from the still-might-be-three-raccoons-in-a-trenchcoat dept.
A Chinese company cut open their invention on stage to prove that it was not a human in a robot suit after comments that it looked too real. Unless it was a human with a missing leg, the robot was indeed proven to be a mechanical invention.
Technology company, Xpeng, unveiled its second-generation humanoid robot, IRON, at its AI Day in Guangzhou, China last week, rivalling Tesla's Optimus robots.
Powered by a solid-state battery and three custom AI chips, IRON features a "humanoid spine, bionic muscles, and fully covered flexible skin, and supports customisation for different body shapes."The robot has the power to make 2,250 trillion operations per second (TOPS) and features 82 degrees of freedom, including 22 in each hand.
"Its movements are natural, smooth, and flexible, capable of achieving, catwalk walking and other high-difficulty human-like actions," Xpeng said
(Score: 4, Funny) by khallow on Friday November 21, @02:52PM
(Score: 5, Funny) by OrugTor on Friday November 21, @04:46PM
It's a human with a missing leg. They should have taken the head off.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Tork on Friday November 21, @05:15PM
The Robot was quoted as saying "AAAAHHHH WHY WAS I PROGRAMMED TO FEEL PAIN!?"
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 2) by Revek on Friday November 21, @06:53PM
Cartman gets killed in the form of Awesom-O.
You killed Carman! That asshole.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 4, Interesting) by istartedi on Friday November 21, @07:04PM (3 children)
This seems like really good viral marketing to me. I watched the video and the robot still lacks the true fluidity and grace of human movement. At best, it might look like a human doing a very good robot impression. If they had fully human movement they would have demonstrated it. Cutting just the leg is doing exactly what they intended--generating discussion about whether or not it's human, and making people aware of the company. When you watch other videos of this model (they're out there) it plainly has robotic movement and it's usually not skinned.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FunkyLich on Friday November 21, @08:48PM (2 children)
At any rate, Chinese scientists and industry are closer to humanoid robots than where the rest of the world is. Most oftentimes "the best" is not what everyone is after, rather it's the "good enough". And in most everything, Chinese products have been "good enough" for most everything imaginable and in many areas are also "the best".
Maybe it is not only their merit though, to be fair. It's also the stupidity of "The West" who seem to be sinking deeper into the recent fetishes of the nonsense surrounding AI and QC (Quantum Computing). These two are like two jokers taking turns to keep the crowd entertained and cheering: one taking the spotlight while the other is on a short break to gather its breathing (and to let the dust of time and forgetfulness cover any lie when caught red handed at it).
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday November 22, @01:15AM (1 child)
AI (the large language model version, anyway) and QC (quantum computing) have very different surrounding nonsense.
LLMs: we do not know how they work, and often they don't.
QC: We do know how it works, but it's very difficult to translate that knowledge into reliable hardware.
(Score: 2) by FunkyLich on Saturday November 22, @10:30AM
Yes, agreed that the problems and nonsense of AI and QC are very different. On the final result though, it's only semantics where these differ, when the end result is the same: unachievable. Whether because one has illusions on how it works, and the other requires hardware that needs to be physically the size of the Moon and consumes energy in the scale of a star's output, it just means one thing: not possible.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Friday November 21, @09:35PM (2 children)
Is the pressing issue that it's China, and not the U.S., that's developing this technology more rapidly? Or is it that such technology will soon render most humans obsolete, and make it so that most people will be unable to earn a living by working?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FunkyLich on Saturday November 22, @10:17AM
All what's required is a change in how human societies organize.
- Currently, as the most popular economic system is (namely Capitalism), indeed, a true functional Artificial Intelligence will make a lot of human work redundant, the owners of the capital will care only to increase that capital while decreasing the costs of doing so. If AI (and its wide range of automating processes) will result in lower costs while increasing profits, then yes, swathes and hordes of humans on the planet will have a tough future ahead.
- Another economic system that exists is what is known as Socialism. While not focusing on the political and social aspects of it, in the economical viewpoint it welcomes and promotes the increase and improvement of any form of automation. Marx discussed this aspect extensively in "The Capital", basically boiling up to automation freeing up humans from redundant work and making it possible for them to spend that time in leisure activities. Surviving and earning a living is fundamentally different as its a social based economy where the entire mechanism works differently. So AI is a lot more welcome and encouraged in a socialist economy to integrate in everyday lives of humans.
Choosing between these two is a childish approach and already naive. We are all aware of the faults and shortcomings of a pure socialist society. Just as we are well aware that a pure capitalist society is plagued with its own ills and what we have right now is far from a purely capitalist society (Usistan is hellbent to convince everyone that is the case, but luckily we all know better than that). So the future is to re-balance these two, in a point of equilibrium that is different from what it was last century, different still from what it is now, and I think will shift even more towards the socialist way of doing things (as of now, that balance is more socialist shifted compared to what it was 100 years ago). How and when this shift will happen, that is still to be seen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23, @08:53AM
China has a smoother transition to a shiny Star Trek style future (with a dystopian experience behind the curtains for those who don't toe the Party line).
The US has a smoother transition to one or more of many sci-fi dystopias e.g. where the corps control everything etc (e.g. Robocop).
I mean just look at the amount and strength of opposition by millions of US people towards stuff like Universal Healthcare and Basic Income. "It's Communist!" etc etc.
For China, transferring (forcibly or not) some of the robot generated wealth to the People being "Communist" is a documented feature not a bug...