Original subtitles

Hello and welcome to Global Eye from the BBC World Service.

In the next half hour, we'll bring you the best journalism

from our teams across the world.

I'm Joe Tidy, the BBC's cyber correspondent,

and this week we're in Silicon Valley, California -

the beating heart of the ongoing AI revolution.

This strip of land has shaped modern life,

from personal computers to social media,

and now it's at the forefront of the next tech wave.

There's a handful of companies here who are fighting

for supremacy in the race to build super-intelligent AI.

And the stakes?

Power, money, and maybe even the future of humanity.

Later in the programme, I'll be exploring one development that was,

until recently, a sci-fi dream - the birth of domestic helper robots.

And it's a few smaller start-ups sprinkled around

San Francisco that could soon be overtaking

the tech giants to make AI servants in your home a reality.

And in the wake of America's capture of the Venezuelan president,

why is Donald Trump so keen to control Venezuela's oil,

when America produces such huge quantities of oil itself?

We'll explore the global struggle

for the planet's precious mineral resources.

Artificial intelligence has been

an invisible part of all our lives for years -

everything from our social-media feeds

to our sat navs has used some form of AI

without us really knowing or caring.

But the rise of generative AI -

programmes that can create text or pictures or videos in an instant -

has showed us just how powerful and pervasive this technology is.

OpenAI caught the world - and the rest of the tech industry -

off guard when ChatGPT went viral in 2022.

The free website became the fastest growing consumer application

in history after being used by one million people in just five days.

Today, 800 million people use it weekly, according to the company.

Tech giants like Google and Microsoft are deep in the race, too.

And new entrants like Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI

are all fighting for a slice of the trillion-dollar dream

as innovative tools to improve productivity

and creativity are unveiled almost weekly.

But this isn't just a US story.

It's a race, too, with China's Silicon Valley

equivalent, Shenzhen.

That was evident last year, when Chinese AI app DeepSeek

topped the Apple download chart and rocked the markets,

as US firms realised they no longer had a monopoly on AI.

But the AI revolution is being viewed with alarm

by some environmentalists.

They fear it's driving up water consumption

that could lead to shortages -

although the exact extent of this is highly contested.

Critics also argue that the energy-hungry data centres

needed to power this tech revolution are setting back

the global drive to bring down carbon emissions.

Google and others have already admitted

that their own carbon-reduction targets are under strain.

But President Trump has shifted Washington's priorities

away from CO2 reduction, as the US doubles down

on trying to win the AI race.

And, as ever, what happens here has ripple effects around the world.

The darker side of AI has been on display in recent weeks,

as users of Elon Musk's AI assistant, Grok,

have repeatedly prompted its image-generation tool

to digitally undress women and even children

to make nearly nude images of them.

Elon Musk has warned that anyone using Grok

to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences

as if they uploaded it themselves.

Campaigners are urging governments across the world

to tighten regulation on deepfake images,

or at least enforce laws already passed, but untested.

The techno-utopian view is that it'll all be worth it.

Technologists promise us that the downsides of AI

will soon be overcome,

and eventually there will be an age of abundance.

Sam Altman of OpenAI and his rival, Elon Musk at Tesla,

they talk about a time when we won't even have to work,

and that inequality - all too visible here

on the streets of San Francisco - will be eradicated.

We think it can be a printing-press moment.

We are working to build tools that one day could help us

make new discoveries and address

some of humanity's biggest challenges,

like climate change and curing cancer.

There are other concerns, too.

Some of the brightest minds in AI are warning

that the birth of an intelligence greater than humanity's

might lead to the downfall of humanity.

The shock of ChatGPT led to a global drive around regulations

for AI safety. "Slow down and make sure that

"these models have humanity's best interests at heart" -

that was the cry. But no more.

Just as climate concerns have fallen off the priority list,

so, too, have discussions about AI safety,

as governments prioritise growth over caution.

And many experts also caution that a bubble could be building,

with investors down for big losses

if the economic promise of AI doesn't live up to expectations.

