Robots, AI, and other stuff
Nothing is ever as good as it first seems and nothing is ever as bad as it first seems. — A best memory paraphrase of advice given to me by Vice Admiral Joe Dyer, former chief test pilot of the US Navy and former Commander of NAVAIR. [You can follow me on social media: @rodneyabrooks.bsky.social … Continue reading Predictions Scorecard, 2026 January 01
rodneybrooks.com/a-prophetic-poem-about-artificial-intelligence-written-in-1961/
In early September a poem about AI started circulating on social media, with a publication date of 1961. At first it just seemed too cute to me and I thought it might be fake, or written by an LLM, passed off as written by a person back in 1961. But with a little bit of … Continue reading A Prophetic Poem about Artificial Intelligence Written in 1961
In this post I explain why today’s humanoid robots will not learn how to be dexterous despite the hundreds of millions, or perhaps many billions of dollars, being donated by VCs and major tech companies to pay for their training. At the end of the post, after I have completed my argument on this point, … Continue reading Why Today’s Humanoids Won’t Learn Dexterity
The term “Embodied AI” is having its moment in the sun right now. For me, that is what I have spent my career working on, and I have repeatedly published articles using the term “embodied intelligence”. I recently stumbled across a piece that I wrote in May 2011 intended for the proceedings of a conference … Continue reading Alan Turing on Embodied Intelligence
This time around I decided on a guest column. The guest is a 37 years ago younger me, and this post is one that I wrote for Manufacturing Engineering in March of 1988. It was for the last page of the trade magazine, in a regular feature titled “THE LAST WORD”. You can download a pdf of … Continue reading AI: great expectations
rodneybrooks.com/parallels-between-generative-ai-and-humanoid-robots/
Anyone who reads just about anything these days will know there are two big things in AI at the moment. They are Generative AI and Humanoid Robots. There is a lot of hype about these two new (to most people) versions of AI and robots, and it has shifted all the major tech companies to have … Continue reading Parallels between Generative AI and Humanoid Robots
Of course, I am filled with fear and anger at the political situation in the US, but we can’t forget about research and how it interplays with the innovation economy of the United States and other countries. The short answer is that it takes longer than anyone thinks to get to deployment, and so sustained … Continue reading Deployment at scale takes decades
rodneybrooks.com/five-new-technology-predictions-for-the-next-decade/
On March 26th I skeeted out five technology predictions, talking about developments over the next ten years through January 1st, 2036. I’ll incorporate these new predictions into my scorecard posts (every Jan 1st) and see how accurate they have been over that time period. Note that none of these predictions are saying what might happen … Continue reading Five new technology predictions for the next decade
[You can follow me on social media: @rodneyabrooks.bsky.social and see my publications etc., at https://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks] This is my seventh annual update on how my dated predictions from January 1st, 2018 concerning (1) self driving cars, (2) robotics, AI , and machine learning, and (3) human space travel, have held up. I promised then to review them … Continue reading Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01
This post is not about research or developing software for robots. Instead it is some tips on how to go about building robots for mass deployment and how to leverage those deployed robots for improving your product. The four tips are straightforward but I explain them more below. Use other people’s supply chain scale wherever … Continue reading Tips For Building and Deploying Robots