for a long period of time. And that scheduling im guessing, is also a big one, because you dont want to have too many people making in california 20 an hour, you know, over scheduling in the wrong place. Talk to me about how you schedule people. Exactly. We cross train our people, so we have multiple people that can do multiple positions. So we put our aces in their places. So we put the best people on our lines, the best people on the cashier, and we teach everybody to cross, cross train so they can go into a different position and help. And that actually brings our cost down to having less people in the restaurant. And then you have to be more careful about who you hire, right . I mean, if youre paying 20 an hour, then you dont want the slackers absolutely very picky on who you hire. You do multiple interviews. So apparently we do two interviews before we hire someone. Its with the assistant manager and then the store manager actually does the final interview before we hire anybody in the restaurant. We do. We do reference calls, things of that nature. Why do we not know as just regular folks who come in to a quick serve restaurant, as you call them, as fast food as we call them, what do we not know about the industry that that you think we should the amount of training that goes into it, the amount of training that goes into training someone to actually make the, you know, make the product on the line or on the girls, it takes a long period of time to get someone proficient in not doing a great job, you know, following browns standards and giving the great product to every guest. What, what other things are you doing to save money in the system . Well, let me ask you this. Have you raised prices recently . And a reminder to a viewer whos just joining us, you dont have locations in california, but you do in places that are dealing with inflation, correct . Weve taken pricing over the years, very cautious taking nowadays, given the fact that our prices are already kind of high and we take price pricing to a high point. Customers dont come in as often. They actually go to a different concept, different restaurants. So they take whats a fast casual restaurant because our prices sometimes compete with them. Yeah, thats interesting that the quick, the, the fast food and a place like chilis have almost the same prices on a hamburger. Exactly. And thats the big concern. Im not taking pricing. So its a great, great fact to just make sure you train your people, keep them happy and dont have that turnover actually brings the cost down. You kind of recoup some of those minimum wage increase by not churning, you know, 150 of your crew a year. Anything else youre doing to keep costs down . Just, we monitor food costs, you know, we monitor food costs, labor. We schedule properly. You know, we dont over schedule. We dont under schedule, but also we keep our employees happy, make sure they schedule the shifts they want to work so they dont call in and theyre able to come to work every day. Theyre scheduled to work, and theyre happier that way. When they get the days off, they want and they can take care of their families, you know, on their days off. We respect their time off. We respect their days off. Do they request i think that goes a long way for our for our team members. Bottom line is, happy. Well paid employees keep costs lower. Correct. If you take care of them properly. Absolutely. All right, well, let me ask you. Ask you one last question. Its kind of a silly one. I mentioned off the top. You own, popeyes, burger king, dennys and wendys. Which one do you like best . Which one do you spend . Find yourself going to lunch at most, popeyes. I like popeyes. I love the cajun spices. I love the food over there. You love that chicken at popeyes . I do, i do. Thats what i appreciate you joining us this morning, kareem. Thanks ever so much. Kareem is the, chief executive officer at qsr, which owns more than 100 fast food restaurants. Thanks for being with us. 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For me, this is what i was put in this world to do to give back to the people that at one point paved the way for me to be here. In my pursuit to greatness, i discovered the secret dedication to my team and my relentless drive to win. When justice is your goal, choose the dedicated team of minorities to your faithful injury attorneys. For the last several minutes, weve seen these flares streaking all across the skies over jerusalem. And now, for the first time, were hearing the air raid sirens. Thats Nbcs Richard Engel in israel during the iranian strike of 13th april. Welcome back to press here. My next guest was in israel at the time. Hes often in israel. Miami based venture capitalist David Blumberg manages Blumberg Capital. Much of this latest fund is invested in israeli high tech. Hes an early investor in israels most successful company, checkpoint software, as well as American Company company nutanix. David, good morning. You met with entrepreneurs. You said it was your 70th tour or visit to israel. You met with entrepreneurs and