Whether we like it or not,

the race is on, and we're all along for the ride.

AI is changing how we live and work,

and the next frontier could be in our homes,

courtesy of domestic helper robots.

Interestingly, it's not big tech that's leading the charge here.

It's nimble start-ups dotted around San Francisco.

And, according to some of these companies,

it could be this year that we start to see these robots in homes.

Domestic helper bots are coming.

Billions is being poured into this new AI frontier.

A global gold rush under way.

Go make us a cup of coffee.

I'm on it.

But how close actually are we to the sci-fi dream of a robot butler?

Oh, holy...

Never seen this in my whole life.

Good accuracy.

Oh! I spoke too soon!

It's not just investor money at stake -

the tech will test safety and privacy

in our most intimate of settings - our homes.

And, as with so many tech races,

it seems like it's China versus the US,

and Silicon Valley is taking centre stage.

I've come to Palo Alto to meet the CEO of AI start-up Sunday.

Yes. Hi, Tony. How's it going? All right, thank you.

Tony Zhao began working on his home robot while at uni,

but dropped out to build Memo full-time.

While many domestic robots in development

are controlled by someone tele-operating them,

Sunday has trained its bot

to do many tasks completely on its own.

So can it see me around it? Does it...?

Yeah. Yeah? Can it...? Right now it doesn't react to you,

but it can perceive the world with all the cameras and other sensors.

Can you just go make us a cup of coffee?

It's after 2pm.

Would you like me to go ahead and make that cup of coffee for you?

JOE LAUGHS

Yes. Please go ahead. I'm on it. Making your coffee now.

So, Tony, can I just check with you - there's no-one

that we can't see doing this for the robot.

This is all autonomous.

Yes. It's one single neural network

controlling the whole body movements of the robot.

Wow.

It was all going smoothly,

then Tony paused the demo as he saw something was off.

Maybe we need to restart this. Restart this.

Um, can we stop? I think there's a...

Can you stop it? Uh...

Might need to do it again.

I saw there's some peeling off here.

Uh, sorry about that. OK. let's just try again.

OK. Maybe I'm overly cautious.

Oh!

Oh, holy...

I've never seen this in my whole life.

After a reset, Memo smoothly cleared away the table.

There's obviously work to be done to get it ready for homes,

but there's no doubt this is one of the most capable bots in the world.

How have you got the robot to be this advanced?

How have you done it?

So I think normally

the way we train AI is to tele-operate the robot

in people's homes, or in other places,

and gather the data and train the AI.

And what we're doing is different.

As in, we don't need robot data to train the robot,

and instead we build these gloves, and people just wear the gloves

in their homes and collect data for us.

And that gives us really diverse data

because we now see, like, more than 500 homes,

and also all the different ways they go about doing the task.

Sunday's army of robot teachers are all being paid to do repetitive,

everyday tasks - a reminder of the human drudgery

underpinning how these machines learn.

The staff allow cameras and sensors to record their every move at home,

but Sunday plans to start shipping Memos next year,

so if the bot needs to be remotely controlled,

it will raise privacy considerations for customers,

as well as questions about safety in a domestic setting.

Like, there will be kids running around,

kids will be climbing on the robot, right?

So we really want to make sure that we put safety

as the most fundamental consideration

when we design these robots. Yeah.

Some robotics companies are already out in the wild,

gathering training data in public.

Here it is.

Isaac's been trained by watching

hundreds of hours of laundry folding.

For the last couple of months, though,

it's been doing it on its own for real -

here, and in six other sites in San Francisco.

Deployment is the strategy.

Nothing counts if it's sequestered away in a lab.

We'll do a live demonstration. There we are. OK.

This is a lot slower than a human.

So some people might be watching this saying,

"Oh, that's not very impressive,"

but can you tell us why it is impressive?

This thing can run all day.

You often hear that robots are best suited to tasks

that are dull, dirty or dangerous.

We want to make clothing-folding optional for people.

When you first put this robot here,

how long did it take to do one T-shirt?

