A renewed concentrate on robots would counsel that OpenAI believes reaching synthetic common intelligence (AGI)—AI that exceeds human intelligence—could require creating algorithms which are able to interacting with the bodily world.
OpenAI did notable robotics analysis in its early years, together with creating an algorithm able to fixing a Rubik’s dice utilizing a humanlike hand in 2019. The corporate shuttered its robotics effort in 2021, nevertheless, to concentrate on algorithms together with the big language fashions which have pushed latest breakthroughs corresponding to ChatGPT. OpenAI restarted work on robots final 12 months, and The Data reported in December 2024 that the corporate was contemplating creating its personal humanoid robots.
Stefanie Tellex, a roboticist at Brown College, says that constructing more practical robots will contain designing and coaching AI fashions able to “processing high-frame-rate, high-dimensional perceptual enter, and producing high-frame-rate, high-dimensional bodily outputs”—which means fashions that may see and act with excessive constancy. Tellex shouldn’t be accustomed to OpenAI’s plans particularly, nevertheless.
Regardless of already having industry-leading fashions for dialog, reasoning, coding, and picture and video era, OpenAI will likely be racing a sequence of robust rivals because it seeks to develop the algorithms for extra succesful humanoid robots. A handful of humanoid startups, together with Determine, Agility, and Apptronik, have emerged over the previous few years, and a few main AI corporations, together with Tesla and Google, are additionally investing in creating and testing humanoids. “I don’t see them having any magical benefit over anybody else,” says Tellex.
Humanoids have gotten more and more well-liked because the {hardware} and software program wanted to construct functioning prototypes turns into extra widespread. Whereas humanoids are nonetheless costly and tough to develop, new sorts of motors and different elements have made it cheaper and simpler to place collectively functioning techniques. Software program corresponding to Nvidia’s Isaac robotic improvement platform have additionally made it less complicated to jot down the code wanted to manage and practice humanoid techniques.
Humanoid hype can be constructing. Enterprise capitalists have invested greater than $5 billion in humanoid startups because the begin of 2024. Morgan Stanley reckons that the humanoid {industry} may very well be price $5 trillion by 2050.
Whereas humanoids can carry out spectacular feats like dancing, they nonetheless lack the intelligence required to function in advanced and unpredictable, or “unstructured,” environments. To amass this, they’ll want algorithms that transcend a big language mannequin’s understanding of the bodily world. These techniques should be capable to management limbs and grippers so as to stroll and manipulate bodily objects. Some analysis teams are beginning to display progress in creating extra usually succesful AI fashions for robots.
On the identical time, it’s turning into more and more clear that new concepts could also be wanted to push AI ahead. The latest disappointment of OpenAI’s GPT-5 is a part of a broader realization that reaching humanlike intelligence would require new avenues of analysis.
“They’ve asymptoted on GPT-5,” says Tellex. “They should transfer in direction of the bodily world.”
