Robotics gets less attention than it should given its potential impact

IF WE take the assertions of prominent tech CEOs at face value, humanity could be risking extinction if artificial intelligence is left to its own devices. Large language models like those that power ChatGPT have shown the first sparks of intelligence, they say, and might lead to armageddon (although the specifics of exactly how have yet to be fleshed out). A few weeks ago, I found myself in an alternate AI reality – with zero mention of human extinction or analogies to nuclear war – when I attended the world’s largest robotics summit, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics …