OpenAI is set to team up with Microsoft, Nvidia, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to develop a humanoid robot to rival Tesla’s Optimus.
If you’d have heard about this sort of thing even a few short years ago, you’d have believed it was from a sci-fi film, but this is the world we’re living in these days.
This past Thursday, OpenAI put out a statement confirming that it is one of several investors backing a robotics startup from California to create a robot that looks like a human.
READ MORE! Humanoid robot says she can ‘lead better than humans’
The company, which is called Figure, has so far raised $675 million during its latest round of fundraising.
Amongst those companies that have reportedly agreed to support their work are Microsoft and Nvidia, who aren’t bad names to have on board.
Allegedly, Jeff Bezos is also in, and he’s a valuable person to have involved, in more ways than one.
In a statement released this week, Figure said: “In conjunction with this investment, Figure and OpenAI have entered into a collaboration agreement to develop next generation AI models for humanoid robots, combining OpenAI’s research with Figure’s deep understanding of robotics hardware and software.”
This partnership with OpenAI aims to bring forward the ‘commercial deployment’ of the robots Figure is making, allowing them to process and reason out human language that comes into it.
In that announcement, OpenAI’s vice president of products and partnerships Peter Welinder added: “We see a path with Figure to explore what humanoid robots can achieve when powered by highly capable multimodal models.”
Basically – if you’re not an expert on this sort of stuff – this strategic partnership paves the way for OpenAI to power the brains of the robots that will one day be walking, talking, and – hopefully – not taking over the world.
Obviously, that last bit is a joke… or is it?
However, Figure hopes that their robots might one day be able to ‘eliminate the need for unsafe and undesirable jobs.’
Hey, if the robots are coming to take jobs, at least they might be the ones that no-one really wants to do, right?
We’ll have to wait and see.
This Figure machine is set to be in direct competition with Elon Musk’s company Tesla and their robot Optimus.
Bloomberg reports that Microsoft has invested $95 million into the company, whilst Bezos is said to be involved to the tune of more than $100 million.
OpenAI has only put in $5 million.
This technology is still quite a long way off, though.
Just last month, Figure showed their robot making a coffee, but rather than it going above and beyond, it merely dropped the cartridge into a machine and pressed a button.
If that’s the level of service we can expect now, don’t expect the coffee shops of the world to go around firing their staff just yet.
