From sprinting on a track to executing a backflip, grooving to tunes, or engaging in kickboxing, an increasing number of videos showcase humanoid robots performing ever more remarkable feats.
TL;DR
- Impressive humanoid robot videos often mask the difficulty of simple tasks and uncontrolled environments.
- Current robots excel in predictable settings but struggle with real-world interaction and continuous correction.
- Future robots will learn from experience, enabling greater adaptability for complex household and factory tasks.
- Widespread automation offers societal benefits like enhanced safety and addressing labor shortages, but requires careful distribution of advantages.
At Tuesday's Coins2Day Brainstorm AI conference, presenters cautioned against being overly impressed by impressive displays. While a robot executing a backflip, a feat challenging for humans, appears remarkable, many current automatons still falter when asked to complete straightforward actions like ascending stairs or holding a drink.
“What looks hard is easy, but what looks easy is really hard,” Stephanie Zhan, a partner at Sequoia Capital, explained, paraphrasing an observation from computer scientist Hans Moravec. In the late Eighties, Moravec and other computer scientists noted that it was easier for computers to perform well on tests of intelligence, yet failed at tasks that even young children could do.
Deepak Pathak, the chief executive of Skild AI, a company specializing in robotics, stated that machines, including computers, excel at performing intricate operations within predictable settings. Pathak then presented a clip featuring a Skild robot moving along a pavement, remarking that “apart from the ground, the robot is not interacting with anything.”
Yet for tasks like picking up a bottle or walking up stairs, a person is using vision to “continuously correct” what he or she is doing, Pathak explains. “That interaction is the root reason for human general intelligence, which you don’t appreciate because almost every human has it.”
Zhan explained that viral videos of humanoid robots don’t show how the product was trained, nor whether it can operate in an uncontrolled environment. “The challenge for you as a consumer of all these videos is to really discern what’s real and what’s not,” she said.
The next step for robots
Nevertheless, the two presenters expressed hope that progress in broad intelligence will shortly result in robots that are more sophisticated and adaptable.
“Robots used to be driven more by human intelligence. Somebody super smart would look at [a task], and…pre-program the robot mathematically to do it,” Pathak said.
But now, the robotics field is shifting from “programming something to learning from experience,” he explained. This allows for new robots that handle more complex tasks in more uncontrolled environments, and which can easily be adapted for other tasks without the cost of reprogramming and retooling them.
Today’s robotics firms are “still constrained by having robots that are only built for specific things,” Zhan argued. A robotics platform with more general intelligence can open up “possibilities that are otherwise not possible for us to achieve,” including tasks that are currently dangerous for human workers.
Consumers could benefit too. “You see all these household robots, but they’re only capable of doing one thing,” Zhan said. “But if we succeed at building general intelligent robots, you will finally have consumer robots that can tackle the whole host of household tasks that you now have.” A similar point was made earlier at Brainstorm AI by Qualcomm CEO Rene Haas, who said that the general adaptability of humanoid robots will make them much better suited for factory jobs than the robotics arms used today.
A surge in robotics brings societal consequences, displacing employment that currently requires human involvement. Nevertheless, Pathak expressed optimism regarding the societal advantages of widespread automation. One such advantage is enhanced safety, as machines can undertake tasks that pose risks or long-term health concerns for people. An additional benefit involves addressing the significant deficit in workers for manual labor and production roles. (This scarcity has hindered American attempts to bring back a substantial portion of its sophisticated manufacturing from Asian markets.)
Pathak also foresaw a time when machines would relieve people of mundane daily tasks, though he acknowledged that communities must determine how to distribute the benefits derived from automation. “There lies a scenario, a good scenario, where everybody is doing things that they like,” Pathak stated. “Work is more optional, and they are doing things that they enjoy.”
