ChatGPT-like breakthrough in humanoid robotics expected in 2-3 years, says Vinod Khosla
While generative AI models are all the rage these days, they could also potentially drive breakthroughs in physical AI. It could usher in a new era of multi-tasking, humanoid robots which may be here sooner than you think, according to billionaire venture capitalist (VC) Vinod Khosla.
'Robotics will take a little longer, but I think we'll have the ChatGPT moment in the next two to three years,' Khosla said in an appearance on a podcast titled 'Uncapped' on YouTube last week.
The 70-year-old VC's prediction that fully autonomous robots will be here in the next few years is noteworthy given that he has a strong track record of spotting what's next. For instance, Khosla was an early stage investor in OpenAI. DoorDash, Block, and Impossible Foods are some of the other notable companies in his investment portfolio.
'Almost everybody in the 2030s will have a humanoid robot at home. Probably start with something narrow like do your cooking for you. It can chop vegetables, cook food, clean dishes, but stays within the kitchen environment,' Khosla said.
He also said that they will be available at lower costs due to high demand. These robots could cost between $300 to $400 a month, Khosla estimated. On the progress of Chinese companies in building humanoid robots, Khosla called it 'pretty damn amazing.' However, he said that these robots currently had a major drawback.
'They're not learning robots. You change the environment and they don't do as well. If you walk a human in here and say clean up, they'll know what to do. A robot needs to do that,' he said.
When asked why big tech companies like Apple are not focused on building humanoid robots, Khosla suggested that breakthroughs in physical AI would come from smaller players as opposed to large incumbents. Uber, for example, did not come from Hertz, nor was Netflix a product of major networks, he said.
Khosla's remarks are in line with those of several tech leaders who are betting big on robotics and physical AI. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has repeatedly said that robots will play a significant role in both industries and daily life in the future.
'I love the idea that I'll have my own R2-D2, my own C-3PO — my R2 will be following me, and for many people just growing up now, they'll have their own personal R2 with them for their lives,' Huang said at an event last year. While speaking at the chipmaker's annual investor meeting last week, Huang further said that AI and robotics represent 'a multitrillion-dollar growth opportunity' for Nvidia, which is shifting focus toward autonomous vehicles and other commercial applications of robotics.
Besides Nvidia, Amazon also considers robotics to be a growth area with CEO Andy Jassy recently saying, 'We're going to hire more people in AI and more people in robotics.'
In an interview with Bloomberg last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman not only predicted breakthroughs in robotics but also warned about their impact on jobs. 'I don't think the world has really had the humanoid robots moment yet, and I don't think that's very far away […] What happens when the humanoid robots get here? I mean, obviously do a lot of jobs,' he said.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
9 minutes ago
- Mint
Arun Maira: Dedication to the state's purpose is the key lesson we must learn from China
India is at a crossroads. Both the political Left and Right agree that the economy needs substantial reform, but disagree on the direction. The progressive Left wants more socialism with more liberal democracy; the conservative Right wants more free-market capitalism and seems willing to tolerate curbs on liberty. The Middle seems muddled. The 20th century was a test of competing economic ideologies—socialism versus capitalism; and competing forms of governance—liberal democracy versus authoritarianism. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, victory was declared for the Washington Consensus of free market capitalism and liberal democracy. India's reformers adopted the Washington formula in 1991. By and large, they gave up on socialism, abandoned industrial policies aimed at growing domestic industries and opened the Indian market for foreign companies without technology-transfer requirements. China did not yield. It stayed its socialist course with single-party governance and continued to build domestic industries. Also Read: Ajit Ranade: The success of 'Made in China 2025' alarmed the West The growth of China's economy is a miracle, economists say. In the 1980s, China and India's economies were comparable in size and per capita income. Now, China's per capita income and GDP are about five times India's. China's high-tech manufacturing sector has grown 48 times larger. The US, meanwhile, has grown alarmed with China's remarkable economic growth and industrial strength despite Beijing not following Washington's economic formula. That consensus has ended even in Washington, where