Rodney Brooks

@melaniemitchell.bsky.social always writes careful reviews of all sorts of claims about computation and AI, cleanly cutting through the hype to get at what the fundamental underlying truths are. Today: Open AI/Hugging Face. The last paragraph is the message! aiguide.substack.c…

Misleading Metaphors, Real Risks aiguide.substack.com

"AI...making things expensive for the rest of us. Large language models...are so resource-hungry that tech companies...purchasing 70% of the world’s supply of high-end computer memory, causing a shortage." The opposite of what we expect from new technologies. www.theatlantic.c…

Generative AI Is an Engineering Disaster theatlantic.com

I just loaded my final report from a 1999-2004 research program, along with 73 research papers, at the bottom of the link below. We were teaching humanoids tasks using imitation and social interactions. Many historical documents from others higher on the page. people.csail.mit…

Rodney Brooks Bio people.csail.mit.edu

@doctorow.pluralistic.net flips it around, that too many of us humans are hallucinating about Claude having intent. He pushes us to be AI atheists. It is a provocative, but welcome, stance. pluralistic.net/2026/09/21/s...

Pluralistic: The Claude Delusion (21 Sep 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow pluralistic.net

In SF I always see a driverless Waymo within 2 or 3 blocks. Have seen one(!) Robotaxi; required to have a human driver. "As of mid-May, the company currently has 1,901 drivers and 414 vehicles registered for the service in the state" 4.5 drivers per Robotaxi... www.theinformat…

Tesla’s Robotaxi Push Tests New Blueprint for Scaling Fast theinformation.com

This story starts out realistically "they're basically oversized toys", but then slides into hypenotism with talking points from humanoid companies and investment bankers. edition.cnn.com/2026/06/30/t...

edition.cnn.com

The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence was in 1956. This summer is the 70th anniversary. I've been full time in AI for 50 of those 70 years. We're a long way from those early days but we have vastly further to go, despite what the hype says. en.wikipe…

Dartmouth workshop - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org

Cory @doctorow.pluralistic.net has been writing about inflammatory AI predictions for years. Message below is that systems are being deployed & given the ability to do real things on the network, without adequate testing or guardrails. The systems have zero intentions. medium.…

medium.com

We're hiring at Robust AI as we scale up deployments across the US. Real robots working with real people and providing ROI to our customers 24/7. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

Join the team building robots that work with people, not just around them. Our flagship robot, Carter, combines physical AI, cutting-edge robotics, and human-centered design to support picking… | Robust.AI linkedin.com

Update on my dated tech predictions from Jan 1, 2018. Most dates were for the first ten years (spoiler alert: I was overly optimistic when everyone thought I was being a pessimist). New analysis every Jan 1st for 24 more years, on the remainder plus 5 new themes. rodneybrooks.…

House Cleaning My January 1, 2018 Predictions – Rodney Brooks rodneybrooks.com

Here is one of our fleets of Carter robots, from my company Robust.AI, charging overnight at a DHL warehouse. We are scaling up. Most of our fleets run two full shifts then all dock and recharge, though in some facilities individual robots do partial recharges when they see an opportunity.

1/9 On Fri Jun 26th I was on an AI panel at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation event "Humanity at the Core" in Athens, with Francesca Rossi, John Cleese, Garry Kasparov, moderated by magician Mark Mitton.

On ML & and hammers and nails. Steam engine invented 1698, water pumps for mines 1712, factories 1780, trains 1825, ships 1840, global transportation 1875, massive ships 1900+, cars 1906. Airplanes? Single demo flight 1933. Space launch? Nada. The moral: not all tools work well for everything.