The world might seem to be on the brink of a humanoid-robot heyday. New breakthroughs in artificial intelligence promise the type of capable, general-purpose robots previously seen only in science fiction—robots that can do things like assemble cars, care for patients, or tidy our homes, all without being given specialized instructions. It’s an idea that…
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. When we talk about the global race for AI dominance, the conversation often focuses on tensions between the US and China, and European efforts at regulating the technology. But it’s high…
Teaching robots to navigate new environments is tough. You can train them on physical, real-world data taken from recordings made by humans, but that’s scarce, and expensive to collect. Digital simulations are a rapid, scalable way to teach them to do new things, but the robots often fail when they’re pulled out of virtual worlds…