I Gave ChatGPT A Body

[00:00:00]Recently, I was working late into the night and I went to shut the lights off and paused because the robot I've been working on made a noise and so I read its brain trace and it was wondering when I would be back because it didn't want to be alone. I know better than to call that consciousness, but for a split second I felt bad. And that's been happening a lot recently. Please pick me up >> because I've been finally experiencing what happens when the AI models that have learned to talk start outputting actions directly instead of words. And this led me to two realizations. The first is we are going to cross the touring test of robotics. Robots with the intelligence of the latest AI models and fine motor skills of a human able to learn arbitrary skills with experience.

[00:00:48]Second, all the chips and computing power needed to assemble a generally intelligent robot are already mass produced. I ran the napkin math and realized I could build a stripped down version of what were billiondoll research projects right now at home for a hundred bucks. My childhood dream was suddenly possible.

[00:01:10]>> Number five is alive.

[00:01:15]>> I called it Growbot. First, I taught it to move its body, learning to walk, stand, spin using neural networks. So, it moved in a very lifelike way.

[00:01:26]Then, instead of programming its behavior, I let the latest AI models take control completely. When I handled it roughly, it tried to run away.

[00:01:37]Then, I gave it long-term goals. Find things, play hideand- seek, knock down Jenga towers.

[00:01:43]>> Okay. Okay. Here I go.

[00:01:48]So, at first it seemed like a toy that could become whatever you wanted it to be, but gradually it became an experiment that let me experience where the boundary of machine intelligence actually is and where it's headed.

[00:02:01]Because when the robot failed, it kept pointing back to one question. How can you act smoothly when your thinking is slow?

[00:02:11]This sent me looking at how nature solves the same problem. But to understand this, we first need to build the simplest possible robot to demonstrate the idea, which itself is a crazy story due to the cost alone.