Recently we reported that Figure AI raised $675 million at a $2.6 billion valuation from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, Microsoft, Intel and… OpenAI. This week they demonstrated the progress made on integrating OpenAI’s models into their humanoid machines, with this video of the robot conversing with a person, dextrously picking up items and dealing with… some washing-up. Figure have a bold vision for robots; replacing all manual labour and like Devin, manufacturing more of themselves.
Whilst AI is disrupting the virtual world, it has also been behind a dramatic acceleration in ‘embodied’ robotic capabilities in 2023-24. We’ve all seen the Boston Dynamics videos of acrobatic androids, but LLMs are radically improving fine motor skills, detailed vision capability, memory and human interactions. Figure 01 and other robots from the likes of Tesla, Agility and 1X use multiple AI models to plan ahead, decode sensor inputs and control complex actions in parallel.
Takeaways: With BMW starting a factory trial of Figure 01s (supposedly they are ~$100k per unit), and Goldman Sachs suggesting there will be 250,000 humanoid robots joining our workforce every year by the end of the decade the impact AI will have in this most physical form will be significant. What is less well known is that simulators, or game-like worlds are providing the primary training-ground for these new robotic developments. From DeepMind’s AlphaGo, Open AI winning in Dota esports, or even F1 drivers training in the sim, virtual worlds are where new solutions can be perfected. AI simulators will be ever more important in devising, researching, training and testing new solutions of any kind; this will be a capability that every business will need to understand and exploit to stay competitive.