I think that we were looking at 2:00, 2:30.

So already - what, in how many months?

That's in a month and a half. In a month and a half? Yeah.

You've got down to 1:30. Just over 1:30.

Weave plan to start shipping this year.

They say it'll be able to tidy up and fold laundry,

but it's not clear how much of that will be autonomous.

Across town, at Physical Intelligence,

they're not interested in building robots themselves -

they're focused on creating the AI software that can be used

to make any robot capable of doing chores autonomously.

The rest of AI - like in ChatGPT, for example -

we're used to training these models on an internet of data.

But we don't have that web of data for robotics,

so we want to be able to actually kind of essentially

breathe intelligence into any sort of physical embodiment -

whether that's kind of a standard typical robot,

a humanoid robot, or even something

that looks closer to an appliance, for example.

Like all these companies, Chelsea and her team are developing

their AI software using reams of videos of humans doing chores.

Their approach is proving successful -

investors like AI giant OpenAI are on board.

Another tech giant, Tesla,

is deep in development of its own humanoid robot, Optimus -

but it's not yet clear what it can do.

And it's not just in the US where people are getting excited

about human-like robots.

Chinese company Unitree is already dominating the market

with its G1 robot - seen here in a demo

given to us by its UK seller, Scan.

This is happening right now - people are buying them,

people are coding on them, and people are learning.

It's entirely operated - it's not autonomous at all as of yet.

It's hard to get into China to film,

but the humanoid robot industry is so hot there

that the government recently warned

a bubble might be building, set to burst.

What's really interesting driving around and speaking to all these

robotics companies in Silicon Valley is there's a lot of confidence -

they think they are building the future,

and they're certain it's going to be, you know, a huge money-maker.

But there's also some nervousness, as well,

because there's lots of things that we wanted to film

and we wanted to show, but we can't.

They are scared because, of course, this is a race -

a race to bring to market a domestic robot.

A company that hopes to be the first is 1X.

The Norwegian-founded company moved here last year,

and millions of dollars are riding on its bot Neo becoming a hit.

Someone is operating Neo right now and watering all the plants.

I've just been told this is what they do all day.

So there are people in the office operating Neo

with a VR headset, carrying out tasks and testing all day long.

Good accuracy.

Oh! I spoke too soon!

JOE LAUGHS

So, interestingly, Neo is struggling with this particular handle,

but the team here change the handles all the time

because they're trying to train the robot different ways

to open different handles.

They had it there.

Founder Bernt Bornich is pushing hard to get Neo out to homes.

So what can Neo do right now for me in my home?

Does a pretty good job of, like, tidying.

So, like, resetting my living room and my house in general.

Uh... Wiping surfaces,

like cleaning the counter,

like these kind of things.

And that's all someone with a VR headset...

It's a mix. It's a mix. So in my home we have a lot of data,

so a lot of the stuff

in my home can get automated because we have data there.

Periodically, someone kind of steps in and helps

if the robot does not know exactly how to move on.

Early adopters will have to be comfortable, then,

waiving their privacy.

And, as with all these bots,

battery life is going to have to be improved,

as Neo can only work for about four hours at a time.

But Bernt promises that neo will be able

to carry out many tasks and charge itself autonomously

by the time they start shipping it.

Your first set of customers, then, they have to be quite wealthy,

and they have to be willing for Neo to make mistakes, essentially.

Well, I don't think they have to be quite wealthy.

I think... It's thousands of pounds, though, isn't it?

I don't know how much it is. Well, it depends on... £20,000?

Mm... Yeah. Like... Are most people have a car quite wealthy?

So you liken it to a car?

Yeah. I mean, it is a pretty affordable car.

It depends on your needs, right? A lot of our early customers

are people that actually will have a lot of value from this.

And for a very large subset of that, it will be way higher value

than having a second car.

Getting the right customers is more important in the beginning.

Distribution with the right customers,

so we can really use these amazing people

that are early adopters to help us make this work.