ideological cracks have appeared with increasing inequality and unrest among workers in the US. The US is pressing India to come closer to it. India is wary. China shares a border with India that has seen the two armies skirmish. India must become self-reliant and stronger much faster than it has so far. Reforms must result in faster income growth among the Indian masses and stronger domestic industries. India's leaders should study China for lessons before pushing harder with economic reforms based on the West's failing model. Also Read: China began de-risking its economy well before Trump's trade fury US capitalism and Chinese socialism: Three recent books offer insights into how socialism and capitalism have been combined to achieve China's inclusive and fast growth. China's leaders are good learners, says German political economist Isabella M. Weber in How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate. Like Mahatma Gandhi, they kept their minds open, allowing ideas to come in from all directions without being blown off their feet. They listened to Western economists but applied only what suited China. Weber says, 'The famous Harvard development economist Dani Rodrik represents the economics profession more broadly when he answers his own question of whether 'anyone (can) name the (Western) economists or the piece of research that played an instrumental role in China's reforms" by claiming that 'economic research, at least as conventionally understood" did not play 'a significant role." Chinese economist Keyu Jin, a professor at the London School of Economics who grew up in China and experienced the Chinese system from within, explains how the Chinese socio-economic-political system works in The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism. She explains why Western economic models, which strip out cultural and social forces from economics, cannot comprehend how China works—or even how Western economies work. She makes visible the 'invisible hand' that free-market economists cannot explain. She explains why the Chinese government keeps financial markets and the private sector reined in to ensure the market produces welfare for all, especially poorer and least powerful citizens. She says, 'The number of financial crises in China is exactly zero. It is also an oddity (from a Western perspective) that despite the nation's preternatural economic growth, its stock market has been one of the worst performing in the world." Also Read: Chinese history shows how a closed economy could squander a nation's greatness The Chinese government has added citizen satisfaction and environmental sustainability to GDP as a measure of its own performance (and of local governments). Though private firms grew nine-fold in China from 2000 to 2019 (their number now exceeds the US's by far), 'A more striking fact," says Lin, 'is that private owners with state connections owned about a third of the capital registered by these companies, showing how pervasive equity linkages between state and private businesses have become in China's corporate sector." While the government has reduced the number of state-owned enterprises and pushed the remainder to add profits to their social objectives, it also demands that private firms comply with societal needs. Large, private, property and tech firms that strayed from the socialist path have been cut down. Three distinctive features of China's governance: The purpose of the state, throughout China's long history from imperial times to the Communist era, has been the welfare of citizens. The best emperor was seen as one who provides the most welfare to all citizens, not one who wins the most wars. The leadership of the Communist Party has continued this role, says Chinese political scientist Zheng Yongnian in The Chinese Communist Party as Organizational Emperor: Culture, Reproduction, and Transformation. Jin explains further (in The New China Playbook) how the ruling party's commitment to this role has shaped Beijing's socio-economic policies, resulting in widespread support for the party even among the young. Also Read: Rahul Jacob: Manufacturing is crying out for a reality check The governance of China is highly decentralized. Local communities are given freedom to craft solutions suited to their needs; the performance of local party officials is measured by the satisfaction of their communities with progress. Chinese leaders and economists are 'systems thinkers.' They see the economy as only a component of a complex social system. For them, the purpose of economic growth is the production of societal well-being, especially for less powerful people. Whenever the economy begins to fail this purpose, reforms are made to bring it back to its socialist moorings. India must not slavishly follow Western models. Nor can India be China. India must find its own way to create a more equitable society. The author is a former member of the erstwhile Planning Commission and the author of 'Reimagining India's Economy: The Road to a More Equitable Society'.
