September 28th, according to TechCrunch, well-known robot expert Rodney Brooks is investing billions of dollars in theHumanoid RobotStartupsofinvestHe warns that you are wasting your money。
Brooks was co-founder of iRobot and worked for decades at MIT. In particular, he was highly sceptical about the efforts of companies such as Tesla and Figure to train humans in their smart operational capabilities by showing them human mission videos. In a newly published article, he put it bluntly, an approach that is “purely delusional”。
What's the problem? The hand structure of humans is extremely complex, with about 17,000 specialized tactile sensors, and no robot currently has access to this level. Although machine learning has radically changed the field of voice recognition and image processing, these breakthroughs are based on data collection techniques accumulated over decades. "We have no such tradition in terms of tactile data." Brooks points out。
There are also security issues. Full-sized, walkable human robots require a sustained flow of energy to maintain balance. Once down, it's dangerous. From a physical point of view, a robot of twice the size of the current model will release eight times more destructive energy when it falls。
Brooks predictedFifteen years later, the "successful" human robot will actually be equipped with wheels, multiple robotic arms and specialized sensors, and will completely abandon the frameI don't know. At the same time, he was convinced that the huge amount of money currently invested was in essence simply financing expensive training experiments, which could never be extended to large-scale production。
This is not the first time that Brooks has given cold water to excessive expectations of radical entrepreneurs and zealous investors. Last year, he explored in depth why the actual ability to generate artificial intelligence (generative AI) fell far short of what was promised in the campaign and, in some cases, even increased the workload。
FOR EXAMPLE, THIS SUMMER, THE NOT-FOR-PROFIT AI RESEARCH INSTITUTE METR RECRUITED 16 HIGH-LEVEL DEVELOPERS FROM LARGE OPEN SOURCE LIBRARIES TO ASSESS THE IMPACT OF THE AI TOOL ON REAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES. THE RESEARCHERS HAVE ALLOWED THEM TO USE AND NOT USE THE AI TOOL TO PROCESS NEARLY 250 ACTUAL DEVELOPMENT TASKS AND TO RECORD THEIR SCREEN OPERATIONS THROUGHOUT THE PROCESS. THE RESULTS SHOW THAT WHEN THE DEVELOPER USES THE AI TOOL, THE TIME TO COMPLETE THE TASK IS EXTENDED BY 19%. AND WHAT'S MORE INTERESTING IS THAT THEY SUBJECTIVELY THINK THAT AI HAS MADE THEIR EFFICIENCY 201 TP3T MORE EFFICIENT。
For a long time, Brooks has also been opposed to the idea that artificial intelligence constitutes a “threat to the survival of humanity”, as many people, including Elon Musk, have expressed. As early as 2017, when Brooks was interviewed at MIT, the AI pattern was different from today, but in some respects it showed a similar trend。
At that time, Brooks indicated that he was beginning to notice that a growing number of companies were focusing on building specialized data sets for machine learning -- a trend that has been increasing ever since. At the same time, he stressed that, while large technology companies had seemingly insurmountable advantages in data control, that did not mean that they were bound to prevail in robotics. The reality, however, is that today's leading robotic companies still have difficulty getting rid of the powerful gravity of these technological giants。
By way of example, Apptronik, a human robot manufacturer, has raised nearly $450 million from investors, and Google is one of its supporters. At the end of last year, Apptronik also worked with the DeepMind robotics team under Google to “combin top artificial intelligence with forward hardware and intelligence”。
Another high-profile AI robotic company, Figure, dedicated to the development of human robots, received a partial investment in Microsoft and OpenAI's initial foundation fund. In February 2024, Figure announced working with OpenAI to integrate its own "Deep Understanding of Robotic Software and Hardware" with OpenAI research. However, almost a whole year later, in March this year, both sides declared their cooperation suspended. Figure states that its in-house self-developed end-to-end robotic AI system has achieved a “significant breakthrough” and will independently advance development in the future. Earlier this month, Figure announced the acquisition of more than $1 billion in committed capital in the latest round of financing, which valued companies at a staggering $39 billion (note: the current exchange rate is approximately RMB 278.41 billion)。