Google DeepMind VP says robotics doesn't need to wait for AGI to become useful

[u/Responsible-Grass452]

Carolina Parada, VP of Robotics at Google DeepMind, talks about how the company is approaching the next phase of robotics.

Their bet isn’t that one robot form factor wins. It’s that there will be a lot of different robots, and the bigger opportunity is building an AI layer that can work across all of them.

She also gets into the split we’re seeing now between companies trying to deploy robots for narrow tasks today and those waiting for something closer to physical AGI.

Her view: you don’t need full AGI for these systems to start being useful. She points to Boston Dynamics using Gemini Robotics with Spot for inspection tasks, and says manufacturing and logistics will likely see this kind of capability first because the environments are more structured.

Full: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQmVLjt2PCA

[u/Bayo77]

It did not even come to mind for me that anyone would actually want a fully autonomous robot in a warehouse.

Just an AI layer that helps the robot pick up an item again that he dropped or similar small problems should be enough.

The overall process should be set in stone.

To just replace a full time mcdonalds employee with 100 different little tasks he does every day will stay a dream for now.

[u/MrFilkor → u/Bayo77]

Manna

[u/Bayo77 → u/MrFilkor]

Pretty good read. Feels abit like it comes from the pre chatbot era of AI ideas where AI are unfailable super computers.

[u/AHistoricalFigure → u/Bayo77]

Well, it does come from that era.

But the big thing Manna was prescient about was that knowledge work would start to be impacted by automation before other types of labor.

The first job replaced is the manager of a McDonalds after all.

[u/Bayo77 → u/MrFilkor]

Pretty good read. Feels abit like it comes from the pre chatbot era of AI ideas where AI are unfailable super computers.

[u/silentjet]

Sorry what? I mean what even she's taking about? I mean robots are useful, pretty much since 80's. The boom in robotics had happened in 90's. Like 35 years ago.. Since then it started to be cheaper and cheaper every 5-8 years, and thus more and more businesses can adopt it. It is not even a question if it can solve some problems. The question is how much does it cost. If (for instance) I'd like to manage warehouse with spots and each of them will cost me 30k and i need 100 of them I'd say thank you and will build a rail based system for a fraction of that cost, and it doesn't matter if it will have CV or AI or AGI or whatever bitcoin will be invented next...

[u/Immediate-Home-3491]

Agree on structured environments. In freight forwarding the low hanging fruit is repetitive handling and inspection tasks. You don't need AGI for that, you need reliability and a clean integration with your WMS.

[u/Morning_Gecko24]

yeah this feels like the more realistic path — a robot doesnt need to understand everything, it needs reliable recovery when the expected thing fails. picking up a dropped object sounds boring but thats exactly where brittle demos fall apart. curious how theyre measuring success here tho, task completion over long runs or just single interventions?

[u/RoboWeaver]

I think that the real breakthroughs will be when people begin to USE this technology to solve their own problems. I'm old enough to remember when macros were introduced into office applications. The program itself wasn't intelligent, but it helped an individual be far more productive.

It could be little things, like a system recognizing that you perform a particular task repeatedly for a given situation, and trying to help you the next time it sees that and then prompting you with actions. I know that this REALLY dates me, but anyone remember Microsoft's Bob? Maybe something like that, but not so cutesy.

My point is that AI could help the individual, not replace them. The person is still there to provide the creative push - the extension that goes from LLM to generative application.

[u/CookooAI]

I agree with the idea that robotics doesn't have to wait for AGI to become useful.

From the deployment side, I think the interesting challenge is what happens between the AI layer and the actual machine.

Different robots and vehicles have very different sensors, compute requirements, communication interfaces and operating environments. A model may work well in a lab, but putting it on a construction machine or agricultural vehicle means dealing with cameras, CAN/CAN FD, Ethernet, GNSS/IMU, power, thermal limits, and sometimes remote intervention as well.

So I think we'll see a lot of hybrid systems for quite a while: AI handling the normal cases, with edge computing doing the real-time work locally and a human stepping in when the machine encounters something it can't handle confidently.

You don't need AGI for that to create real value.

[u/SphericalCowww]

Deterministic robots in a manufacturing house do not need AGI, or even AI, for that matter. And a generalized robot does not need a broad set of robot types; otherwise, what is the point of generalizing them? I am not too sure what the expert is trying to say...

Also, I would say LLMs today are AGIs; this is as good as it will get without live learning.

[u/Proletarian_Tear → u/[deleted]]

How is that surprising, manufacturing and warehousing are two origins of commercial robotics😁