Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says AI thinks a rolling ball disappears
Jensen Huang is the head of Nvidia, the chipmaker.
The short version
- He says today computers lack the basic physical sense dogs have.
- A dog knows a dropped ball is on the floor.
- Most robots still try to walk straight through tables.
Why it matters to you. If you set a bottle down, a human knows it does not drop through the wood.
Roll a ball off your kitchen counter and your dog trots around the table to find it. Nvidia, the giant chipmaker, says today's artificial intelligence would conclude the ball simply left the universe. Jensen Huang, the head of Nvidia, made that exact gap the centerpiece of his pitch at the Hill & Valley Forum in Washington.
The next wave requires machines to understand the laws of physics, friction, and inertia. He calls the missing link physical AI. Most computers excel at writing and pictures on a screen, but they lack the common sense a toddler or a pet grasps instantly.
Robots need to learn that if you want to reach the other side of a room, you must walk around the obstacle instead of marching straight through it.
Nvidia has already released foundation models named GR00T for humanoid robots. Huang argues that a new generation of highly robotic factories will help companies deal with severe labor shortages around the world in the next 10 years. Until the machines finally learn that a ball does not vanish into thin air, your family dog keeps the lead.
Photo: Anderseidesvik, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, edited
