Humanoid robots take center stage at Silicon Valley summit, but skepticism remains

By MATT O BRIEN MOUNTAIN VIEW Calif AP Robots have long been seen as a bad bet for Silicon Valley investors too complicated capital-intensive and boring honestly says venture capitalist Modar Alaoui Related Articles Ticker Disney invests B in OpenAI Disney invests B in OpenAI in deal to bring characters like Mickey Mouse to Sora AI video tool Open AI Microsoft face lawsuit over ChatGPT s alleged role in Connecticut murder-suicide AI slop ad backfires for McDonald s OpenAI names Slack CEO Dresser as first chief of revenue as ChatGPT maker aims to make a profit But the commercial boom in artificial intelligence has lit a spark under long-simmering visions to build humanoid robots that can move their mechanical bodies like humans and do things that people do Alaoui founder of the Humanoids Summit gathered more than people this week including top robotics engineers from Disney Google and dozens of startups to showcase their hardware and debate what it will take to accelerate a nascent industry Alaoui says numerous researchers now believe humanoids or several other kind of physical embodiment of AI are going to become the norm The question is really just how long it will take he noted Disney s contribution to the field a walking robotic version of Frozen character Olaf will be roaming on its own through Disneyland theme parks in Hong Kong and Paris early next year Entertaining and highly complex robots that resemble a human or a snowman are already here but the timeline for general purpose robots that are a productive member of a workplace or household is farther away Even at a conference designed to build enthusiasm for the innovation held at a Computer History Museum that s a temple to Silicon Valley s previous breakthroughs skepticism remained high that truly humanlike robots will take root anytime soon The humanoid space has a very very big hill to climb commented Cosima du Pasquier founder and CEO of Haptica Robotics which works to give robots a sense of touch There s a lot of research that still requirements to be solved The Stanford University postdoctoral researcher came to the conference in Mountain View California just a week after incorporating her startup The first customers are really the people here she stated Kochi Sato left shakes hands with a humanoid robot during the Humanoids Summit Thursday Dec in Mountain View Calif AP Photo Godofredo A V squez Robots made by Weave Robotics fold clothes inside the exhibition room at the Humanoids Summit Thursday Dec in Mountain View Calif AP Photo Godofredo A V squez People watch as a robot made by Weave Robotics folds clothes during the Humanoids Summit Thursday Dec in Mountain View Calif AP Photo Godofredo A V squez Yuka Iwashita right interacts with a robotic hand at the Alt-Bionics table during the Humanoids Summit Thursday Dec in Mountain View Calif AP Photo Godofredo A V squez Show Caption of Kochi Sato left shakes hands with a humanoid robot during the Humanoids Summit Thursday Dec in Mountain View Calif AP Photo Godofredo A V squez Expand Researchers at the consultancy McKinsey Company have counted about companies around the world that have raised at least million to develop humanoids led by about in China and in North America China is leading in part due to administration incentives for component production and robot adoption and a mandate last year to have a humanoid ecosystem established by mentioned McKinsey partner Ani Kelkar Displays by Chinse firms dominated the expo section of this week s summit held Thursday and Friday The conference s the majority prevalent humanoids were those made by China s Unitree in part because researchers in the U S buy the relatively cheap model to test their own application In the U S the advent of generative AI chatbots like OpenAI s ChatGPT and Google s Gemini has jolted the decades-old robotics industry in different options Investor excitement has poured money into ambitious startups aiming to build hardware that will bring a physical presence to the latest AI But it s not just crossover hype the same technical advances that made AI chatbots so good at language have played a role in teaching robots how to get better at performing tasks Paired with computer vision robots powered by visual-language models are trained to learn about their surroundings One of the majority of prominent skeptics is robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks a co-founder of Roomba vacuum maker iRobot who wrote in September that in current times s humanoid robots will not learn how to be dexterous despite the hundreds of millions or perhaps multiple billions of dollars being donated by VCs and major tech companies to pay for their training Brooks didn t attend but his essay was frequently mentioned Also missing was anyone speaking for Tesla CEO Elon Musk s growth of a humanoid called Optimus a project that the billionaire is designing to be extremely capable and sold in high volumes Musk explained three years ago that people can perhaps buy an Optimus within three to five years The conference s organizer Alaoui founder and general partner of ALM Ventures previously worked on driver attention systems for the automotive industry and sees parallels between humanoids and the early years of self-driving cars Near the entrance to the summit venue just blocks from Google s headquarters is a museum exhibit showing Google s bubble-shaped prototype of a self-driving car Eleven years later robotaxis operated by Google affiliate Waymo are constantly plying the streets nearby Particular robots with human elements are already being tested in workplaces Oregon-based Agility Robotics released shortly before the conference that it is bringing its tote-carrying warehouse robot Digit to a Texas distribution facility run by Mercado Libre the Latin American e-commerce giant Much like the Olaf robot it has inverted legs that are more birdlike than human Industrial robots performing single tasks are already commonplace in car assembly and other manufacturing They work with a level of speed and precision that s intricate for this day s humanoids or humans themselves to match The head of a robotics pact group founded in is now lobbying the U S regime to develop a stronger national strategy to advance the advancement of homegrown robots be they humanoids or otherwise We have a lot of strong tool we have the AI expertise here in the U S stated Jeff Burnstein president of the Association for Advancing Automation after touring the expo So I think it remains to be seen who is the ultimate leader in this But right now China has certainly a lot more momentum on humanoids Associated Press journalist Terry Chea contributed to this statement