AI Is Running Circles Around Robotics

When people imagine the AI apocalypse, they generally imagine robots. But the robot-takeover scenario most often envisioned by science fiction is not exactly looming. Recent and explosive progress in AI--along with recent and explosive hype surrounding it--has made the existential risks posed by the technology a topic of mainstream conversation. Yet progress in robotics--which is to say, machines capable of interacting with the physical world through motion and perception--has been lagging way behind. "I can't help but feel a little envious," said Eric Jang, the vice president of AI at the humanoid-robotics company 1X, in a talk at a robotics conference last year.