For a tech industry intoxicated by advances in artificial intelligence, the idea that fully humanoid robots will soon be stalking the earth hardly seems a stretch.
Elon Musk recently predicted a $10tn market for Optimus, Tesla’s attempt at an artificial human that can take over your household chores. Nvidia boss Jensen Huang said this would be “the largest technology industry the world has ever seen”.
And to judge by the surge of investment into robot start-ups and a flood of videos online of two-legged robots displaying impressive humanlike movements, it is easy to believe such a revolution is at hand. If large language models can tackle difficult reasoning tasks, then it might seem simple to implant a model in a robot and retrain it to navigate the world. Problem solved.