Relax, Amazon workers – OpenAI-trained robo hand isn't much use (well, not right now)

Vid Human hands are surprisingly dexterous: they can knit clothes, stuff delivery packages with things, play the piano, and so on, albeit with practice. Yet if you're worried machines are going to take these pleasures away from us, be assured us mortals can, for now, pick up these skills faster than robots can, judging from the following findings. Researchers at OpenAI trained, using about a hundred years of simulated experience, a robotic system called Dactyl to rotate and orientate a cube. Dactyl exists not just in its virtual world, though. It can also control a Shadow Dexterous Hand: a metal meathook complete with five fingers, force sensors, and 24 degrees of freedom – pretty close to a human's 27 degrees of freedom. The cube it's told to fondle features a specific letter and color on each of its six faces, and it has to figure out how to manipulate the object so that it finds the requested symbol.