Category Robots Podcast

Researchers from the Shenyang Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a multi-mode swimming soft robotic fish. Drawing inspiration from the highly sensitive lateral line sensing system and advanced muscle actuation mechanisms of natural fish, the new design integrates actuation, perception, and control capabilities, offering significant advancements in underwater robotics.

The US-China humanoid robot showdown is heating up! The US dominates AI & high-end tech, while China masters supply chains & cost efficiency—leading to big price gaps & diverse applications.

Despite impressive challenges from competitors, ChatGPT still dominates the AI landscape — currently serving 400 million users each week.

Even better: ChatGPT use in business has also doubled in less than six months and is currently used at more than two million enterprises, according to writer Michael Nunez.

Observes Nunez: “The surge in enterprise adoption represents a crucial validation of OpenAI’s strategy to position ChatGPT as not just a chatbot for casual queries, but as a serious productivity tool for businesses.”

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*Study: AI Use Triples Work Efficiency: Workers who are leaning on AI say tasks once requiring 90 minutes of their time now only take an average of 30 minutes.

Even so, heavy AI use at the workplace is still largely limited to the young, the highly educated and to higher income workers.

Observes writer Mike Kaput: “Unsurprisingly, industries like customer service, marketing and IT are the biggest adopters.”

Bottom line: Sounds like there are many more workers who can reap major rewards from AI with just a bit more awareness and training.

*Elon Musk’s AI Writer/Chatbot Edges Ahead of ChatGPT: In the never-ending horse race that is AI development, Elon Musk has edged ahead by a nose against ChatGPT with the latest version of his AI chatbot, Grok 3.

Observes writer Michael Nunez: “A key innovation is Grok 3’s ‘DeepSearch’ feature, which combines web searching with reasoning capabilities to analyze information from multiple sources.

“The system also includes specialized modes for complex problem-solving, including a ‘Think’ function that shows its reasoning process and a ‘Big Brain’ mode that allocates additional computing power to difficult tasks.”

Even so, Musk’s slim lead may not last long.

ChatGPT’s maker OpenAI is promising two upgrades for ChatGPT in 2025. And other major players like Google, Anthropic and Meta are throwing major coin at advancing their own AI this year.

*Deep Research Just Got Very Cheap for Writers: AI research tool Perplexity just rolled-out a new version that auto-generates in-depth research reports in minutes.

Even better: The new feature from Perplexity is completely free — and nearly as good as comparable research offered by other major players like ChatGPT, which bills users $200/month for slightly better results, according to writer Michael Nunez.

Observes Nunez: “The launch exposes a painful truth in AI pricing: Expensive enterprise subscriptions may be unnecessary.”

The catch with Perplexity: Users can only secure five deep research queries each day for free — although Perplexity Pro subscribers get 500 deep research queries a day and faster processing, according to Nunez.

*Turbo-Charged Deep Research from OpenAI Goes After Researchers’ Jobs: Writer Matt Marshall finds that Deep Research from Open AI represents a real threat to similar tasks done by human researchers — especially when paired with automated AI agents.

Observes Marshall: “With Deep Research mode, users can ask OpenAI’s leading o3 model any question.

“The result? A report often superior to what human analysts produce — delivered faster and at a fraction of the cost.”

*The New York Times Brings in More AI: Already a long-term user of AI, The New York Times has brought in new AI tools for its newsroom.

Interestingly, the AI tools can be used in virtually every step of the reporting process: Writing, editing, summarizing and even coding.

Adds writer Jess Weatherbed: “Other examples mentioned in a mandatory training video shared with staff include using AI to develop news quizzes, quote cards, and FAQs — or suggesting what questions reporters should ask a start-up’s CEO during an interview.”

*’Miss Manners’ Comes to AI: Intel has released a new AI text editor designed to ensure that any AI writing you release to the world is quite polite.

The new tool, dubbed ‘Polite Guard,’ offers four spins on the everyday oral genuflect: Polite, somewhat polite, neutral and impolite.

Intel’s primary target market for the tool is company customer service, where a polite word can make all the difference.

*AI Now Handles 70% of All Translations: A new study finds that AI now dominates the translation space at the expense of many human translators.

Observe researchers behind the report, from Lokalise: “Initial research from the product team at Lokalise showed that Claude 3.5 ranked first in translation accuracy when compared to other leading translation engines, including GPT-4o, Google Translate, DeepL and Microsoft Translator — based on the Bradley Terry model evaluation.

