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Gemini Robotics

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Re: Gemini Robotics

#31

Post by smokel »

delichon wrote: post #13

I read too much scifi, and almost none of it has updated on the current state of AI. For example spaceships swarming with low skill level crew members that swab the decks and replace air filters. Or depending on a single engineer to be the only one with the crucial knowledge to save the ship in an emergency. If scifi authors aren't keeping up it's hard to expect the rest of us to. But the macro and micro economic cha…

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams does a great job at being a timeless and priceless way to learn about the relativity of things.

Re: Gemini Robotics

#32

Post by sdenton4 »

pixl97 wrote: post #22
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is it's hard to tell compelling stories without people.

Stories for robots by robots "Will the security update finish before we're discovered and killed by the hunter seeker, stay tuned to find out more!"

Basically, Murderbot.

Re: Gemini Robotics

#33

Post by intalentive »

fusionadvocate wrote: post #15

Robotics has been trying the same ideas for the last who knows how many years. They still believe it will work now, somehow. Perhaps it goes beyond the brightest minds at Google that people can grasp things with their eyes closed. That we don't need to see to grasp. But designing good robots with tactile sensors is too much for our top researchers.

Tactile input is a nice-to-have but unnecessary. A human can pilot a robot through image sensors alone.

Re: Gemini Robotics

#34

Post by csmoak »

qoez wrote: post #28
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is it's hard to tell compelling stories without people.

Greg Egan is a master of this (making compelling hard scifi stories where the characters aren't the great american novel quality, still fine though).

diaspora by greg egan is a good example

Re: Gemini Robotics

#35

Post by pb7 »

moralestapia wrote: post #11

The problem with Google is that they keep putting out "videos" but almost ship an actual product. I'm not sure what's the end goal of this other than "get some people excited" or "justify R&D spend to shareholders". This is a great achievement and I'm not underestimating the work of the people involved. But similar videos have been put together by many research labs and startups for years now. I feel like Google's a…

>GOOG is around the same price as it was in 2022

Even after the massive total market correction in the last few weeks, the earliest that GOOG was the same price as today is not even a full year ago. In fact, it's up 90% since 2022.

Re: Gemini Robotics

#37

Post by Workaccount2 »

Google is probably the most undervalued tech company there is currently, by far:

1.) Has cutting edge in house AI models (Like OpenAI, Anthropic, Grok, etc.)

2.) Has cutting edge in house AI hardware acceleration (Like Nvidia)

3.) Has (likely) cutting edge robotics (Like Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Figure)

4.) Has industry leading self driving taxis (Like Tesla wants)

5.) Has all the other stuff that Google does. (Like insert most tech companies)

The big thing that Google lacks is excitement and hype (Look at the comments for all their development showcases). They've lost their veneer, for totally understandable reasons, but that veneer is just dusty, the fundamentals of it are still top notch. They are still poised to dominate in what the current forecasted future looks like. The things that are tripping Google up are relatively easy fixes compared to something like a true tech disadvantage.

I'm not trying to shill despite how shill like this post objectively is. It's just an observation that Google has all the right players and really just needs better coaching. Something that isn't too difficult fix, and something shareholders will get eventually.

Re: Gemini Robotics

#38

Post by aithrowawaycomm »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #23
EncomLab wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the "Wozniak Standard" (sometimes called the Coffee Test) - Drop an AI enabled robot in front of a random house and ask it to bring you a cup of coffee. The robot would need to enter the house, locate the kitchen, locate the coffee machine, locate the coffee, locate the filters, locate the coffee mugs, locate a measuring spoon - then add the correct amount of water, the filter, the correct amount of coffee, s…

That’s a very high standard. I’d fail repeatedly.

It is not a high standard, I am sure you could train a chimp to pass this test[1]. If you know how to use a standard coffee maker and live in a typical American home, and the test is done in an typical American home with a standard coffee maker, you can definitely pass this test 100% of the time.

I understand that many people don't live in America and don't know how to use a coffee maker. That is 100% irrelevant. There is a frustrating tendency in AI circles to conflate domain knowledge with intelligence, in a way that invariably elevates AI and crushes human intelligence into something tiny.

[1] The hard part would be psychological (e.g. keeping the chimp focused), not cognitive. And of course the chimp would need to bring a chimp-sized ladder... It would be an unlawful experiment, but I suspect if you trained a chimp to use a specific coffee maker in another kitchen, forced the chimp to become addicted to coffee, and then put the animal in a totally different kitchen with a different coffee maker (but similar, i.e. not a French press), it figure would figure out what to do.

Re: Gemini Robotics

#40

Post by ekidd »

delichon wrote: post #13

I read too much scifi, and almost none of it has updated on the current state of AI. For example spaceships swarming with low skill level crew members that swab the decks and replace air filters. Or depending on a single engineer to be the only one with the crucial knowledge to save the ship in an emergency. If scifi authors aren't keeping up it's hard to expect the rest of us to. But the macro and micro economic cha…

> For example spaceships swarming with low skill level crew members that swab the decks and replace air filters.

This is largely a function of what science fiction you read. Military SF is basically about retelling Horatio Hornblower stories in space, and it has never been seriously grounded in science. This isn't a criticism, exactly.

But if you look at, say, the award-winning science fiction of the 90s, for example you have A Fire Upon the Deep, the stories that were republished as Accelerando, the Culture novels, etc. All of these stories assume major improvements in AI and most of them involve breakneck rates of technological change.

But these stories have become less popular, because the authors generally thought through the implications of (for a example) AI that was sufficiently capable to maintain a starship. And the obvious conclusion is, why would AI stop at sweeping the corridors? Why not pilot the ship? Why not build the ships and give them orders? Why do people assume that technological progress conveniently stops right about the time the robots can mop the decks? Why doesn't that technology surpass and obsolete the humans entirely?

It turns that out that humans mostly want to read stories about other humans. Which is where many of the better SF authors have been focusing for a while now.

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