July

1 events

Editors' summary

OpenAI folds up robotics and moves resources to language

On 16 July it emerged that OpenAI had disbanded its robotics research team. The reasoning was that progress comes faster in domains where data is already abundant, as with language, than where it has to be gathered from the physical world. The robot hand that solved a Rubik's Cube had been shown two years earlier.

Rather than widening what it worked on, OpenAI was concentrating on the line that was moving.

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Record1 events

16
ResearchOpenAI / Wojciech Zaremba
OpenAI disbands its robotics research team
It emerged that OpenAI had disbanded its robotics research team. Cofounder Wojciech Zaremba, who led the effort, revealed the decision on a podcast hosted by Weights & Biases, and an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed it in a statement to VentureBeat. Zaremba explained that the scarcity of training data was holding robotics back and that focusing on data-rich domains was best for the company. The move closed the chapter known for feats like a robot hand solving a Rubik's Cube, and read at the time as a sign that OpenAI was shifting its resources toward language models.

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OpenAI disbands its robotics research team