Outside of the tech bubble, some -

including the International Federation of Robotics -

think it could take 20 years before domestic bots

become truly useful and accepted.

But we have heard that before about other futuristic AI technologies.

So keep your seat belt fastened, please.

In some ways, brand-new revolutionary technology

does just sort of creep up on you.

If you think about driverless cars,

I've been talking about driverless cars in my reporting

for a decade at least.

But now they're here and they're just sort of normal.

In many cities across the US and in China,

driverless cars are an everyday sight.

AI robotics companies are convinced their tech will go the same way.

And not only will their devices be truly useful,

we'll all eventually want one in our homes.

Now to South America.

Donald Trump has said Venezuela will be "turning over"

up to 50 million barrels of oil to the US.

This comes after the military operation to remove

President Nicolas Maduro from power.

But why does America want more oil

when it's already the world's biggest producer?

Laura Garcia, from the BBC's global journalism team explains why.

The United States produces more oil

than any other country in the world,

and President Trump talks about it a lot.

Take the oil. Keep the oil.

Drill, baby, drill.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

But he doesn't just talk about America's oil.

We're going to have presence in Venezuela, as it pertains to oil.

So, why is he interested in more oil when the US has so much of its own?

To understand this, we need to take a deeper look at oil

and how it's shaped the US and the world.

Oil fuels our transport and powers our homes,

but it's also used to make plastic, asphalt and even some lip balms.

And to make all those different things

requires different types of oil.

Depending on its density, sulphur content,

and ability to flow,

oil is classed from light sweet crude on one end

to heavy sour on the other.

It's easier to refine light crude than heavy, which is thicker,

and once that's done, the light is mainly used

for products like gasoline and jet fuel,

while heavy oil can be used as fuel for ships,

material for roads and lip balm, among many other things.

That's generally reflected in the price.

Light sweet crude, the blue line on the chart,

is worth more than heavy - the red line -

and so it's more expensive to buy.

And this is key to understanding American oil.

In 2025, the US sold 13.4 million barrels a day,

but at the same time, it bought nearly two million barrels

each day from other countries.

So why not just keep those extra barrels it produces?

It all comes down to light versus heavy.

America's oil is 80% light,

but most US oil refineries, like these along the Gulf Coast,

were built to deal with heavy.

That's because most oil available to the US in the 20th century

was heavy sour crude oil imported from Latin America and Canada.

But in the early 2000s, there was a seismic shift

in US oil production.

Advances in technology meant light crude oil

trapped in shale rocks could now be extracted at scale.

This means there's a mismatch between most of the oil

America has and the type it can refine.

Once a refinery has been built,

it's very difficult to change it, and it requires millions

and millions of dollars' worth of investment.

It's not worth doing that because, as we saw on this graph,

America can sell its light crude for more and buy heavy for less.

It makes good economic sense.

So, let's look at the top ten countries

with the biggest oil reserves.

Many are known to extract heavy crude.

Three of them - Venezuela, Iran and Russia -

are currently under sanctions by the United States.

Despite this, small amounts of oil from Venezuela

have trickled into the US.

That's because, after Venezuela struck oil,

it was mostly American companies that helped set up the industry.

And that relationship continued for most of the 20th century,

extracting their heavy crude.

Unlike other Latin American countries,

Venezuela maintained this positive relationship with the United States,

even during the 1976 nationalisation of oil.

But the turning point was when socialist leader Hugo Chavez

came to power in 1999.

..embargo.

He asserted state control over the oil industry in particular.

He put tougher conditions on foreign oil companies,

and that's what the US government

and US oil companies didn't really like.

When Hugo Chavez died in 2013,

Nicolas Maduro became President and continued these policies.

In 2019, a World Bank tribunal ordered the Venezuelan government

to pay compensation to US oil companies.

But it wasn't paid.

And that's part of what US President Donald Trump

is referring to when he says that Venezuela

has stolen American oil.

They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there.

As you know, they threw our companies out,

and we want it back.

Venezuela denies these claims.

