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☆ Elon Musk wants to take humanoid robots mainstream with Optimus. Making them 'the biggest product ever' will be tough.
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-11 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Tesla plans to unleash a new generation of humanoid robots. Related storiesMusk's plans to make humanoid robots mainstream face some tough challenges, however. Before these new iterations were revealed, industry watchers were already predicting explosive growth in the humanoid robotics market. AdvertisementIt is unclear how Musk's Optimus robots will stand out in this fast-growing market and become "the biggest product ever of any kind." Making further improvements to humanoid robots is a tough technical challenge.

Persons: Tesla, Elon Musk, Optimus, Musk, —, Elon, Cybertruck, livestream, Jensen Huang, Huang, Goldman Sachs, Paul Miller, Forrester, Jim Fan, Gene Organizations: Service, Warner Bros, Elon, Tech, Amazon, Oregon State University, Robotics, Nvidia, Star Wars, Hyundai, Boston Dynamics, Deepwater Asset Management, Optimus Locations: Burbank , California

☆ The AI boom turned Nvidia into a trillion-dollar giant. Its next big bet is even more complex.
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-01 | by ( Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

In addition to the Computex display, humanoid robots have come up on Nvidia's last two earnings calls. The first is self-driving cars and the second is likely to be humanoid robots. Project Groot, which the company refers to as a "moonshot" initiative, is a foundation model for humanoid robots. AdvertisementIt feels like every player aiming for humanoid robots is in it for themselves, Kapoor said. Simulators are an essential stop on the path to humanoid robots, but they don't necessarily lead to human-like perception.

Persons: Jensen, —, Jensen Huang, gesturing, Elon Musk, Huang, Raul Martynek, Databank, Isaac, Tesla, That's, Sophia Velastegui, who's, William, Omniverse, Ashish Kapoor, Kapoor, Jonathan Stephens, Martynek, Velastegui Organizations: Service, Nvidia, Apple, Google, Microsoft, BMW, Boston Dynamics, BYD Electronics, Siemens, sunsetted, Foundations, Grid, Scaled Foundations, Star Locations: Taipei, Taiwan, Computex

☆ Startups are building robots that can perceive the human world. Here's why VC firms like Khosla and a16z say that spatial intelligence will be the next big thing in AI.
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-09 | by ( Samantha Stokes | Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Spatial intelligence allows robots to navigate and interact with their environment more efficiently, which means that robots can perform more complex tasks with higher precision and adaptability. AdvertisementEven so, investors say that spatial intelligence represents a quantum leap for the robotics industry, a space already benefiting from an AI boom. Lior Susan, CEO and founder of Eclipse Ventures, is betting that the difficulty of building AI with spatial intelligence will yield bigger returns in the future. "You see this boom of generative AI startups that are actually buying a lot of compute that do not have a business model yet," Susan said. Big tech is rolling in, tooBigger tech companies are also gearing up to compete in robotics' spatial intelligence race—both as builders and investors.

Persons: —, Andreessen Horowitz, Catalyst, Howard Morgan, Max Rimple, Erin Price, Wright, Fei, Fei Li, Kanu Gulati, Khosla, –, Gulati, Lior Susan, Susan, Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang Organizations: Service, Khosla Ventures, Business, B Capital, Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue Management, Stanford University, Eclipse Ventures, Intelligence, Lux, Sequoia Capital, Microsoft, Nvidia, Carbon Robotics, AIs Locations: LLMs, OpenAI, Lux Capital, Taipei

☆ I doubled my income at Microsoft after starting my career in a factory. I only had enough money for 1 semester of school, but I was determined.
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-11 | by ( Perri Ormont Blumberg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Read previewThis as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nandita Gupta, an accessibility product manager at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. I'm an accessibility product manager at Microsoft. Since December 2021, I've worked as an accessibility product manager for Accessibility Insights, a suite of products that helps developers code with accessibility in mind. There came a moment in my manufacturing job when I asked myself, "What am I doing? Taking the Microsoft job doubled my earnings from my last job — my annual income was around $75,000 in manufacturing, and the move to Microsoft brought my total compensation to over $170,000.

Persons: —, Nandita Gupta, I've, MasterClass, Lauryn Haas Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Business, Google, Zoo Atlanta, TED, Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, TEDx Georgia Tech Locations: Redmond , Washington, lhaas@businessinsider.com

As Open AI employees celebrated the return of CEO Sam Altman with a five-alarm office party , OpenAI software engineer Steven Heidel was busy publicly rebuffing overtures from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Heidel was one of more than 700 OpenAI employees who's threatened exodus halted a would-be mutiny at one of Silicon Valley's most important AI companies. He was previously a scientist at Facebook AI Research and worked as a member of Google Brain under supervision of Prof. Geoffrey Hinton and Ilya Sutskever. Alec Radford: Radford was hired in 2016 from a small AI company he founded in his dorm room. Tao Xu : technical staff, worked on GPT4 and WhisperChristine McLeavey : technical staff, with contributions to music-related productsChristina Kim : technical staffChristopher Hesse : technical staffHeewoo Jun : technical staff, researchAlex Nichol : technical staff, researchWilliam Fedus: technical staff, researchIlge Akkaya: technical staff, researchVineet Kosaraju : technical staff, researchHenrique Ponde de Oliveira Pinto : technical staffAditya Ramesh : technical staff, developed DALL-E and DALL-E 2Prafulla Dhariwal : research scientistHunter Lightman : technical staffHarrison Edwards : research scientistYura Burda : machine language researcherTyna Eloundou : technical staff, researchPamela Mishkin : researcherCasey Chu : researcherDavid Dohan : technical staff, researchAidan Clark : researcherRaul Puri : research scientistLeo Gao : technical staff, researchYang Song : technical staff, researchGiambattista ParascandoloTodor Markov : Machine learning researcherNick Ryder : technical staff

