Is AI Ready For Robots?

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It seems like artificial intelligence is everywhere in our virtual lives. It's in our search results and our phones. But what happens when AI moves out of the chat and into the real world? NPR science editor and correspondent Geoff Brumfiel took a trip to the Intelligence through Robotic Interaction at Scale Lab at Stanford University to see how scientists are using AI to power robots and the large hurdles that exist for them to perform even simple tasks.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR informs and connects communities around the country, providing reliable information in times of crisis.
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0:15.6	Learn more about safeguarding the future of public media.
0:18.8	Visit protectmypublic public media.org.
0:22.4	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:27.2	Hey, shortwavers, Regina Barber here.
0:29.8	It seems like artificial intelligence is everywhere in our virtual lives.
0:33.6	It's in our search results, our phones, it's trying to read my emails.
0:37.3	But NPR science correspondent Jeff Brunfield has noticed that AI isn't just showing up online anymore.
0:42.7	It's starting to creep into reality.
0:45.5	Yep.
0:46.1	I don't know if you tuned in for Tesla's big marketing event last year, Regina.
0:50.5	No.
0:50.7	But AI was there.
0:53.3	Speaking of robots.
0:56.7	Tesla is obviously a car company, but Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, made a big part of the event
1:03.6	about a humanoid robot powered by AI and called Optimus.
1:07.7	The software, the AI inference computer.
1:12.2	It all actually applies to a humanoid robot.
1:15.5	And Google just unveiled another humanoid robot that operates using AI.
1:20.3	Hmm.
1:20.7	We're bringing Gemini 2.0's intelligence to general purpose robotic agents in the physical world.
	...

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