OpenAI Gets Back into Robotics Game

With AI-driven robotics taking off like never before, OpenAI is back in the game. They’re reassembling the robotics team they disbanded three years ago. Yep, you heard that right—reassembling. They’re on the hunt for research engineers to jump on this new wave. According to a job post on their website, these new hires will be some of the first boots on the ground.

Forbes spilled the beans, saying that the new robotics team has been up and running for about two months now. The job listing doesn’t give away too much about their master plan, but it does mention that these engineers will be training multimodal models, developing new features for partners, and diving into core model research and optimization. This involves everything from exploring new model architectures to gathering robot data and running evaluations.

What’s wild is that OpenAI is looking to play nice with other robotics companies instead of going head-to-head. They’re integrating their tech into existing systems rather than developing their own hardware—at least for now. Over the past year, their internal venture fund has pumped cash into a few humanoid robot companies like Figure AI, 1X Technologies, and Physical Intelligence. Figure AI even showed off a video back in March featuring their humanoid robot, Figure 01, powered by OpenAI’s models.

Peter Welinder, OpenAI’s VP of Product and Partnerships, mentioned that returning to robotics has been in the cards for a while. His LinkedIn says he was on the robotics team from 2017 to 2020. He’s pretty pumped about the potential these humanoid robots have, thanks to their multimodal models.

Robotics Has Always Been in OpenAI’s DNA

Wojciech Zaremba, one of the co-founders, led the original team with the dream of creating a general-purpose robot. Back in 2019, they even managed to train a neural network to solve a Rubik’s cube with a single robotic arm in a virtual setup.

But then in 2020, they suddenly pulled the plug on their robotics research. Zaremba said it was because they didn’t have enough training data, and they decided to shift gears to areas where data was more plentiful. After the team disbanded, some members stuck around and took on new roles—Zaremba helped with the GPT models, Welinder moved to product and partnerships, Bob McGrew took the reins on research, and Lilian Weng led the safety systems team.

It's quite the ride for OpenAI, getting back into robotics. Let’s see where this rollercoaster takes them.

Companies In The World Of Ai Robotics

Boston Dynamics is leading the pack with their agile robots like Atlas and Spot. You've probably seen those videos where they move like they're straight out of a sci-fi movie. Then there's Intuitive Surgical, cranking up the precision in surgeries with their da Vinci system. It's like having a robot doc on standby.

Anduril Industries is stepping up the game in national security with their AI tech. Meanwhile, Miso Robotics is making waves in the kitchen with their robot chef, Flippy. Imagine a robot flipping your burgers—hotter than a hoe in church on Sunday, right?

Brain Corp is all about autonomous robots for commercial spaces. They’re making sure places are clean and tidy without human intervention. And let's not forget Diligent Robotics, with their healthcare assistant, Moxi. This robot is helping out in hospitals, doing everything from fetching supplies to delivering meds.

These companies are at the forefront, blending AI with robotics to tackle some seriously sophisticated tasks across different fields. It’s like we’re living in the future.