- Applied Intuition hosted a Physical AI day highlighting its ambitions and challenges. - Marc Andreessen said that the "practical reality of existing in the world" is a challenge for AI. - Applied Intuition is making a lofty pitch to automate mining and logistics. A Bay Area startup company wants AI to leave the chat and run the physical world. Applied Intuition, a Silicon Valley software company that develops autonomous systems, hosted Physical AI Day last week to demonstrate the potential of automating mines, farms, and trucks. Unlike an AI agent that lives entirely online, Applied Intuition is adding its software to existing machinery that has to navigate the real world. The challenge? The machines need to operate in environments with high levels of uncertainty, such as hundreds of miles of freeway, a growing field or crops, or an underground mining site. Marc Andreessen, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and an early backer of Applied Intuition, spoke at Physical AI Day and talked about both the potential and pitfalls of the technology as companies try to bring bits to atoms. In conversation with CEO Qasar Younis and CTO Peter Ludwig, Andreessen said the AI revolution comes in two waves: "the virtual wave and the physical wave." "The virtual wave is much easier to explain — you only need the keyboard," Andreessen said. "But the world is built for physical experience for people. How do you build a humanoid to fit into that environment?" Andreessen said he once bought his child a robot dog made by a Chinese company, only to realize that it weighed 150 pounds, needed to be held up by a rack when idle, and was simply not safe for children should it fall over. "The practical reality of existing in the world is a completely different thing,"