The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup OpenAI recently announced that it had to shut down its robotics team as they face severe unavailability of usable data.
Co-founder of OpenAI Wojciech Zaremba said in a statement that the company no longer plans to carry out research on integrating machine learning into physical machines but would now focus on other aspects of artificial intelligence.
He said, “I was actually working for several years on robotics. Recently, we changed the focus at OpenAI. I disbanded the robotics team.” The artificial intelligence firm thought that it would be able to achieve breakthroughs in artificial general learning through self-generated data, but unfortunately, the plan didn’t work out.
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OpenAI now plans to work on other related domains, which have adequate available data. After successfully completing the Rubik’s cube project for reinforcement learning, the tech-enterprise has decided to stop conducting robotic research and focus on reinforcement learning through human feedback.
They believe it is a faster and better way to bring advancement in the artificial intelligence sector. Zaremba also said, “The sad thing is if we were a robotics company, the mission of the company would be different, and I think we would continue. I believe quite strongly in the approach that the robotics team took and the direction.”
The startup’s robotics team could not make much progress towards OpenAI’s primary goal of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI). OpenAI was founded by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, and Wojciech Zaremba in 2015.
The startup is considered to be a competitor of Alphabet’s DeepMind and specializes in conducting research in the field of artificial intelligence to develop solutions that would benefit society as a whole.
Earlier this year, the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, announced that OpenAI had released a $100 million fund for startups.
