Robotics company Figure has revealed its first collaboration with OpenAI, the creators of the artificial intelligence language learning model, ChatGPT. The collaboration resulted in the development of Figure 01, a full-size humanoid robot powered by OpenAI. The announcement was made by Figure’s founder and CEO, Brett Adcock, in a two-and-a-half-minute video, which showed a demo of the new robot. According to Brett Adcock’s tweet, OpenAI contributes to Figure 01’s visual reasoning and language understanding capabilities, while Figure’s neural networks facilitate rapid dexterous robot actions.
The video demo showed the humanoid robot using speech disfluencies, such as “uh” in its sentences, in order to sound similar to a human. Some experts suggest the use of speech disfluencies is a technique to facilitate a realistic flow of speech and can also be used as a tool to mask processing time. However, the author of the original article emphasized the robot’s human-like disfluencies and behaviors in a more humorous and dystopian light, suggesting that the robot’s speech disfluencies make it seem alive and even expressing a tongue-in-cheek desire to “date” the robot.
The author’s eccentric angle took the conversation further by humorously contemplating a future where such advanced robots might lead to a dystopian world ruled by artificial intelligence. The article ends with a whimsical assertion, whereby the author postulates that by winning the robot’s love, one could, perhaps, rule the world.
Overall, the unveiling of the new humanoid robot powered by OpenAI showcases advancements in robotics and AI technology, with the robot’s human-like speech disfluencies and gestures eliciting wide-ranging reactions from amusement to concern about potential future implications.