Hindustan Times
10 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Get more out of ChatGPT: 5 smart tricks to get better results
AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini have become an integral part of many people's lives. Many have been using these AI chatbots to create write-ups, solve college assignments, generate images, and summarise text for research, amongst a whole host of other things. You can get more out of ChatGPT if you use the right tricks.(Unsplash) However, at the very same time, many still do not know how to get the best results out of these chatbots. Of course, most of it has to do with your prompting and how detailed and smartly written your prompts are. Now, based on a Reddit post by user u/stuckingood, we have curated this guide for you. Here are various tricks that you can use to get the best out of ChatGPT. TL;DR - Summarises Text There are many times you want to summarise your text. In this case, you write prompts like, "Please summarise this text" or "Summarise this text." Instead, you can simply write "TL;DR:" followed by any long text that you would want a summary of. Make Your Text Sound Human For coming up with text pieces that sound too robotic, you can simply write "humanise" before your prompt. This gets you human-like responses from the ChatGPT chatbot. It cuts down on the adjectives, reduces sensationalism, and makes your text sound more human. Use ChatGPT Itself To Craft Prompts For Image Generation This is something we discovered, and we have been using chatbots like ChatGPT to craft prompts to be submitted to the chatbots themselves. So, if you want an image that should look a certain way, you can describe it in rough language to the chatbot and tell it to come up with a prompt. We have discovered that this does result in highly detailed images, and chatbots can often add details that you may not have even thought of. So, give this one a try. ELI5 - Explain Like I'm 5 This is something that you can actually write before a query, and the chatbot will give you a simple answer that is going to be really easy to understand. This could be for the simplification of an overly complicated topic and more. Jargonise - Makes Your Writing Sophisticated Just as ELI5 simplifies things for you, "jargonise" can actually make your text sound more sophisticated and professional. You could perhaps use this for professional documents, presentations that might be due in office, or perhaps important emails. All you have to do is add the word "jargonise," followed by a colon, before your actual prompt or text. MOBILE FINDER: iPhone 16 LATEST Price
The Hindu
17 minutes ago
- The Hindu
Chinese President Xi's move to share power, his absence from BRICS fuels speculation about his political future
Chinese President Xi Jinping, widely regarded as a leader for life, is beginning to delegate authority to key organs of the ruling Communist Party, a first in his over 12-year rule. Mr. Xi's move sparked speculation that he may be laying the groundwork for an orderly power transition or scaling back his role in preparation for possible retirement. Speculation about Mr. Xi's power transition was rife after state-run Xinhua news agency recently reported that the powerful 24-member Political Bureau of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) in its meeting on Jun 30 reviewed a set of new regulations on the work of the party's institutions. The meeting presided over by Mr. Xi himself stressed that the regulations will further standardise the establishment, responsibilities, and operations of the CPC Central Committee's decision-making, deliberative, and coordinating institutions. Such institutions should exercise more effective leadership and coordination over major tasks and focus on planning, discussing, and overseeing major tasks, the Xinhua report said. While the overseas Chinese dissident community in recent months was abuzz with speculation of a power struggle within the secretive and tightly controlled CPC, a China-based political analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity said the regulations on these party bodies could hint at preparations for Xi's retirement. 'The rules may be set up to regulate the bodies because it's a key time for power transition,' the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post on Sunday quoted the analyst as saying. Other experts, however, averred that Mr. Xi, regarded as the most powerful leader after CPC founder Mao Zedong, may be delegating some powers to focus on larger issues. 'It does seem that Xi might pay less attention to day-to-day details, which necessitates a policing mechanism to ensure that his policy priorities are still being carried out by lower-level officials,' Victor Shih, a specialist in Chinese elite politics and finance at the University of California San Diego, told the Post. Mr. Xi also skipped the BRICS summit being held in Rio de Janeiro from Sunday. This is the first time since he became President that he will be missing the summit of the emerging economies. Chinese Premier Li Qiang is heading China's delegation at the summit. Mr. Xi's move of delegating power comes amid U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff war disrupting China's $440 billion exports to America, besides major headwinds faced by the Chinese economy, with growth falling due to continued slowdown, and the collapse of the housing market, the mainstay of the economic growth. The crisis was exacerbated by the government's attempts to rein in the corporate sector and the unsuccessful zero COVID policy of shutting down Chinese cities during the height of the pandemic, resulting in the industry and business coming to a grinding halt. Since he took over power, becoming the General Secretary of the CPC in 2012, Mr. Xi, who was previously the Vice President, rapidly consolidated his power hold in the key power centres — the party, the presidency, and the powerful military as the Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) — the overall high command of Chinese armed forces. As he firmed up his grip over power structures, carrying out China's biggest anti-corruption campaign in which over a million officials were punished and dozens of top generals purged, Mr. Xi was declared as 'core leader' of the party, a designation that was conferred only on party founder Zedong. Later, the key rule of the President's term of two five-year terms was amended by the legislature, paving the way for him to get elected for an unprecedented third five-year term as the General Secretary of the Party in 2022 and as President of the country in the following year. All of Mr. Xi's predecessors retired after two five-year terms, while he continued in power with no term limits, earning him the label of President for life. Analysts say his plan to remain in power or share power was expected to unravel before or during the next five-year congress of the CPC to be held in 2027, by which time his third term will end.
