Why humanoid robots aren't advancing as fast as AI chatbots - The Robot Report

The article discusses why humanoid robots are not advancing as rapidly as AI chatbots, despite recent breakthroughs in large language models (LLMs) that power conversational AI. While tech leaders like Elon Musk and Jensen Huang predict humanoid robots will soon perform complex tasks such as surgery or home assistance, robotics experts like UC Berkeley's Ken Goldberg caution that these expectations are overly optimistic. Goldberg highlights a fundamental challenge known as the “100,000-year data gap,” referring to the vast difference between the extensive textual data available to train AI chatbots and the limited physical interaction data available to train robots for real-world tasks. This gap significantly slows the development of robots’ dexterity and manipulation skills, which remain far behind their language processing capabilities. Goldberg emphasizes that the core difficulty lies in robots’ ability to perform precise physical tasks, such as picking up a wine glass or changing a light bulb—actions humans do effortlessly but robots struggle with due to the complexity of spatial perception and fine motor control. This issue, known