leaders and military during your most recent visit. Can you give me an idea of just sort of the overall mood over there . Thank you very much. Its a pleasure to be with you. Yes, ive been to israel many times. Ive lost count. Its well over 70 visits. This was one of the most interesting, and i have to say, most inspiring. We went with our family for the first week and then i stayed for a week of business with the family. I wanted them to be able to bear witness to the atrocities that happened on october 7th, and then also to see the resilience of the people and to support the soldiers and so on. So we visited about a dozen frontline units, drone units, k9 units, paratroopers, commandos, hostage rescue teams, you name it. And we got a very up close and personal impression of the both the valiant efforts and courageousness of their citizen army. Remember, its a citizens army. Its not like ours. Volunteer. Its everyone is drafted there and there are people from all walks of life and all religions, which is very interesting. There are muslim soldiers, there are christian soldiers, there are jewish soldiers. Of course, it is resilient. It, on the battle front, they are innovating as we speak, trying to avoid harming civilians and trying to yet defeat the terrorist enemy of hamas and iran. Now, on the business side, just give a moment. The, Business Community continues to work, to invest and to do their very best to be good suppliers to their customers abroad, we continue to invest. And so, again, its this combination of resilience and determination, i think, that characterized the most, of this visit. David, you mentioned going to the front lines. Thats not a normal, tour of israel, i mean, its is it just youve got serious pole that you are visiting frontline units on your trip to israel. Yes, yeah. They in israel, the word for it is protection, which it means you get sort of special access, wed also donated our son had a bar mitzvah, and instead of just having a big party, we thought, lets do it for something more serious. So we gave money and raised money for a counterterrorist Organization Called yamam, which is like our navy seals, but their specialty is antiterrorism and theyre theyre in need of equipment. And they were in need of training and support and the widows who of the Fallen Soldiers need now, support for them and their, their kids. So it was a mission of solidarity. And we saw how hard they train, how seriously they take their jobs. And again, the life saving they work that they do to rescue hostages. So we were right on the gaza border. We were in fatigues and in humvees, driving right along the fence, we could see into gaza. We saw we heard artillery shots, back and forth between, you know, them shooting and us shooting back. And, our kids were very impressed with the with the seriousness of this effort. And we wanted to show them that life is not all Silicon Valley in miami. Right . Easy living. There are places where its very tough to sustain liberty, and democracy on both sides. Yeah i lets talking about business, i think there are some people dont realize that that israel really is a high tech hub, particularly a Cyber Security hub. I was talking with Shlomo Kramer the other day. Somebody called him the godfather of cybersecurity in israel. And he said part of the reason going back to the army was that so many Cybersecurity Company employees are coming out of 8200 unit, 8200 of the idf, this is their Cyber Intelligence division, it is a hotbed of Cyber Defense and cybersecurity in israel. Yes israel leads the world per capita in investment in the cybersecurity industry. The cyber world is connecting with what we call the internet of things. So its when it networks and computers now connect with physical machines, for example, youd familiar in a hospital, but the cat scanners and the blood pumps and so on. All of that is connected through the internet and through wifi. So all these signals can be, blocked, or they can be. And so the protection goes between it and now iot. So those are all new areas for investment. And there are areas of concern for National Health organizations, military and just general public to be aware, david, youre heavily invested in in israeli companies, because you know, the landscape, not because necessarily theyre israeli per se. You told you told a financial reporter, quote, too many jewish investors come to israel, leave their heart or their head rather at passport control, and leave with their hearts. I do the exact opposite. I leave my heart at passport control and i follow my head. In other words, youre making the investments because theyre good investments. Youre saying yes, and thats really the only way to be a serious long term investor. One can be lucky by leading with an intuition or an emotion, but really logically, you have to work with facts. You have to work with Competitive Analysis that has to be global. So Blumberg Capital is situated such that we have offices in san francisco, new york, miami and tel aviv. We invest in north america, israel and europe principally. And what we