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Sergey Levine

Sergey Levine

@sergey-levine · 24 positions · On ppll ↗

Professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, and a co-founder of the robotic foundation model company Physical Intelligence.

Sergey Levine did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

4 of Sergey Levine's claims fit 3 mental models. Most often: Feedback loops, Emergence, Thought experiments.

Models we see in what they say

Our reading: their claim applies the idea without naming it. The claim is theirs; filing it here is ours.

Feedback loops

Shorten the loop between doing and finding out; whatever a loop rewards is what you become.

Used by 62 others

Robots will learn from deployment more easily than chatbots do, because a physical mistake is obvious the moment it happens.

  1. Sergey Levine Professor of computer science at UC Berkeley Like if you answer a question, you just like answered it wrong. It's like well it's not like you can just like go back and like tweak a few things like the person you told the answer to might not even know that it's wrong. Whereas if you're like folding the t-shirt and you messed up a little bit like it's pretty obvious like you can reflect on that, figure out what happened and do it better next time. Fully autonomous robots are much closer than you think – Sergey Levineyoutube.com · 12 Sept 2025 · 0:07:45 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    Like if you answer a question, you just like answered it wrong. It's like well it's not like you can just like go back and like tweak a few things like the person you told the answer to might not even know that it's wrong. Whereas if you're like folding the t-shirt and you messed up a little bit like it's pretty obvious like you can reflect on that, figure out what happened and do it better next time.

    Watch from 0:07:45 plays here

    ↗Fully autonomous robots are much closer than you think – Sergey Levineyoutube.com

    12 Sept 2025 · video · 1h 28m · spoken · machine transcript

Manipulation will scale faster than driving because a robot can make a mistake, fix it and learn from it, and a car cannot.

  1. Sergey Levine Professor of computer science at UC Berkeley And when you make a mistake and correct it, well, first you you've achieved the task because you've corrected, but you've also gained knowledge that allows you to avoid that mistake in the future. With driving, because of the dynamics of how it's set up, it's very hard to make a mistake, correct it, and then learn from it because the mistakes themselves have significant ramifications. Fully autonomous robots are much closer than you think – Sergey Levineyoutube.com · 12 Sept 2025 · 0:20:17 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    And when you make a mistake and correct it, well, first you you've achieved the task because you've corrected, but you've also gained knowledge that allows you to avoid that mistake in the future. With driving, because of the dynamics of how it's set up, it's very hard to make a mistake, correct it, and then learn from it because the mistakes themselves have significant ramifications.

    Watch from 0:20:17 plays here

    ↗Fully autonomous robots are much closer than you think – Sergey Levineyoutube.com

    12 Sept 2025 · video · 1h 28m · spoken · machine transcript

Emergence

Whole systems do things none of their parts do, and nobody has to design that order for it to appear.

Used by 22 others

Emergent abilities come from generalisation turning compositional, not merely from a training set containing a lot of stuff.

  1. Sergey Levine Professor of computer science at UC Berkeley Yeah. So there's a subtlety here. Emerging capabilities don't just come from the fact that internet data has a lot of stuff in it. They also come from the fact that generalization once it reaches a certain level becomes compositional. Fully autonomous robots are much closer than you think – Sergey Levineyoutube.com · 12 Sept 2025 · 0:39:23 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    Yeah. So there's a subtlety here. Emerging capabilities don't just come from the fact that internet data has a lot of stuff in it. They also come from the fact that generalization once it reaches a certain level becomes compositional.

    Watch from 0:39:23 plays here

    ↗Fully autonomous robots are much closer than you think – Sergey Levineyoutube.com

    12 Sept 2025 · video · 1h 28m · spoken · machine transcript

Thought experiments

Test an idea in your head first, by imagining the case that would break it.

Used by 3 others

The goal was never good simulation; it was answering counterfactuals, and a value function does that job as well as a simulator does.

  1. Sergey Levine Professor of computer science at UC Berkeley It tells us that the key is not necessarily to do really good simulation. The key is to figure out how to answer counterfactuals. Fully autonomous robots are much closer than you think – Sergey Levineyoutube.com · 12 Sept 2025 · 1:09:16 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    It tells us that the key is not necessarily to do really good simulation. The key is to figure out how to answer counterfactuals.

    Watch from 1:09:16 plays here

    ↗Fully autonomous robots are much closer than you think – Sergey Levineyoutube.com

    12 Sept 2025 · video · 1h 28m · spoken · machine transcript