From the archive
AI robotics combines perception, planning and learning with machines that act in the physical world. Follow developments in humanoid robots, autonomous systems, robotic manipulation and embodied intelligence. Our reports examine what was demonstrated, the conditions it worked under and the gap between a controlled trial and reliable deployment, with sources you can check and space to discuss the results.
Lead story
Developers told VentureBeat that safeguards in OpenAI and Anthropic models are flagging ordinary aerospace, robotics and security tasks, interrupting work and sometimes pushing them towards other models. The dispute is practical: how can AI tools block dangerous requests without treating routine engineering as a threat?
Read the report & discussion ↗Anthropic Watch
Anthropic has published a study estimating which US job tasks today’s robots can perform, and where they can do them. Its central finding is a useful brake on automation headlines: robots can perform an estimated 74% of physical tasks, but are cost-competitive with people for just 0.3% of…
AMD Watch
AMD has agreed to acquire World Labs, the spatial-AI company co-founded by Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock deal valued at about US$8.2 billion. The move brings research into AI systems that model the physical world closer to a chipmaker’s hardware and software business, with potential applications in robotics…
Watch Desk
Carnegie Mellon University says its planned Miami campus will organise research and teaching around societal challenges, with AI and other emerging technologies part of the approach. Its four initial areas include health, national security, advanced manufacturing, and energy and climate resilience.
Microsoft AI Watch
Microsoft Research Asia’s Singapore lab says it began nine new projects with the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University in its first year. The work spans healthcare AI, robotics, AI systems and multi-agent systems, offering a concrete snapshot of how Microsoft is building research links across…
Fei-Fei Li Watch
Fei-Fei Li has released Atlas, a model that HackerNoon says can rebuild a three-dimensional scene from photographs. The same article says Chinese company Yingsu’s video-based InSpatio-Curious ranked first in a public world-model benchmark, putting two different approaches to spatial AI side by side.
AMD Watch
AMD has agreed to acquire World Labs, the AI company co-founded by researcher Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock deal valued at about $8.2 billion. The purchase brings a leading world-model lab into the chipmaker, with Li set to join AMD as executive vice-president and chief scientist once the…
NVIDIA Watch
Nvidia’s extraordinary share-price rise is changing the meaning of its famous employee retention strategy: some long-serving staff now have enough wealth to leave, retire or build something of their own. Business Insider reports that vested shares are turning the company’s golden handcuffs into a rather well-funded exit plan.
Microsoft AI Watch
Colombia’s government has proposed a pilot partnership with Microsoft to train young people and adults in artificial intelligence, while also exploring cooperation in quantum computing. The initiative would give the country’s technology ambitions a practical test, although no agreement or timetable has yet been announced.
AWS AI Watch
Aderant has put an AI ticket-triage system into production for its SierraOps team, using Amazon Nova Lite through Amazon Bedrock to gather context, classify support requests and route work. In its first 2.5 weeks, the company says the system reviewed 109 tickets with approximately 96% routing accuracy, while…
Watch Desk
AI is helping Endura Therapeutics analyse experiments, build research tools and screen hundreds of disease targets, according to Adrian Sanborn in Latent Space. The important shift is not a miraculous robot scientist, but a practical one: researchers can now explore far more options before committing scarce laboratory time.
DeepSeek Watch
DeepSeek’s v0.1.7-rc.2 release gives its agent harness a more persistent workflow: scheduled tasks can survive app restarts, repeat as often as every minute and continue running when the desktop window is closed. It also adds clearer controls for approvals, plugins and account-backed versus API-key tasks, turning a research-shaped…
