[OrigamiPastrami]

> Doesn't it seem like in < 10 years there will be dozens of autonomous, affordable home-robots?

If you buy the hype, sure. I know many startups that have already gone bust working on this. I've also seen lots of similar attempts in laboratories around the world going back well over a decade.

> One last note, they call this generalist, but each of the examples is quite specific from a macro perspective. Yes the robot can fold maybe any pile of crumpled laundry now and that is generalist compared to previous efforts, but it does seem like we shouldn't try to train bots how to do billions of tasks in specific detail; rather they should learn to learn and take on new tasks they weren't trained for.

You are starting to see how difficult the problem is and how limited the solutions are. You're basically saying "let's just give the robots general AI and everything will be so much easier!"

[XorNot]

Conversely it's hard until it's not. Quadcopters were hard until now they're a disposable item purchased in bulk.

The point of a model like this is targeting that very notion: that with the right software, and enough computer power, you should be able to learn a pretty wide range of available capability (i.e. humans can do this anyway - we drive, we fly planes, we operate heavy machinery - that's us being the software but it's not clear that you need the whole human to get the effect).

[golol]

Idk this is really promising, how many robot foundation models have you seen before that also work very well? I believe this is all quite recent.

[OrigamiPastrami]

I'm not saying there isn't progress. I'm saying progress is slow relative to the work that needs to be done. I've also worked at enough robotics companies to be skeptical of anything they publish because there is a strong tendency to cherry-pick results. The disconnect between the research papers being published and the reality of the robots at one company I worked at was pretty egregious.

Robots are super cool. Just be skeptical of the hype.