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We accidentally solved robotics by watching 1M hours of YouTube

ksagar.bearblog.dev

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Re: We accidentally solved robotics by watching 1M hours of YouTube

#61

Post by Aurornis »

imranq wrote: post #14

This was a bit hard to read. It would be good to have a narrative structure and more clear explanation of concepts.

> This was a bit hard to read.

This writing style is prominent on Twitter and niche Discords. It's funny how much I've come to be able to cut right through it, but if you haven't seen much of it it's really hard to parse. That's by design, too. The vibe of this writing style is to project an air of confidence so strong that the author doesn't care if you get it or not. It's a sort of humblebrag where the writing is supposed to flex the author's understanding of the subject while also not caring if you get it or not.

As others have already covered, there's also some heavy stretching of the truth and rewriting of history going on in this post. That's also common of the extreme bravado in this style of semi-impenetrable writing: The vagueness and ambiguities allow the author to make grandiose claims but then wiggle out of them later if someone is astute enough to catch on.

For example: The blog post is written as “We…” but is the author part of the team? Or is he using “we” meaning society in general?

Re: We accidentally solved robotics by watching 1M hours of YouTube

#63

Post by jagged-chisel »

snickerdoodle12 wrote: post #25
mouse_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not. Who cares at this point? No one is stopping ML sets from being primarily pirated. The current power is effectively dismantling copyright for AI related work.

> Who cares at this point Anyone who has a shred of integrity. I'm not a fan of overreaching copyright laws, but they've been strictly enforced for years now. Decades, even. They've ruined many lives, like how they killed Aaron Swartz. But now, suddenly, violating copyright is totally okay and carries no consequences whatsoever because the billionaires decided that's how they can get richer now? If you want to even t…

> … like how they killed Aaron Swartz.

I can’t imagine why you’d let the FBI off the hook

Re: We accidentally solved robotics by watching 1M hours of YouTube

#64

Post by xdfgh1112 »

billstar wrote: post #60
rozab wrote: post #52

I just wrote a reply to a comment talking about the AI tells this writing has, but it got flagged so my comment disappeared when I hit post. I'll rephrase out of spite: My first thought upon reading this was that an LLM had been instructed to add a pithy meme joke to each paragraph. They don't make sense in context, and while some terminally online people do speak in memes, those people aren't quoting doge in 2025. T…

Also, the author of the blog "Ksagar Atharva" doesn't appear anywhere in the list of authors on the linked FB research paper with Yann LeCun as a co-author. Unless the blog author is using a heavily modified pseudonym. The research is very real but the blog post appears to be very fake.

It's someone explaining the research as a blog essay right? Which is very commonly done. We=humanity

Re: We accidentally solved robotics by watching 1M hours of YouTube

#65

Post by [deleted] »

rozab wrote: post #52

I just wrote a reply to a comment talking about the AI tells this writing has, but it got flagged so my comment disappeared when I hit post. I'll rephrase out of spite: My first thought upon reading this was that an LLM had been instructed to add a pithy meme joke to each paragraph. They don't make sense in context, and while some terminally online people do speak in memes, those people aren't quoting doge in 2025. T…

[deleted]

Re: We accidentally solved robotics by watching 1M hours of YouTube

#66

Post by marcus_holmes »

shadowgovt wrote: post #56
snickerdoodle12 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who cares at this point Anyone who has a shred of integrity. I'm not a fan of overreaching copyright laws, but they've been strictly enforced for years now. Decades, even. They've ruined many lives, like how they killed Aaron Swartz. But now, suddenly, violating copyright is totally okay and carries no consequences whatsoever because the billionaires decided that's how they can get richer now? If you want to even t…

Aaron Swartz died of suicide, not copyright. His death was a tragedy but it wasn't done to him.

There's an English phrase "hounded to death", meaning that someone was pursued and hassled until they died. It doesn't specify the cause of death, but I think the assumption would be suicide, since you can't actually die of fatigue.

I think that's what was done to Aaron Swartz.

Re: We accidentally solved robotics by watching 1M hours of YouTube

#68

Post by Pyxl101 »

Aurornis wrote: post #61
imranq wrote: post #14

This was a bit hard to read. It would be good to have a narrative structure and more clear explanation of concepts.

> This was a bit hard to read. This writing style is prominent on Twitter and niche Discords. It's funny how much I've come to be able to cut right through it, but if you haven't seen much of it it's really hard to parse. That's by design, too. The vibe of this writing style is to project an air of confidence so strong that the author doesn't care if you get it or not. It's a sort of humblebrag where the writing is s…

What's the point in writing something while "not caring" if the reader understands or not? Seems like a false confidence or false bravado to me; it reads like an attempt to project an impression, and not really an attempt to communicate.

Re: We accidentally solved robotics by watching 1M hours of YouTube

#69

Post by jdmichal »

Keyframe wrote: post #34
pr337h4m wrote: post #20

IMO, VideoMimic is a better proof-of-concept https://www.videomimic.net/ https://www.videomimic.net/page1.html

Looks like it was trained on Shaolin Drunken Fist videos. Does it look drunk because of the videos or because there's a discrepancy between videos and it not accounting for gravity and physics in general?

My guess would be lack of actuators. For instance, this robot looks like it has an ankle that can only go up and down, but not roll like a human's. Also, I wonder if there's a center of gravity issue, as it almost always appears to be leaning backwards to even out.

I think it's still pretty impressive in its recoveries, even though there's an unnaturally large number of them necessary. About 8 seconds into the video on the homepage, it almost misses and ends up slipping off the second step. I've eaten shit at missing a couple inch curb, though I don't think "graceful" has ever been used as a descriptor for me. So the fact that it just recovers and keeps going without issue is impressive to me.

Re: We accidentally solved robotics by watching 1M hours of YouTube

#70

Post by xyzzy123 »

contingencies wrote: post #8

This is interesting for generalized problems ( "make me a sandwich" ) but not useful for most real world functions ( "perform x within y space at z cost/speed" ). I think the number of people on the humanoid bandwagon trying to implement generalized applications is staggering right now. The physics tells you they will never be as fast as purpose-built devices, nor as small, nor as cheap. That's not to say there's zer…

As the vendor you can sell it with the promise that awesomeness is coming "just around the corner" with the next software update.

You can also seek investment without committing to an actual concrete business model.

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