Robots, whether they are bipedal humanoids handling basic factory tasks or four-legged military “robot dogs” intended for urban combat, need brains. Historically, these have been highly specialized and purpose-built. But a Pittsburgh-based robotics startup claims it’s created a single off-the-shelf intelligence that can be plugged into different robots to enable basic functions.
Founded in May 2023 by Abhinav Gupta and Deepak Pathak, two former Carnegie Mellon University professors, Skild AI has created a foundational model for what it describes as a “general purpose brain” that can be slotted into a variety of robots, enabling them to do things like climbing steep slopes, walking over objects obstructing its path and identifying and picking up items.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2024/07/09/this-15-billion-ai-company-is-building-a-general-purpose-brain-for-robots/
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Founded in May 2023 by Abhinav Gupta and Deepak Pathak, two former Carnegie Mellon University professors, Skild AI has created a foundational model for what it describes as a “general purpose brain” that can be slotted into a variety of robots, enabling them to do things like climbing steep slopes, walking over objects obstructing its path and identifying and picking up items.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2024/07/09/this-15-billion-ai-company-is-building-a-general-purpose-brain-for-robots/
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
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00:00Today on Forbes, this $1.5 billion AI company is building a general-purpose brain for robots.
00:09Robots, whether they're bipedal humanoids handling basic factory tasks
00:14or four-legged military robot dogs intended for urban combat, need brains.
00:20Historically, these have been highly specialized and purpose-built.
00:24But a Pittsburgh-based robotics startup claims it's created a single,
00:28off-the-shelf intelligence that can be plugged into different robots to enable basic functions.
00:34Skilled AI, founded in May 2023 by Abhinav Gupta and Deepak Pathak,
00:40two former Carnegie Mellon University professors,
00:43has created a foundational model for what it describes as a
00:46quote, general-purpose brain that can be slotted into a variety of robots,
00:51enabling them to do things like climbing steep slopes,
00:54walking over objects obstructing its path,
00:57and identifying and picking up items.
01:00The company announced on Tuesday that it has raised $300 million at a $1.5 billion valuation
01:06in a Series A funding round led by Lightspeed Ventures, SoftBank,
01:11Co2, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,
01:14with participation from CRV, Felicis Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Amazon, and General Catalyst, among others.
01:22Raviraj Jain, the Lightspeed partner who also led the company's seed round in July 2023,
01:28told Forbes he was wildly impressed with Skilled AI's models
01:32when he first saw them being pressure tested last April.
01:35Robots using them were able to perform tasks in environments that they'd never seen before
01:39and hadn't been designed for demos.
01:42He said, quote,
01:43The robots at that time were able to climb stairs,
01:46and I think it's really crazy how well they were able to do it
01:49because it's a very complex stability problem.
01:53And still more impressive,
01:54the robots using Skilled's AI models also demonstrated, quote,
01:58emergent capabilities, entirely new abilities they weren't taught.
02:03These are often simple, like recovering an object that slips out of hand or rotating an object.
02:08But they demonstrate the model's ability to perform unanticipated tasks,
02:12a tendency that occurs in advanced artificial systems like large language models.
02:17Skilled has pulled this off by training its model on a massive database of text, images, and video,
02:23one it claims is 1,000 times larger than those used by its rivals.
02:28To create this massive database, the co-founders, both former AI researchers at Meta,
02:33blended a mix of data collection techniques,
02:36which they have developed and tested over years of research.
02:40One way was to hire human contractors to operate robots remotely
02:44and collect data about those actions.
02:46Another was to have the robot carry out random tasks, record the results, and learn by trial and error.
02:53The AI model was also trained on millions of public videos.
02:58As a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley,
03:00Pathak developed a way of instilling, quote, artificial curiosity into robots
03:05by rewarding the system for producing outcomes that come about
03:08when it can't predict the results of its actions.
03:11Pathak explained, quote,
03:13The more uncertain the agent is about the prediction of the effect of its actions,
03:17the more curious it gets to explore.
03:20The technique incentivized the AI to navigate more scenarios and collect more data.
03:26Pathak's research on curiosity-driven learning was published in 2017
03:31and has been cited more than 4,000 times, he said.
03:34Pathak also devised a way for robots to use written information from large language models like GPT
03:40of how to open a can of milk, for example,
03:42and convert that into actions.
03:45Pathak said, quote,
04:00Skilled AI faces steep competition from a string of robotics companies
04:04that have emerged with billions of dollars in venture funding thanks to the AI boom.
04:09Industry behemoth OpenAI recently revived its robotics team
04:13to supply models to robotics companies, as Forbes first reported.
04:17Then there's outfits like humanoid robotics company Figure AI,
04:21helmed by billionaire CEO Brett Adcock,
04:24and Covariant, an OpenAI spinoff that is building chat GPT for robots
04:29and has raised over $200 million to do it.
04:33For full coverage, check out Rashi Srivastava's piece on Forbes.com.
04:38This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.