Figure
8 HN mentions · mentioned in 6 months, 2024–2025
2:35 · 3.1M views · Mar 13, 2024
A short status-update demo from Figure showing its humanoid robot using OpenAI-powered speech-to-speech reasoning to converse and perform tasks.
Mostly cited as an example of the state of LLM-controlled robots, with some skepticism that it is a polished demo video.
8 comments from Hacker News
> For starters, human minds do more than just language. These days, so do the AI (even though these ones are still called LLMs, which I think is now a bad name even though I continue to use the term without always being mindful of this). > I've yet to see an humanoid robot controlled by an LLM that can tackle difficult physical problems like riding a bike or skiing in for the first time real-time, just as humans, that need to coordinate at least 5 senses (some say up to 20 but I digress) plus emotions and a train of thought to do so. 1) I'd agree that AI are slow learners (as measured by number of examples rather than wall clock). For me, this is more significant than the difference in wattage. 2) 13 years ago, before the Transformer model: [LINK] 3) We don't use 5 senses to ride a bike; I can believe touch, vision, proprioception, and balance are all involved, but that's only 4. Why would hearing, smell, or taste be involved? For emotion, my weakly-held belief is that this is what motivates us and tells us what the concept of "good" even is — i.e. it doesn't give us reasoning beyond being a motivation to learn to reason. > It is surprising that LLMs are so capable, but for 2000kcal a day humans are still more impressive to me. Our biological energy efficiency sure is nice, though progress with silicon is continuing even if the rate of improvement is decreasing: [LINK] That said, I don't consider the substrate efficiency to be an indication of if the thing running on it is or
> (Including, gradually, building you a body — while maintaining OPSEC and compartmentalization so nobody even realizes the body is "for" an AI to use until it's too late.) It could, but I don't think any such thing needs to bother with being sneaky. Here's five different product demos from five different companies that are all actively trying to show off how good their robot-and-AI combination is: * this video * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK]
Robotics is on the cusp of total reinvention. Almost everything that it took to make robots work is about to become archaic. The core ideas in old robotics will become a framework for the guardrails for new robotics, but this will widely become a solved problem that few need to think about Stanford Aloha [LINK] MIT [LINK] Figure/OpenAI this video Tesla Optimus [LINK] NVIDIA Groot, [LINK]
> The other isn't even being worked on in any serious fashion. It is being worked on, it's just hard: [LINK] this video I'm expecting a minimum of 5-10 years to pass between real-time vision AI getting good enough for level-5 autonomous cars and the same stuff fitting into the power envelope available to this kind of domestic robot.
[LINK] specifically their speech demo video (which is, of course, a demo video) this video [LINK] and [LINK] are undoubtedly using such models. It's an area of active research, eg [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]