Things escalated between the two countries at the end of 2025,

when the US military seized oil tankers

and blockaded Venezuelan ports.

President Trump said this was to tackle narco terrorism.

EXPLOSION, SCREAMS

On January 3rd, American troops seized the leader of Venezuela,

Nicolas Maduro, and his wife.

They took them to the United States to face drug-related charges.

Here's some of what President Trump said following that intervention.

We'll have the greatest oil companies in the world going in,

invest billions and billions of dollars and take out money,

use that money in Venezuela.

And the biggest beneficiaries are going to be the people of Venezuela.

US and Western sanctions in Venezuela over the last decade

have made space for competitors to come in,

like Russia, Iran and particularly China.

China has been buying around 90% of Venezuela's oil

and is a key trading partner.

And it's this sort of influence that the Trump administration

wants to stop.

Well, we want safety there.

We want to be surrounded by countries

that aren't housing all of our enemies all over the world.

When it comes to Venezuela's oil,

things aren't going to change quickly.

Despite Venezuela having the biggest known reserves -

around 303 billion barrels -

it exports fewer than a million barrels a day.

That's because of sanctions and decades of underfunding

and mismanagement.

The infrastructure has to be, in some cases,

believe it or not, rebuilt from scratch.

Looking at a three to four year window

before any Venezuelan crude in meaningful volumes happens.

And while there's a push to use more renewable energy

in the face of growing climate change concerns,

oil still plays a crucial role in the global order.

Also this week on the World Service,

as protests have rapidly spread across Iran in recent days,

initially driven by public anger over the country's economy,

BBC Persian, in collaboration with BBC Verify,

have been monitoring videos posted online

to produce a dynamic map indicating where the protests have broken out.

The map clearly shows just how widespread

the challenge to the Iranian government has become.

You can read the full story on the BBC news website.

Now we're going to take you to Central America.

Since Donald Trump's return to the White House in January 2025,

the United States has taken a much stricter view on immigration,

with sweeping efforts to remove undocumented migrants

from the country. Yet despite the threat of deportation,

thousands from Central and Southern America

continue to head north in search of opportunity.

Among them are Guatemalans.

Nearly 10% of the country's population

has relocated to the US in recent decades,

and the remittances they send back home

have become a cornerstone of Guatemala's economy.

Atahualpa Amerise reports on how remittance homes

have become an economic lifeline and a cultural symbol.

Guatemala, a country made up of around 18 million,

is one of the poorest countries in Central America.

Inequality is extreme,

especially in rural and indigenous areas,

where poverty and unemployment and limited access

to public services remain widespread.

For decades, migration has been one of the main ways

Guatemalans have tried to escape that reality.

The main destination - the United States.

For families who stay behind,

migration has one central economic consequence -

remittances.

MUSIC PLAYS ON RADIO

Antonio is a master builder

and has just completed this mansion for his 22-year-old son,

who migrated to the US three years ago.

Globally, remittances are often discussed as financial flows.

In Guatemala, they are visible in everyday life

and in the built environment.

Money sent from migrants in the United States

has become a pillar of Guatemala's economy.

In many rural municipalities,

remittances exceed all other sources of income combined,

including state investment.

Jordi is a local architect

who specialises in American-style homes.

From his studio in the centre of San Martin Sacatepequez,

he designs houses commissioned by migrants

who want to help their families,

or dream of one day returning to live in Guatemala.

Maria's mother works in the United States

and moved there more than 12 years ago.

The money she sends to Guatemala every month

allowed her daughter to move from a small house

made of metal sheets to this three-storey mansion.

In recent years, remittances have also become

a form of insurance against deportation.

Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House,

US immigration policy has again tightened.

The administration has intensified enforcement

against undocumented migrants,

increasing workplace raids and deportations.

Most Guatemalans now living in the US

are believed to be undocumented.

Guatemala's remittance architecture is ultimately

a physical record of global inequality, migration and power,

built one house at a time.

Thanks for joining us here in California.

Next week, Global Eye will be reporting from Israel.

Goodbye.