Robots, AI, and other stuff
[You can follow me on social media: @rodneyabrooks.bsky.social] This is my sixth 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 at the start of the year every … Continue reading Predictions Scorecard, 2024 January 01
To finish up this brief series on the reality of autonomous, or self driving vehicles, in 2023 I want to outline my experiences taking almost 40 rides in San Francisco in Cruise vehicles. I have previously reported on my first three rides in Cruise vehicles back in May of 2022. In those three rides, as with … Continue reading Autonomous Vehicles 2023, Part III
rodneybrooks.com/three-things-that-llms-have-made-us-rethink/
There are three things that the existence of LLMs, such as ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT-4 make us have to rethink. At different times and amongst different communities they have all had lots of AI researchers talking about them, often with much passion. Here are three things to note: The Turing Test has evaporated. Searle’s Chinese Room … Continue reading Three Things That LLMs Have Made Us Rethink
I was going to write this post later this week filling in my promised experience from Thursday Oct 19th, 2023, experience of real fear that I might be involved in a really bad accident, while riding in a Cruise driverless taxi in San Francisco. The reason for rushing it out today is this story, today, that Cruise is no … Continue reading Autonomous Vehicles 2023, Part II
My Early Experience with Self Driving Cars Back in the summer of 1979 (forty four years ago) I was Hans Moravec’s gopher, at the Stanford AI Lab, helping test his self driving Cart for his PhD thesis. Every night that summer we would wait until midnight or so, when most people had gone home and … Continue reading Autonomous Vehicles 2023, Part I
Generative Pre-trained Transformer models (GPTs) are now all the rage and have inspired op-eds being written by everyone from Henry Kissinger (WSJ) to Noam Chomsky (NYTimes) in just the last month. That sure is some hype level. Way back in the early history of GPTs, January 1st this year, I wrote briefly about them and said: Calm down … Continue reading What Will Transformers Transform?
On January 1st, 2018, I made predictions about self driving cars, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and robotics, and about progress in the space industry. Those predictions had dates attached to them for 32 years up through January 1st, 2050. As part of self certifying the seriousness of my predictions I promised to review them, as made … Continue reading Predictions Scorecard, 2023 January 01
I see lots of hype about eVTOLs being on the verge of being big, but I can’t find any videos of prototypes doing what the hype says will be common place by 2025. Here is a story from November 1st, 2022, about a $352M series E financing for air taxi company Volocoptor. More about Volocoptor below. … Continue reading Where are the crewed eVTOL videos?
I’ve pulled together the links for the online versions of everything that I have written for IEEE Spectrum since 2008. My favorite is a sonnet, very much based on Shakespeare’s most famous one, but mine starts out Shall I compare thee to creatures of God? And I have to love that picture of me the editors dug up from … Continue reading My IEEE Spectrum Columns and Articles
rodneybrooks.com/no-front-seat-occupants-adventures-in-autonomous-ride-services/
Just over ten years ago, on April 5th, 2012 to be precise, I took my first ride in a self-driving car, from Google X, in a research unit that has now become Waymo. There was someone sitting in the driver seat, but he had his feet and hands off the controls. We left Google and … Continue reading No front seat occupants; adventures in autonomous ride services
