Humanoid Robots: should we start questioning their development? | AI with Human Body

If there were something we should start questioning, it would be the progress that has been made in the development of robots with artificial intelligence. We have been amazed by the interpretation capabilities of an AI observing its constant evolution through a series of periodic updates that are still happening consecutively.

Generative artificial intelligence models have allowed for effective progress in the technological field, and everything indicates that every computer system, at some point, will tend to benefit from the potential of our current era.

We had also mentioned on more than one occasion that one of the things the future holds for us is an intelligence that is not so predictive anymore but one that is capable of reasoning or understanding the context of a situation from a much more human perspective.

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Pietro Jeng | Unsplash

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While it is true that we are still in an unfinished and expanding stage, Large Language Models (LLMs) continue to scale processing power with a large amount of information, which is the key to making predictions in a matter of seconds.

We are talking about language models with trillions of parameters that increase with each significant update (version change), expanding the knowledge cloud because, after each response to a query or prompt, the model is being trained and learning on the fly, which could become much more accurate in the long run.

Right now, we have several models such as GPT-4 from OpenAI or Bard, which has now changed its name to Gemini. There are many more, but I would like to focus on the first one, with which I will continue the idea of today.

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Zac Wolff | Unsplash

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We had started talking about robots but, are we ready for it? A few years ago, we could see how Boston Dynamics showed us prototypes of yellow robotic dogs that characterized the company. I was particularly fascinated by it at the time, however, it seemed that they did not have as advanced artificial intelligence as it may be now.

In fact, I would dare to say that this was an introduction to what would come later since they only had to detect certain obstacles and follow a path, that is, they could have elements of artificial intelligence but not focused in the way we might think. From here, we could see many elements in the development of the robots that are currently being created. One of the things to consider could be their joints, which in my opinion are essential to achieve much smoother movements, as well as the mastery in sensor technology, which, if viewed from a more human perspective, will simulate every aspect of our organism.

So we can ensure that this was an inevitable technological evolution, since mastering any science leads to a higher scale, and how much higher than a robot with artificial intelligence? Well, the current reality is that we are managing to perfect the skills of a machine that we could have laughed at for being clumsy at that time, but that in the future could be, in some aspects, one step ahead of the human brain.

Currently, in the era we live in, we have witnessed the development of a humanoid robot named Optimus, by Elon Musk's Tesla company. We can truly say that its performance was very rewarding compared to human movement, however, what could be even more impressive is what may come in the upcoming prototypes mixing motor skills and artificial intelligence.

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Figure 01, Humanoid Robot | figure.ai

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This is the case with the new Figure 01 from OpenAI, which combines a predictive model in a tangible form as a robot capable of seeing, interpreting, and deducing what a person is proposing when given a series of instructions while interacting verbally.

Such remarkable advances only mean one thing; competition. It is possible we will see new prototypes competing against each other either to not fall behind in this race to see who achieves the best robotic evolution or to lead a new market, as the use of these robots will be aimed at filling positions that humans cannot occupy or would be inefficient for them.

Returning to the initial point of uncertainty, should we be happy about such progress? The answer could be in between. On one hand, it is a step that we must take as humanity, as we live in a technologically evolving era, so from that perspective, this is an inevitable and obvious step to broaden the possibilities of the tools that humans have built from the beginning.

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Future planning | figure.ai

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However, the downside could be that at some point there may no longer be restrictions to prevent things from getting out of hand, leading to the realization that it might be too late to stop.

We are obviously not talking about a machine takeover (I hope), but rather the strong possibility that thousands of people may lose their jobs because there will be someone much more effective and efficient, at the lowest possible cost, and that could indeed be a major issue for humankind and a setback for every human being.