Picking up a box and placing it in a neat pile is not an impressive action in itself for a robot; understanding an enigmatic human command and correctly deciphering and explaining the decision-making process, are definitely innovations. Digit owes parts of its progress to the generative artificial intelligence revolution that also reached the field of robotics and turned expectations from it on its head. “I’ve been asked what’s the biggest thing in 2024 besides language modeling — it’s robotics. Period,” Nvidia’s senior AI scientist Jim Fan wrote in December. “We’re about three years away from a ChatGPT moment for physical AI agents,” he explained.

Ever since Fan made this statement, it seems that everyone is talking about the “ChatGPT moment of robotics”, or the hope of a technological breakthrough that will push the field forward and finally fill our homes with intelligent humanoid robots to help us with household chores, wash the floor, set the table or do the laundry (but not fold it). “What has been happening in recent months is dramatic,” explains Amir Bousani, CEO of R-Go Robotics, which recently entered into a partnership with Nvidia to equip the robot it is developing with its spatial perception capabilities. “The physical world is more difficult than the internet,” notes Dr. Oren Etzioni, founding CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, “but the field of robots that have the ability to behave in general is running much faster today.”

The huge interest in humanoid robots, or humanoids, which Fan is talking about, is evident in the constant announcements in the field: in February, the startup Figure raised $675 million from Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and OpenAI for the development of the humanoid. In March, Nvidia’s CEO stood on the stage of the company’s developer conference alongside nine humanoids from different companies and announced that building models for robots is “one of the most exciting problems to solve in artificial intelligence”; in April, Elon Musk promised that he would launch the humanoid robot he is developing — Optimus — next year and predicted that by 2040 there will be a billion humanoids among us. A short time later, the activities of Mentee Robotics, Amnon Shashua’s company that was founded two years ago and also develops the humanoid, went public.

In an era where AI is reshaping industries at breakneck speed, Doug Seven finds himself at the forefront of a technology that’s changing the way developers approach their work.

As the director and general manager of AWS AI Developer Experiences, Seven is at the helm of this transformation, where specialized AI is not just assisting but actively reshaping how code is written and deployed.

With years of experience at Microsoft and Amazon, Seven has witnessed the evolution of developer tools, but nothing compares to the potential he sees in AI agents.

Designed to mimic human decision-making and physical interaction, the Astribot S1 robot can handle tasks that would traditionally require human dexterity and judgment.

Launched by Stardust Intelligence, a Chinese company, the robot has a human-like upper body structure mounted on a wheeled base.

During its first technical demonstration, the robot was seen folding clothes, sorting items, flipping pans while cooking, vacuuming, and cup stacking, attracting widespread attention in the industry.

Presented in a complete form in a new video, the robot is seen accurately serving tea in a cup. If you are feeling sad and want to listen to any music, the innovative machine can play musical instruments as well.

In short, companies are no longer hiding their optimism over replacing human labor with AI, an unfortunate reality for those looking to maintain a stable job.

Despite tech conglomerate Cisco posting $10.3 billion in profits last year, it’s still laying off 5,500 workers as part of an effort to invest more in AI, SFGATE reports.

It joins a litany of other companies like Microsoft and Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, that have used AI as justification for the mass culling of its workforce.

The layoffs at Cisco came to light in a notice posted with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week, affecting seven percent of its staff.

As of August 2024, the global employment landscape is facing significant turbulence, with more than 130,000 employees laid off across nearly 400 companies. Tech giants like Google, IBM, Apple, Amazon, SAP, Meta, and Microsoft have contributed to these staggering figures, indicating a major recalibration within the job market.

According to industry experts, this trend is accelerating as the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation prompts companies to streamline operations. Amidst this upheaval, Ramesh Alluri Reddy, CEO of TeamLease Degree Apprenticeship, sheds light on layoffs, workforce reshaping, and the potential for recovery.

…Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids… Even then, since Mars has 38% of Earth’s gravity, it can only retain an atmosphere of about 0.38 bar.

These are some of the most compelling ideas on how to terraform Mars into a habitable, Earth-like world for future explorers.

Here they are!

Here they come…

And this shows one of the many ways in which the Economic Singularity is rushing at us. The Bots are coming soon to a job near you.

NVIDIA unveiled a suite of services, models, and computing platforms designed to accelerate the development of humanoid robots globally. Key highlights include:

- NVIDIA NIM Microservices: These containers, powered by NVIDIA inference software, streamline simulation workflows and reduce deployment times. New AI microservices, MimicGen and Robocasa, enhance generative physical AI in Isaac Sim, built on ‪@NVIDIAOmniverse‬
- NVIDIA OSMO Orchestration Service: A cloud-native service that simplifies and scales robotics development workflows, cutting cycle times from months to under a week.
- AI-Enabled Teleoperation Workflow: Demonstrated at #SIGGRAPH2024, this workflow generates synthetic motion and perception data from minimal human demonstrations, saving time and costs in training humanoid robots.

NVIDIA’s comprehensive approach includes building three computers to empower the world’s leading robot manufacturers: NVIDIA AI and DGX to train foundation models, Omniverse to simulate and enhance AIs in a physically-based virtual environment, and Jetson Thor, a robot supercomputer. The introduction of NVIDIA NIM microservices for robot simulation generative AI further accelerates humanoid robot development.

When I have described my rationale for the likelihood of the Economic Singularity, key to this has been the ability of this new form of machine intelligence to make decisions and to make plans.

SummaryTatiana Mamut, co-founder of Wayfound AI, explains that AI agents are like human workers with the ability to interact and make decisions on their own…