{"id":172328,"date":"2025-09-27T08:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T08:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/172328\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T08:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T08:10:08","slug":"humanoid-robots-are-metas-next-ar-size-bet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/172328\/","title":{"rendered":"Humanoid robots are Meta\u2019s next \u2018AR-size bet\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is Sources by Alex Heath<\/a>, a newsletter about AI and the tech industry, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.<\/p>\n

Building humanoid robots is Meta\u2019s next \u201cAR size bet,\u201d a top executive told me recently. That suggests the company plans to spend billions of dollars on the effort.<\/p>\n

During a recent conversation at Meta\u2019s headquarters, CTO Andrew Bosworth said he stood up a robotics \u201cresearch effort\u201d earlier this year at the direction of CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The team\u2019s existence has been reported on<\/a> before, but Bosworth hadn\u2019t discussed its strategy in-depth until our interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the hardware is the hard part,\u201d he told me ahead of Meta\u2019s recent Connect conference. \u201cI\u2019m not saying the hardware isn\u2019t also hard, but it\u2019s not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is the software.\u201d<\/p>\n

To demonstrate, Bosworth picked up my glass of water from a table between us. \u201cIf you know robotics, one of the biggest problems that you have is dexterous manipulation,\u201d he said. \u201cThese robots, they can stand, they can run, they can do a flip, because the ground is a super stable thing.\u201d By contrast, a robot trying to pick up the glass of water would likely \u201cimmediately crush it or spill all the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not saying the hardware isn\u2019t also hard, but it\u2019s not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is the software.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Meta is currently building its own humanoid, or \u201cMetabot\u201d as it\u2019s called internally, Bosworth envisions the company licensing its software platform to other robot manufacturers. \u201cI don\u2019t care about us being the hardware manufacturers,\u201d he explained. Instead, Meta plans to approach it similarly to Google, which licenses its software to phone makers. The idea, according to Bosworth, is to take the software blueprint Meta develops and let any company use it \u201cas long as your robot meets these specs.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that Meta\u2019s new Superintelligence AI lab is collaborating with the robotics group to build a \u201cworld model\u201d that can \u201cdo the software simulation required to animate a dexterous hand.\u201d (Google DeepMind\u2019s Demis Hassabis has also talked frequently about his goal of building a world model that brings spatial awareness to AI.) The \u201csensor loop doesn\u2019t exist\u201d for a humanoid to be able to gingerly fetch a set of keys out of a jeans pocket like a human could, Bosworth explained. \u201cSo you have to build that data set.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wouldn\u2019t be doing this if we didn\u2019t have the lab, if we didn\u2019t think we were going to be building the models that could do it,\u201d he said, referring to the new team being led by ex-Scale CEO Alexandr Wang.<\/p>\n

When I asked about the approach Elon Musk is taking with Optimus, Bosworth said that building humanoids won\u2019t work in the same way that Tesla has built its self-driving platform: \u201cThey\u2019re like, \u2018Look, we\u2019re not doing LiDAR. Humans have figured this out with vision, and therefore, we can do it with enough data.\u2019 I can see how Tesla cars are getting enough data. I can\u2019t figure out how they\u2019re going to get robotic data.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wouldn\u2019t be doing this if we didn\u2019t have the lab.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marc Whitten, the former CEO of self-driving company Cruise, is leading Meta\u2019s robotics team. \u201cThe real story is the talent we\u2019ve been able to pull,\u201d according to Bosworth. He highlighted Sangbae Kim \u2014 \u201cthe greatest tactical roboticist in the game right now\u201d \u2014 who Meta hired from MIT earlier this year. He also told the story of convincing Jinsong Yu, a senior Meta engineer who architected the software for the Orion AR glasses prototype, not to retire and join the team. And Ning Li, a 15-year company veteran, is now leading the engineering team for robotics.<\/p>\n

Based on my conversation with Bosworth, it appears that Meta still has a lot to figure out regarding its robotics strategy. He mentioned how there are \u201ca bunch of people competing to be the backbone provider\u201d for humanoids at the silicon level, such as Nvidia and Qualcomm, and that Meta is \u201cconsidering all those pieces.\u201d And even though he framed the effort in the same category as the billions Meta is spending on AR, Bosworth seemed to downplay the need for a robot that\u2019s as dexterously advanced as Tesla\u2019s Optimus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think you need 23 degrees of freedom in your hand. Two thumbs would be nice. I only need two thumbs.\u201d<\/p>\n

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