“Overall, the data suggests that successful companies aren’t choosing between human and machine-assisted translation but are instead adopting hybrid approaches that combine both methods for optimal results.”

*Bringing New Meaning to a Legal ‘Oops:’ Lawyers in a lawsuit got egg on their face after it was discovered that eight legal cases they’d cited in their argument did not exist.

Oops.

Instead, the supposed eight cases were little more than legal flights-of-fancy made-up by ChatGPT.

Currently, the judge for the case — Wyoming District Judge Kelly Rankin — is weighing if the attorneys should be sanctioned.

*AI Big Picture: Deep Dive: New Development Technique Promises Major AI Price Drops Ahead: Writers should expect AI writing and other tools to become much more affordable in the foreseeable future — thanks to companies like DeepSeek, which have proven that AI tools nearly as good as ChatGPT can be produced for pennies-on-the-dollar.

While there has been a slew of analysis regarding DeepSeek’s long-term impact on AI, this 34-minute video from CNBC’s Dierdra Bosa offers an easy-to-understand, deeply insightful look at where things are going.

Key to DeepSeek’s success: Instead of investing $100 million-or-more to develop its own AI engine, it simply ‘pummeled’ ChatGPT with thousands upon thousands of targeted questions to essentially distill ChatGPT’s knowledge — and then embeded that knowledge in a much smaller, cleverly written AI engine that runs much faster and much cheaper.

The result: The DeepSeek 3 AI chatbot is nearly as smart as ChatGPT.

But it only cost about $6 million to make.

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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post ChatGPT Sets New Record: 400 Million Weekly Users appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

Researchers are blurring the lines between robotics and materials, with a proof-of-concept material-like collective of robots with behaviors inspired by biology.

Groundbreaking study shows machine learning can decode emotions in seven ungulate species. A game-changer for animal welfare? Can artificial intelligence help us understand what animals feel? A pioneering study suggests the answer is yes. Researchers have successfully trained a machine-learning model to distinguish between positive and negative emotions in seven different ungulate species, including cows, pigs, and wild boars. By analyzing the acoustic patterns of their vocalizations, the model achieved an impressive accuracy of 89.49%, marking the first cross-species study to detect emotional valence using AI.

Researchers have engineered groups of robots that behave as smart materials with tunable shape and strength, mimicking living systems. "We've figured out a way for robots to behave more like a material," said Matthew Devlin, a former doctoral researcher in the lab of University of California, Santa Barbara (USCB) mechanical engineering professor Elliot Hawkes, and the lead author of the article published in the journal Science.

This surge is fueled by automation in industries such as manufacturing, logistics, and warehousing. North America is projected to lead with a 15.4% CAGR, while Asia Pacific is set to grow at 18.3%, driven by rapid industrialization.

Claire chatted to Catherine Menon from the University of Hertfordshire about designing home assistance robots with ethics in mind.

Catherine Menon is a principal lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. Her research explores the ethics and safety of autonomous systems, and she has a particular interest in the interaction between safety requirements, ethical imperatives and trust constraints in public-facing AI including assistive robots. She has previously worked as a safety-critical systems engineer in the defence and nuclear sectors, and has been involved in producing and validating several international standards for these domains.

In recent years, roboticists and computer scientists have developed a wide range of systems inspired by nature, particularly by humans and animals. By reproducing animal movements and behaviors, these robots could navigate real-world environments more effectively.

A novel system that chases larval zebrafish around an arena with predator robots is enabling scientists to understand how these days-old fish quickly learn in the real world.

AutoStore empowered by Swisslog’s SynQ software can deliver a solid return on investment. Here are four questions to help you determine if AutoStore is a good fit for your business.

Humans are known to accumulate knowledge over time, which in turn allows them to continuously improve their abilities and skills. This capability, known as lifelong learning, has so far proved difficult to replicate in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics systems.

Engineers have developed a versatile swimming robot that nimbly navigates cluttered water surfaces. Inspired by marine flatworms, the innovative device offers new possibilities for environmental monitoring and ecological research.

Swimming robots play a crucial role in mapping pollution, studying aquatic ecosystems, and monitoring water quality in sensitive areas such as coral reefs or lake shores. However, many devices rely on noisy propellers, which can disturb or harm wildlife. The natural clutter in these environments—including plants, animals, and debris—also poses a challenge to robotic swimmers.

Researchers find large language models process diverse types of data, like different languages, audio inputs, images, etc., similarly to how humans reason about complex problems. Like humans, LLMs integrate data inputs across modalities in a central hub that processes data in an input-type-agnostic fashion.