pull down to refresh

MIT roboticist calls out Elon Musk's 'fantasy' of humanoid robot assistantswww.yahoo.com/news/articles/mit-roboticist-calls-elon-musk-233000398.html
242 sats \ 5 comments \ @brent 27 Dec 2025 AI

How much of the Tesla bubble is based on unrealistic hype?

Rodney Brooks was the co-founder of iRobot, the creator of the home robot vacuum Roomba. He recently wrote that it will be practically impossible for robots to fulfill the same roles as people, despite Tesla's stated goal of having robots do so with its product, Optimus.

"In my opinion, believing that this will happen any time within decades is pure fantasy thinking," wrote Brooks on his personal blog. "But many are predicting that it will happen in as soon as two years, and the more conservative 'hypenotists' believe it will have significant economic impact within five years."
write
preview
related posts
142 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 27 Dec 2025

Didn't iRobot just file for bankruptcy?

Elon cope apparatus not bringing its best

Lol they even threw in some climate fud

reply
21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Car 2 Jan
reply
17 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 27 Dec 2025

I think that the best way to ensure that Elon's robot is going to be real is to convince the public that it is impossible.

reply
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Car 2 Jan
This is an extremely informative post. Thank you.
However, allow me to play devils advocate. Was it not long believed by deep learning skeptics that machines could never master language through big data alone because language refers to external things which the machines do not access to. In other words, humans don’t learn language by relating words to words. They learn language by relating words to things, to feelings, to actions, etc. Could one say that LLMs also lack access to that right kind of data, yet nevertheless, still managed to become quite proficient with language? Could that mean that with enough visual data, a robot could become dexterous as a human just as llms became sufficient with language even though they lack human senses and perceptions?
reply
21 sats \ 0 replies \ @brent OP 3 Jan

Yes, technological development is often underestimated, and people working within a field have a certain set of assumptions about it that can be upended by new developments. In the case of LLMs, it was advancements in the mathematics of tensors that allowed for associations between words to be modelled effectively at scale. The inventor of the Roomba could very well be in this category, operating from outdated assumptions.

Chinese robotics seem to be very advanced, capable of dexterity and sensitivity beyond what Dr. Brooks suggests is possible.

reply