10+ years ago I expected we would get AI that would impact blue collar work long before AI that impacted white collar work. Not sure exactly where I got the impression, but I remember some "rising tide of AI" analogy and graphic that had artists and scientists positioned on the high ground.
Recently it doesn't seem to be playing out as such. The current best LLMs I find marvelously impressive (despite their flaws), and yet... where are all the awesome robots? Why can't I buy a robot that loads my dishwasher for me?
Last year this really started to bug me, and after digging into it with some friends I think we collectively realized something that may be a hint at the answer.
As far as we know, it took roughly 100M-1B years to evolve human level "embodiment" (evolve from single celled organisms to human), but it only took around ~100k-1M for humanity to evolve language, knowledge transfer and abstract reasoning.
So it makes me wonder, is embodiment (advanced robotics) 1000x harder than LLMs from an information processing perspective?
Recently it doesn't seem to be playing out as such. The current best LLMs I find marvelously impressive (despite their flaws), and yet... where are all the awesome robots? Why can't I buy a robot that loads my dishwasher for me?
Last year this really started to bug me, and after digging into it with some friends I think we collectively realized something that may be a hint at the answer.
As far as we know, it took roughly 100M-1B years to evolve human level "embodiment" (evolve from single celled organisms to human), but it only took around ~100k-1M for humanity to evolve language, knowledge transfer and abstract reasoning.
So it makes me wonder, is embodiment (advanced robotics) 1000x harder than LLMs from an information processing perspective?