The Obtain: rise of the multimodal robots, and the SEC’s new local weather guidelines


The information: In the summertime of 2021, OpenAI quietly shuttered its mulrobotics workforce, saying that progress was being stifled by a scarcity of information obligatory to coach robots in how you can transfer and motive utilizing synthetic intelligence.

Now three of OpenAI’s early analysis scientists say the startup they spun off in 2017, known as Covariant, has solved that downside. They’ve unveiled a system that mixes the reasoning expertise of huge language fashions with the bodily dexterity of a complicated robotic.

The way it works: The brand new mannequin, known as RFM-1, was educated on years of information collected from Covariant’s small fleet of item-picking robots, in addition to phrases and movies from the web. Customers can immediate the mannequin utilizing 5 various kinds of enter: textual content, photos, video, robotic directions, and measurements. The corporate hopes the system will turn into extra succesful and environment friendly because it’s deployed in the actual world. Learn the complete story.

—James O’Donnell

The SEC’s new local weather guidelines have been a missed alternative to speed up company motion

—Dara O’Rourke is an affiliate professor and co-director of the grasp of local weather options program on the College of California, Berkeley.

Final week, the US Securities and Alternate Fee enacted a set of long-awaited local weather guidelines, requiring most publicly traded firms to reveal their greenhouse-gas emissions and the local weather dangers increase on their stability sheets. 

Sadly, the federal company watered down the laws amid intense lobbying from enterprise pursuits, undermining their final effectiveness—and lacking the perfect shot the US could have for a while at forcing firms to reckon with the rising risks of a warming world. Learn the complete story.