Persons: Sam Altman, Steven Heidel, Marc Benioff, Heidel, Altman, Mira Murati, Murati, Brad Lightcap, Lightcap, Jason Kwon, Kwon, Wojciech Zaremba, Geoffrey Hinton, Ilya Sutskever, Alec Radford, Radford, OpenAI, Peter Welinder, He's, Github Copilot, Anna Makanju, Andrej Karpathy, OpenAI's, Michael Petrov, Petrov, Greg [ Brockman, Miles Brundage, Brundage, John Schulman OpenAI, Srinivas Narayanan, Scott Grey, Grey, Bob McGrew, Research Che Chang, Lillian Weng, Safety Systems Mark Chen, Frontiers Research Barret Zoph, Peter Deng, Jan Leike Evan Morikawa Steven Heidel Jong Wook Kim, Tao Xu, Christine McLeavey, Christina Kim, Christopher Hesse, Heewoo, Alex Nichol, William Fedus, Henrique Ponde de Oliveira Pinto, Aditya Ramesh, Hunter Lightman, Harrison Edwards, Yura, Tyna, Pamela Mishkin, Casey Chu, David Dohan, Aidan Clark, Raul Puri, Leo Gao, Yang, Giambattista Parascandolo Todor Markov, Nick Ryder Organizations: Business, BI, OpenAI, Khosla Ventures, Facebook, Research, Google, Tesla, U.S . Department of Energy, Oxford University, Safety Systems, Frontiers Research Locations: Albania, Canada, OpenAI

☆ Amazon adds a new reason to get and keep Prime: member discounts on health-care services
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-08 | by ( Paulina Likos | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Amazon (AMZN) said on Wednesday that it's offering Prime members a discount on its new health-care service — another perk that should help bring more people into the online retailer's ecosystem. It provides members unlimited 24/7 access to virtual care as well as in-person, and remote primary care services. Prime members can add up to five people from their family to the One Medical plan for an additional $6 a month. Amazon offering a discounted subscription to One Medical's services is part of the company's efforts to expand the broader Prime flywheel by leveraging its 167 million Prime members. The goal of the Amazon Prime membership is to provide people with "one simple membership, something that provides shopping, savings, streaming and now positive health outcomes, said Jamil Ghani, SVP of Amazon Prime in a CNBC interview Wednesday.

Persons: Jeff Marks, It's, Tom Forte, Forte, Andy Jassy, Davidson, there's, Jamil Ghani, Jim Cramer's, Jim Cramer, Jim, John Love, Jason Redmond Organizations: Amazon, D.A, Amazon Web Services, Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Prime, CNBC, Robotics Research, AFP, Getty Locations: Davidson, Sumner , Washington

☆ Q&A With the Sustainability Chief of Oilfield-Services Firm SLB
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-05 | by ( Rochelle Toplensky | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +9 min

The German native joined SLB, formerly known as Schlumberger , in 2021 as its chief strategy and sustainability officer. Katharina Beumelburg, chief strategy and sustainability officer of SLB. Beumelburg: This push toward lowering carbon emissions in the oil-and-gas industry is a major change. The other side is our transition technology portfolio that focuses on bringing the carbon emissions at our customers down. Carbon capture and storage is the obvious short-term solution to reduce carbon emissions, one where the technology is ready, where we know what to do.

Persons: Katharina Beumelburg, SLB, Beumelburg, SLB Beumelburg, Johan Rockström, Rochelle Toplensky Organizations: Sustainability, Siemens, SLB, Schlumberger, Pro, WSJ, Potsdam Institute, Business, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Linde, Rochelle, rochelle.toplensky@wsj.com Locations: Greenland, Paris, Texas, Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Davos

Warehouse workers pick items up, sort them and put them down millions of times a day. Warehouse workers at Amazon and other companies are at risk of developing repetitive-stress injuries and musculoskeletal disorders. The Sparrow is “a major leap in technology challenge and technology development,” said Joseph Quinlivan, Amazon’s vice president of global robotics and technology. Amazon workers at the robotics facility in Westborough, Mass. New robots aren’t expected to replace warehouse employees but will lead to more roles to work with the robots, Amazon said.

☆ Amazon is cutting some robotics projects in a reorganization of its research efforts in this field. Canvas, which it bought for over $100 million, is the latest casualty.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Amazon is consolidating robotics research projects to focus on those that help customers most. Amazon is shutting down Canvas, the warehouse robotics startup it acquired for over $100 million in 2019, Insider has learned, as the e-commerce giant continues to cut costs. Employees are being given the choice to transfer to a different team within Amazon or leave with severance pay. Last week, Amazon shut Scout, a mini home delivery robot it launched in 2019. The company has implemented a broader hiring freeze in its retail business too, while scaling back several warehouse expansion plans this year.

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