Educating robots to navigate new environments is hard. You may prepare them on bodily, real-world information taken from recordings made by people, however that’s scarce, and costly to gather. Digital simulations are a fast, scalable technique to train them to do new issues, however the robots typically fail after they’re pulled out of digital worlds and requested to do the identical duties in the actual one.
Now, there’s probably a greater possibility: a brand new system that makes use of generative AI fashions along with a physics simulator to develop digital coaching grounds that extra precisely mirror the bodily world. Robots skilled utilizing this methodology labored with the next success fee than these skilled utilizing extra conventional strategies throughout real-world checks.
Researchers used the system, referred to as LucidSim, to coach a robotic canine in parkour, getting it to scramble over a field and climb stairs, regardless of by no means seeing any actual world information. The strategy demonstrates how useful generative AI could possibly be in the case of instructing robots to do difficult duties. It additionally raises the chance that we may in the end prepare them in totally digital worlds. Learn the total story.
—Rhiannon Williams
Africa’s AI researchers are prepared for takeoff
Once we speak concerning the international race for AI dominance, the dialog typically focuses on tensions between the US and China, and European efforts at regulating the expertise. But it surely’s excessive time we speak about one other participant: Africa.
African AI researchers are forging their very own path, growing instruments that reply the wants of Africans, in their very own languages. Their story is just not solely one in every of persistence and innovation, however of preserving cultures and preventing to form how AI applied sciences are used on their very own continent. Nonetheless, they face many limitations. Learn the total story.
—Melissa Heikkilä