The Download: Google DeepMind’s plans for robots, and Eastern Europe’s changing tech sector
The news: Google DeepMind has released a new model, Gemini Robotics, that combines its best large language model with robotics. Plugging in the LLM seems to give robots the ability to be more dexterous, work from natural-language commands, and generalize across tasks. All three are things that robots have struggled to do until now.
Why it matters: The team hopes their work could usher in an era of robots that are far more useful and require less detailed training for each task. Incorporating LLMs into robotics is part of a growing trend, and this may be the most impressive example yet. Read the full story.
—Scott J Mulligan
If you’re interested in how researchers are making robots more useful, why not take a look at these stories:
+ The robot race is fueling a fight for training data. AI is upending the way robots learn, leaving companies and researchers with a need for more data. Read the full story.
+ It’s becoming easier to train robots with sound, which helps them adapt to tasks and environments where visibility is limited. Read the full story.
+ To be more useful, robots need to become lazier. Smarter data processing could make machines more helpful and energy-efficient in the real world. A good way to test this principle is to make robots play soccer.
+ Gen AI models aren’t just good for creating pictures—they can be fine-tuned to generate useful robot training data, too. Read the full story.
MIT Technology Review Narrated: How the Ukraine-Russia war is reshaping the tech sector in Eastern Europe
Startups in Latvia and other nearby countries see the mobilization of Ukraine as a warning and as inspiration. They are now changing consumer products—from scooters to recreational drones—for use on the battlefield.
