Sanctuary AI CEO - the robots really are coming! Thanks to transformer AI

Hardware robotics and AI have long been on parallel journeys, with AI in the fast lane and robotics in the slow. This decade, AI has moved at internet speed (witness the last 18 months’ progress in generative systems alone), while robots have been lumbering along for years, slowly finding their feet as one engineering challenge gives way to the next.

Some robots can now walk, run, jump, and climb stairs, but so what? What are they for?

But all that is set to change as the term ‘robotics’ is gradually replaced by another: ‘embodied AI’, a sign that the technologies’ separate tracks are merging. The speed and breadth of AI development this decade has pulled robotics into its slipstream on a shared journey towards the future.

Robots of every kind are now becoming the means by which AI interacts with the physical world, while AI is fast becoming the way ...