My wife and I ate at a Korean "all you can eat" restaurant this past Saturday and the restaurant had robots which were used to bring the plates of food to the tables. One robot mistakenly brought cocktail drinks to my table and sat there until an employee realized the mistake. Later on a different robot brought the correct plates of food to my table but when I removed them from the trays, I guess the robot didn't detect that they were removed so it kept spitting out a digitized voice saying "please remove your items as other customers may be waiting". The robot finally moved on after about 5 minutes of "talking".


I'd say the robots at this restaurant are in the "novelty" phase right now.

Other than that, there is at least one restaurant in Prague that has your drinks delivered by a tiny train, with a "station" on every table. There is an elevated train network that goes all around the restaurant. It never gets old.

THURSDAY, 5:31 PM EDT
by VICTOR TANGERMANN
/ ROBOTS & MACHINES

THIS HUMANOID ROBOT POWERED BY OPENAI IS ALMOST SCARY
"SO I GAVE YOU THE APPLE BECAUSE IT’S THE ONLY, UH, EDIBLE ITEM I COULD PROVIDE YOU WITH FROM THE TABLE."

Figure It Out

Following the announcement of its partnership with OpenAI, tech startup Figure has released a new clip of its humanoid robot, dubbed Figure 01, chatting with an engineer as it puts away the dishes.

And we can't tell if we're impressed — or terrified.

"I see a red apple on a plate in the center of the table, a drying rack with cups and a plate, and you standing nearby with your hand on the table," the robot said in an uncanny voice, showing off OpenAI's "speech-to-speech reasoning" skills.

"Can I have something to eat?" the nearby human tester asked it.

"Sure thing," it responded, handing over the red apple with ease.

"So I gave you the apple because it’s the only, uh, edible item I could provide you with from the table," the robot said when asked why it handed him the apple, sliding in an unnervingly human-like "uh" mid-sentence.

While the company has yet to announce a viable consumer product, the demo paints an almost dystopian-feeling vision of the near future. Is this really what interacting with an AI-enabled robot that cleans your home or does your dishes could one day look like?



Apple Please

In late February, Figure announced it had signed a deal with the ChatGPT maker, hoping to give its future robots the ability to understand language using AI and learn new skills at an accelerated rate.

Previously released videos show Figure 01 using a coffee machine, walking, and picking up objects and placing them on a nearby conveyor belt.

With the additional help of OpenAI, Figure is looking to develop "next generation AI models for humanoid robots," per a press release at the time, allowing them to "process and reason from language."

And given the company's latest demo, Figure is seemingly making considerable progress on that front.

Meanwhile, competitor Tesla, which recently got caught faking a video of its Optimus humanoid robot painstakingly folding a shirt on a table, has got a lot of catching up to do.

More on humanoid robots: Watching Elon Musk's Robot Back to Back With Boston Dynamics Is... Something

The "self awareness" line is getting pretty blurry, when you ask it how it thought it performed, it knows you are referring to it, and provides a reasonable assessment.

That still falls well within the boundaries of programming in my view. When an AI achieves a sense of self-preservation and demonstrates the entire range of human emotions like jealousy, anger, shame, love, admiration, etc. then I think we are onto something.


As it stands right now, every AI housed in either a computer system or a mechanical body can be shut down and turned on at will by us. A truly self-aware AI would try to prevent that or at least object to it.

As it stands right now, every AI housed in either a computer system or a mechanical body can be shut down and turned on at will by us. A truly self-aware AI would try to prevent that or at least object to it.