A Leap in Robotics

Recently, GPU maker Nvidia held its annual conference for AI developers and showed what it was doing on the robotics front. Its founder and CEO Jensen Huang stated that the age of generalist robotics had arrived. He was alluding to humanoid robots. Robots have been doing specialised functions for a long time, from surger•ies to cleaning houses, but they look like regular equipment. Humanoid robots have the form of human beings—hands, legs, head, body and doing functions with them based on instructions from owners. It was a promise that science fiction had been making but one that never seemed to come to fruition. Nvidia has created and launched a foundation model, an AI software framework, for humanoid robots with the ability to do gener•alised tasks. It is collaborating with companies that manufacture human•oid robots, which will use the model to bring the robots into the market. Some of these robots were on display at the conference. There was one, for instance, that could work in ware•houses of e-commerce companies sort•ing products. Even the entertainment company Disney has one in the works to be used in its theme parks.

Five-Minute EV Charger

The Chinese electric vehicle (EV) major BYD has unveiled a five-minute charger for its vehicles which could be a game-changer. The main advantage that petrol and diesel engines still have over EVs is that they can be refuelled in minutes but this will end now with a charger like this. It also shows how BYD is striding ahead of Tesla, which has so far been the icon
of EV technology.

ChatGPT’s Visual Avatar

OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman announced that the company’s flag•ship AI product ChatGPT will now be able to make visuals through a new advanced genera•tion model. He said that what he had seen during testing had amazed him for how lifelike they were. Interestingly, he didn’t discount the possibility of the model being used for content that ‘offends’ but hinted that the company wouldn’t clamp down too much on it.

Gmail Is Going Smart

Gmail is now adding AI to come up with better results when users search in their mails. Earlier, it would come up with results chrono•logically but now it will bring out what is more relevant based on what the program predicts the user is looking for. It will do this by incorporating factors “like recency, most-clicked emails and frequent contacts”.

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