Robotussin’

“Until a few years ago, robotics seemed to be developing far more slowly than A.I. On YouTube, humanoid forms developed by Boston Dynamics, an industrial-robotics company, danced or leaped over obstacles, doing a sort of mechanical parkour. But these movements were scripted—the same robots couldn’t make you a cup of coffee. To fetch a coffee filter, a robot might need to navigate around a kitchen island, recognize a cupboard, and open the cupboard door without ripping it off its hinges. Simply peeling apart the sides of a coffee filter was long considered a feat of unfathomable difficulty. A hopelessness hung over the whole enterprise … [but today] roboticists increasingly believe that their field is approaching its ChatGPT moment.” What does that mean? Robots are starting to be able to use AI to teach themselves how to do things. This will make for some incredible advances that will probably escalate quickly from a robot bringing you breakfast in bed to an army of them ruling over you. In the meantime, from The New Yorker: A Revolution in How Robots Learn.

+ SF Standard: I got a massage from a robot, and I have thoughts.