What happened
OpenAI is offering robotics engineers up to $500,000 in base salaries as it builds out its robotics efforts. The company has 27 robotics jobs listed on its careers page, up from 11 in May, spanning hardware, software, data collection, and prototyping.
OpenAI is hiring people to design and build hardware, collect the data needed to train robots, and test them, not just develop software that controls them.
The company is hiring actuator design engineers, who build the motors and mechanisms that move a robot's joints, alongside software, firmware, and machine-learning engineers.
OpenAI is looking for a lab technician to help 'develop, build, test, and iterate on robotic systems,' as well as a lawyer dedicated to the robotics team.
Another role would oversee OpenAI's 'data collection facilities,' pointing to one of the industry's biggest bottlenecks.
Unlike large language models, which could be trained on vast amounts of data already on the internet, robots need examples of how people and machines interact with the physical world.
Source details: businessinsider.com ↗
Why it matters
OpenAI's return to robotics comes as billions of dollars pour into 'physical AI,' the industry term for putting increasingly capable AI models into machines that can act in the real world. This move puts OpenAI in direct competition with some of the most heavily funded robotics efforts in Silicon Valley, including Tesla, which is building the humanoid Optimus, and Figure AI.
OpenAI's return to robotics comes as billions of dollars pour into 'physical AI,' the industry term for putting increasingly capable AI models into machines that can act in the real world.
This move puts OpenAI in direct competition with some of the most heavily funded robotics efforts in Silicon Valley, including Tesla, which is building the humanoid Optimus, and Figure AI.
OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman has grown more explicit about OpenAI's robotics ambitions in recent months, stating that the company will 'definitely do a humanoid' and 'do other form factors as well.'
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What to watch next
OpenAI's robotics team is led by Aditya Ramesh, a longtime researcher best known for creating DALL·E, the company's image generator, and later working on Sora, its AI video generator. The company's return to robotics comes as billions of dollars pour into 'physical AI,' the industry term for putting increasingly capable AI models into machines that can act in the real world.
OpenAI's robotics team is led by Aditya Ramesh, a longtime researcher best known for creating DALL·E, the company's image generator, and later working on Sora, its AI video generator.
The company's return to robotics comes as billions of dollars pour into 'physical AI,' the industry term for putting increasingly capable AI models into machines that can act in the real world.
OpenAI previously experimented with robotics before shuttering the project behind a robotic hand that could solve a Rubik's Cube in 2020.
The company's postings don't reveal much about what OpenAI's robots will ultimately look like, but references to laser range finders and batteries 'vaguely imply' an untethered mobile robot.
OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman has identified data centers as an early application for robots and suggested that robots could eventually perform household tasks as personal assistants.