Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI disbands its robotics research team

venturebeat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 128 posts

Re: OpenAI disbands its robotics research team

#2

Post by samstave »

Curious idea:

With the mentioning that they can shift their focus to domains with extensive data that they can build models of action with etc... Why not try the following (If easily possible)

---

Take all the objects on the various 3D warehouses (thingiverse, and all the other 3d modeling repos out there) -- and have a system whereby an OpenAI 'Robotics' platform can virtually learn to manipulate and control a 3D model (solidworks/blender/whatever) and learn how to operate it.

It would be amazing to have an AI robotics platform where you feed it various 3D files of real/planned/designed machines, and have it understand the actual constituancy of the components involved, then learn its degrees of motion limits, or servo inputs etc... and then learn to drive the device.

Then, give it various other machines which share component types, built into any multitude of devices - and have it eval the model for familiar gears, worm-screws, servos, motors, etc... and have it figure out how to output the controller code to run an actual physically built out device.

Let it go through thousands of 3D models of things and build a library of common code that can be used to run those components when found in any design....

Then you couple that code with Copilot and allow for people to have a codebase for controlling such based on what OpenAI has already learned....

As Copilot is already built using a partnership with OpenAI...

Re: OpenAI disbands its robotics research team

#3

Post by verall »

samstave wrote: post #2

Curious idea: With the mentioning that they can shift their focus to domains with extensive data that they can build models of action with etc... Why not try the following (If easily possible) --- Take all the objects on the various 3D warehouses (thingiverse, and all the other 3d modeling repos out there) -- and have a system whereby an OpenAI 'Robotics' platform can virtually learn to manipulate and control a 3D mo…

NVIDIA Isaac sounds very close to what you're describing.

Re: OpenAI disbands its robotics research team

#5

Post by Animats »

minimaxir wrote: post #4

The cynical-but-likely-accurate take is that researching language modeling has a higher ROI and lower risk than researching robotics.

Yes.

Also, regular ML researchers sit at tables with laptops. Robotics people need electronics labs and electronics technicians, machine shops and machinists, test tracks and test track staff...

If you have to build stuff, and you're not in a place that builds stuff on a regular basis, it takes way too long to get stuff built.

Re: OpenAI disbands its robotics research team

#7

Post by high_derivative »

minimaxir wrote: post #4

The cynical-but-likely-accurate take is that researching language modeling has a higher ROI and lower risk than researching robotics.

I dont think this is cynical and I don't think it's a bad thing. OpenAI is not a huge org. The truth in 2021 is that not only is robotics 'just not there yet' in terms of being a useful vehicle for general intelligence research (obviously robotics research itself is still valuable), there is also nothing really pointing at this going to be the case in the next 5-10 years.

Given that, unless they want to commercialise fruit picking or warehouse robots, it seems sensible.

Re: OpenAI disbands its robotics research team

#9

Post by johnmoberg »

amelius wrote: post #6
minimaxir wrote: post #4

The cynical-but-likely-accurate take is that researching language modeling has a higher ROI and lower risk than researching robotics.

Order picking in e-commerce warehouses seems a potentially profitable market.

Definitely! Pieter Abbeel (who was working with OpenAI at some point) and others realized this and founded https://covariant.ai/.
Post reply on HN