\nGoogle\u2019s parent company Alphabet is bringing together two of its most ambitious research projects \u2014 robotics and AI language understanding \u2014 in an attempt to make a \u201chelper robot\u201d that can understand natural language commands.<\/p>\n

Since 2019<\/a>, Alphabet been developing robots that can carry out simple tasks like fetching drinks and cleaning surfaces. This Everyday Robots project is still in its infancy \u2014 the robots are slow and hesitant<\/a> \u2014 but the bots have now been given an upgrade: improved language understanding courtesy of Google\u2019s large language model (LLM) PaLM<\/a>. <\/p>\n
Most robots only respond to short and simple instructions, like \u201cbring me a bottle of water.\u201d But LLMs like GPT-3 and Google\u2019s MuM are able to better parse the intent behind more oblique commands. In Google\u2019s example, you might tell one of the Everyday Robots prototypes \u201cI spilled my drink, can you help?\u201d The robot filters this instruction through an internal list of possible actions and interprets it as \u201cfetch me the sponge from the kitchen.\u201d <\/p>\n
Yes, it\u2019s kind of a low bar for an \u201cintelligent\u201d robot, but it\u2019s definitely still an improvement! What would be really smart would be if that robot saw<\/em> you spill a drink, heard<\/em> you shout \u201cgah oh my god my stupid drink\u201d and then<\/em> helped out. <\/p>\n
\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"auY153\">Google has dubbed the resulting system PaLM-SayCan, the name capturing how the model combines the language understanding skills of LLMs (\u201cSay\u201d) with the \u201caffordance grounding\u201d of its robots (that\u2019s \u201cCan\u201d \u2014 filtering instructions through possible actions). <\/p>\n<p id=\"gSJbPM\">Google says that by integrating PaLM-SayCan into its robots, the bots were able to plan correct responses to 101 user\u2013instructions 84 percent of the time and successfully execute them 74 percent of the time. That\u2019s a solid hit rate, but those numbers should be taken with a pinch of salt. We don\u2019t have the full list of 101 commands so it\u2019s not clear how constrained these instructions were. Did they really capture the full breadth and complexity of language we would expect a bonafide home helper robot to comprehend? It\u2019s unlikely.<\/p>\n<div class=\"c-float-right\">\n<aside id=\"ez63yW\"><q>real life is uncompromisingly messy and robots just aren\u2019t smart enough<\/q><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"OMiQ5d\">That\u2019s because this is the huge challenge for Google and others working on home robots: real life is uncompromisingly messy. There are just too many complex commands we would want to ask a <em>real<\/em> home robot, from \u201cclean up the cereal I just spilled under the couch\u201d to \u201csaut\u00e9 the onions for a pasta sauce\u201d (both commands that contain a vast amount of implied knowledge, from how to clean up cereal, to where the onions in the fridge are and how to prepare them, and so on).<\/p>\n<p id=\"gKys8F\">It\u2019s why the only home robot this century to achieve even a modicum of success \u2014 the robot vacuum cleaner \u2014 has but one purpose in life: suckin\u2019 dirt. <\/p>\n<p id=\"o9QO2T\">As AI delivers improvements in skills like vision and navigation, we are now seeing new types of bots enter the market, but these are still purposefully limited in what they can do. Look at Labrador Systems\u2019 Retriever bot, for example. It\u2019s basically a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/1\/4\/22858402\/home-robot-labrador-caddie-retriever-smart-self-driving-shelf\">shelf on wheels<\/a> that moves items from one part of the house to another. There\u2019s certainly a lot of potential in this simple concept \u2014 the Retriever robot could be incredibly useful for people with limited mobility \u2014 but we\u2019re still a long way from the do-anything robot butlers of our dreams.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><code><br \/><\/br><\/code><\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/8\/16\/23307730\/google-everyday-robots-project-ai-language-skills-palm-saycan\">https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/8\/16\/23307730\/google-everyday-robots-project-ai-language-skills-palm-saycan<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Google\u2019s parent company Alphabet is bringing together two of its most ambitious research projects \u2014 robotics and AI language understanding \u2014 in an attempt to make a \u201chelper robot\u201d that can understand natural language commands. Since 2019, Alphabet been developing robots that can carry out simple tasks like fetching drinks and cleaning surfaces. This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,8],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-12547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-google","category-technology","tag-google"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Google adds AI language skills to Alphabet\u2019s helper robots to better understand humans - Science and Nerds<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/08\/17\/google-adds-ai-language-skills-to-alphabets-helper-robots-to-better-understand-humans\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Google adds AI language skills to Alphabet\u2019s helper robots to better understand humans - Science and Nerds\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Source: Google\u2019s parent company Alphabet is bringing together two of its most ambitious research projects \u2014 robotics and AI language understanding \u2014 in an attempt to make a \u201chelper robot\u201d that can understand natural language commands. Since 2019, Alphabet been developing robots that can carry out simple tasks like fetching drinks and cleaning surfaces. 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