Given the frequency with which their developers toss around the phrase “general purpose humanoids,” more attention ought to be paid to the first bit.
After decades of single purpose systems, the jump to more generalized systems will be a big one.
The use of generative AI in robotics has been a white-hot subject recently, as well.
One of the biggest challenges on the road to general purpose systems is training.
The proliferation of multi-purpose systems would take the industry a step closer to general purpose dream.
As I wrote recently, generative AI models are increasingly being brought to healthcare settings — in some cases prematurely, perhaps.
Hugging Face, the AI startup, proposes a solution in a newly released benchmark test called Open Medical-LLM.
Hugging Face is positioning the benchmark as a “robust assessment” of healthcare-bound generative AI models.
It’s telling that, of the 139 AI-related medical devices the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved to date, none use generative AI.
But Open Medical-LLM — and no other benchmark for that matter — is a substitute for carefully thought-out real-world testing.
Mentee Robotics hasn’t been in stealth, exactly.
The Israeli firm caught a small wave of press at the tail end of 2022, following Tesla’s initial humanoid robotics announcement.
Even so, the firm caught some headlines because its co-founder and chair, Amnon Shashua, founded Mobileye and the well-funded AI firm, AI21 Labs.
On Wednesday, however, the company offered up a glimpse of Menteebot, its own stab at the rapidly growing humanoid category.
In fact, this is one of those spots where the precise definition of what constitutes a humanoid system gets blurred.
The investor’s latest “Camp” incubator trained up and funded 9 AI agent startups they hope will take on today’s more tedious tasks.
The use cases for many of these companies sound promising, but AI tends to have trouble keeping its promises.
But are AI agents at that stage?
And it’s well within the capabilities of today’s AI agents, which would primarily be tasked with understanding natural language rather than forms.
A framework for web-based AI agents with a pay-as-you-go model so if your company’s experiment craters, you only owe a few bucks.
Los Angeles-based Gitai said Tuesday that its autonomous robotic arm has nailed a tech demonstration outside the International Space Station.
Autonomous robotic systems still have a ways to go before they render human labor obsolete, especially here on Earth; but in space, human labor is expensive (and dangerous), which provides an opening for a robotic alternative.
The 1.5-meter autonomous robotic arm, which the startup calls S2, launched to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 in January.
In the nearer term, the company is targeting on-orbit satellite servicing for spacecraft in low Earth orbit and geostationary orbit.
The arm’s technology readiness level (TLR), a standard used by NASA to chart the maturity of technology, is now at 7, the highest level, Gitai said.
That’s why software developer Adam Whitcroft built a dead simple to-do app called Twodos that doesn’t remind you of your pending tasks.
Whitcroft, who has worked at a16z-backed Rewind and Shopify, wanted to have a non-noisy app for his tasks.
You can add tasks, mark them as done using a swipe gesture, and check the archive to clear all tasks.
Last decade’s simple to-do hit Clear, launched a new version called Clear 2 last month.
Clear’s developer Phill Ryu said that the app still follows simple gestures for navigation and task management without overloading the app with features.
SambaNova, an AI chip startup that’s raised over $1.1 billion in VC money to date, is gunning for OpenAI — and rivals — with a new generative AI product geared toward enterprise customers.
SambaNova today announced Samba-1, an AI-powered system designed for tasks like text rewriting, coding, language translation and more.
The company’s calling the architecture a “composition of experts” — a jargony name for a bundle of generative open source AI models, 56 in total.
But is Samba-1 really superior to the many, many other AI systems for business tasks out there, least of which OpenAI’s models?
Rather, it’s a set-it-and-forget it package — a full-stack solution with everything included, including AI chips, to build AI applications.
Will AI automate human jobs, and — if so — which jobs and when?
“Like much of the recent research, we find significant potential for AI to automate tasks,” Thompson told TechCrunch in an email interview.
In conducting this study, the researchers surveyed workers to understand what an AI system would have to accomplish, task-wise, to fully replace their jobs.
maintaining an AI system) that didn’t exist before.
For AI researchers and developers, this work points to the importance of decreasing the costs of AI deployments and of increasing the scope of how they can be deployed.
Figure today announced a “commercial agreement” that will bring its first humanoid robot to a BMW manufacturing facility in South Carolina.
BMW has not disclosed how many Figure 01 models it will deploy initially.
Nor do we know precisely what jobs the robot will be tasked with when it starts work.
Adcock alludes to Figure 01 being tasked with an initial set of jobs that require high dexterity.
Figure 01 will very much be learning on the job, as well, refining its approach during real-world testing, much as we humans do.
“Verve is pioneering a new class of connected wearable technology for the industrial sector by integrating robotics into functional apparel,” Galiana said.
But Galiana perceived applications well beyond combat; Galiana launched Verve in 2020 to commercialize his and his team’s tech for industrial as well as retail and manufacturing settings.
Verve’s mission is to power the human workplace through people-centric robotics.”Verve’s powered exosuit is customizable to workers and tasks, intended to be worn like a regular backpack.
“The challenge [we face] is to convey that the goal is to create a safer and more efficient future for industrial workers,” Galiana said.
“As we heighten awareness regarding the advantages of soft exosuit, we anticipate a rapid transition towards a future where wearable robotic technology seamlessly merges with our everyday work attire.”Aspirational?