find is were able to compare a startup that might start in israel with one that might start in the us or europe, and then pick the best one to invest in. We dont have to invest in israel or europe or the us. We can choose for the best interests of our Investor Base to try and find the winning technology. And then finally, i realized that neither you nor i are going to have an outcome on the influence on this war. But or the peace. Lets hope theres peace. Do you feel optimistic . I do, i listen to a very interesting podcast just this morning, in time for this by victor davis hanson, whos at the hoover institution. Hes a friend of mine from fresno where i grew up. And he said something very interesting. Remember, i slept through the attack from iran on saturday night. Why did i sleep through it . Well, there were no sirens in tel aviv. The sirens were in jerusalem, which is to the east, and they were in jordan, and they were in iraq, which is further to the east. So iran launched those things. They had to come toward the west, and they went through several other countries and there were airplanes to intercept them. And the iron dome and a number of technologies that were deployed by the us by germany, germany, excuse me, the us, uk, france, israel, jordan, saudi arabia and the uae all helped in this. And maybe there were others. So it was a combined allied effort. So that was a first. Never in history have so many cruise missiles and so on been launched at the same time. And the allies did a brilliant job of knocking them all almost all down. So iran was defeated in that technological salvo. Also, israel did a response where they hit very sophisticated, very important. Defense establishment, anti radar stations at a at a base in iran that protects their nuclear, areas. And so israel was able to pinpoint and get through their defenses, which are russian. So israel won this war with the allies. And i think its a very strong sign militarily to be optimistic. Then im going to give one more example, and thats intel invested a few months ago or announced an investment of 25 billion in a new fab plant in israel, and israel. And intel is no, you know, weak sister. It is a very strong, determined, tough company that does things for business reasons. They dont invest with their heart, they invest with their brain. And their brain told them that they can have a fab that needs to run 24 7, 365, even in a place like israel. So i am optimistic. I think very smart people are making these decisions to continue to invest, and i think israel is proving it is resilient and has the stuff of the 21st century for the i future that were all building. David blumberg, i appreciate your time and your insight this morning. David blumberg is the head of Blumberg Capital, and thank you for being with us this morning. And press here. Well be back in just a minute. Moving the bay area forward. Thats why we investigate. Its about helping people. Se trata de ayudar a la gente. Digging deeper to expose the truth. Its about challenging power, making sure your voice is heard and finding solutions. Because progress means a Better Future for everyone. Nbc bay areas investigator unit. Moving the bay area forward. Weeknight at six and 11 and on all our digital platforms. Hi, this is daniel john baez. Bay area houses. Got a home thats eating up your time and cash. Thinking about moving all your renters stuff to manage. Inherited a home and not sure what to do with it. John buys bay area houses. Offers the fastest way to sell your home as is, with no fees, no commissions and no hassle. Just call us today for a free cash offer at 510707 6000. Thats 510707 6000. John buys a houses. Sell your house the easy way. I was on the freeway and my car just hit me out of nowhere. And i just didnt know what to do. My back was hurting, my neck was hurting. So i just googled. I got an accident. What should i do . One of the first names that popped up was Jakobi Meyers. When i appreciate the most with Jakobi Meyers that they were always there for me. They genuinely cared of how i was feeling, how i was doing my process. I have four daughters. I need to make sure that i have somebody, you know, on my side. Because of the settlement, i was able to spend more time with my family. Get healthy. Hiring Jakobi Meyers was the best choice that i made. Jacoby and meyers for the justice you deserve. Welcome back. In a previous segment i had mentioned i had done an interview with Shlomo Kramer. He is one of the founders of checkpoint software, one of israels largest tech companies. You can find that as a podcast on sand hill road. Heres a clip. Did you know that you are the godfather of israeli cybersecurity . I heard this term being used before, but i think there are many godfathers to this success. Ive done well, you know, and i lived an interesting life. So, thats a benefit. Our podcast, sand hill road, available anywhere you find podcasts. Thats our show for this week. My thanks to my guests, and thank you for making us a part of your sunday morning. 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