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Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

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Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#361

A lot of these household tasks could be automated without the need for humanoid robots. Roombas can clean your floor, automated rubbish disposal can be integrated into houses and flats, grocery delivery and storage could be done via an automated intake, cataloguing, and storage system. Humanoids are just creepy and you can't really trust them. Could you sleep easily knowing that you have one in your house? What if yo…

You are being far too kind. A primate's body shape may be optimal for life in the trees, but it sure isn't optimal for any of the industrial or household tasks we want a robot to do. There are millions of robots around the world doing useful things, from vacuuming houses to assembling iPhones and playing table tennis. None of them look remotely like a human.

If an article features a humanoid robot it's sure sign its a PR fluff piece. This one looks to be a recruitment ad. Tesla's Optimus is being used to pump some sort of investment scam. God knows China's humanoid marathon is about. Whatever it is, it isn't getting from A to B quickly and efficiently.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#362
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For house keeping tasks the robotics companies love showing off... it honestly doesn't matter if it takes a robot longer than a human to clean your house. As long as it gets done before you get home from work, no big deal.

I'm bearish that they'll be economically viable in the house for a very long time. For businesses the bar for adoption is very low: If the thing can work repetitive jobs for 24 hours a day and replace 3 shifts, the purchase bar is nominally anything less than 3 x human salary if your budgeting horizon is 1 year. That's a high number, and probably fairly easy to achieve. For homes, it's a very different bar. You'd hav…

I think ~car is a more likely range, there's a lot of value in cooking / cleaning, Americans buy cars pretty frequently

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#363
post #4

Can anyone that works on this technology provide an honest assessment of where this technology actually stands? How much instrumentation is actually required, what the interaction quality is, how much trouble do humanoids have with in the wild daily tasks like turning doorknobs, recovering from falls, avoiding knocking into things, etc.

I work in this field, and I wrote my bachelor's thesis here, not with humanoids but with VLAs (think chatgpt connected to a robot arm) It's certainly not there yet for anything practical, there's also certain bits and structures that don't have accurate names during construction, and it is important to keep that in mind - so a robot is unlikely to understand what it means to say "put the left bit of this box onto thi…

This is absolutely not true check out Sunday robotics and their robot that folds clothes. Sunday robotics says it does holding of clothes correctly 99% of the time that is real world usage today. They even have three hour video of the robot folding the clothes.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#364

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>automated rubbish disposal can be integrated into houses and flats, grocery delivery and storage could be done via an automated intake, cataloguing, and storage system This is a complete non-starter for already-built apartment blocks, terraced homes, and even most semi-detached. It's an interesting but costly solution for new detached homes. Humanoids are a useful form factor because the already-built human world is…

Doing what's ethically right rarely means taking the most convenient path. Fridges and pantries take a considerable amount of space in our homes. These could become part of an automated storage system.

Why is a Roomba or automated rubbish disposal system more "ethically right" than a humanoid robot?

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#365

I'm a researcher at Deepmind that contributed to these models. (And the opinions here are my own) Just want to say, Deepmind is a great place to work and the only (Edit: one the few unique labs!) lab where you can move from large frontier models (Gemini), frontier open models (Gemma), robotics (what you see here), science (weather, biology, more) and basically any other topic related to intelligence. It's really an i…

Is DeepMind basically Google innovation hub ??? What happens when those ideas need to be scaled into real products, though? For instance, I can't really imagine Google being fully committed to manufacturing and selling robotic arms at scale.

Don't worry, after ten years of research a few employees will quit and form their own company, and release a robot arm, which will spur Google to release their own version 3 months later. (As is tradition)

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#366

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> Hell, the only ones that can afford them will be the same that would hire human household help. But maybe they'd rather deal with a robot than a human?

Honestly: why?

"hey Rosie, the cat yakked on the rug again"

(real-time mess handling)

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#367

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If all goes well, imagine a world in which you work because you want to not because you have to.

I'm really curious - are the people who keep saying this in denial or lacking in a basic education in economics? You can imagine all you want, but this is absolutely not a possible outcome.

As someone who lacks a basic education in economics, what part of basic economics prohibits this nice-sounding outcome? It seems like what I'd expect from a combination of UBI and widespread automation.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#368

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"Just following orders" is how some of the worst shit in human history went down. They're literally CREATING the tech and tools and you're saying don't even question them about potential and proven misuse?? lol They're the first people that should be asked this question.

I don't think OP's "Why do people ask employees this stuff" question implies you _shouldn't_ ask, but rather wonders why people even ask when you're obviously not going to get an answer (and if you do, it'll be a non-answer filtered through PR/HR/MR/etc).

Thank you.. this was what I meant.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#369

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It's certainly an odd situation where Google is on the forefront of all these emerging technologies while the latest chatbots from OpenAI and Anthropic are getting breathless press releases and wildly hyperbolic coverage ("rogue AIs" "too dangerous, must be banned" etc...) Google acting like a normal but competent company that's just chugging away, meanwhile the hype cycle is propping up its upstart competitors to tr…

Google wins on infrastructure and creativity (NotebookLM, etc) but entirely lacks product coherence. The ecosystem is a mess, just like Microsoft's offering, and I don't think this is a coincidence but rather a symptom of the type of company in which these two companies have evolved. Furthermore, Gemini is just all around a less trustworthy and mature model, for many reasons. Very smart but lacking the precision and…

Yeah, something surprising to me was that I can't even add a custom MCP to gemini. It has tons of missing features.
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