when I was a student studying robotics a group of us decided to make a present

for our professor's birthday we wanted to program our robots to cut a slice of
cake for him we pulled an all nighter writing the software and the next day
disaster we programmed this robot to cut a soft round sponge cake but we didn't
coordinate well and instead we received a square hard ice cream cake the robot
flailed wildly and nearly destroyed the cake our professor was delighted anyway
he calmly pushed the stop button and declared the erratic behavior of the robot a
control Singularity a robotics technical term I was disappointed but I learned a
very important lesson the physical world with its physics laws and imprecisions
is a far more demanding space than the digital world today I lead mit's computer
science and AI lab the largest Research Unit at MIT this is our building where I
work with brilliant and brave researchers to invent the future of computing and
intelligent machines today in Computing artificial intelligence and Robotics are
largely separate Fields AI has amazed you with its decision decision making and
learning but it remains confined inside computers robots have a physical
presence and can execute pre-programmed tasks but they're not intelligent well
this separation is starting to change AI is about to break free from the 2D
computer screen interactions and enter a vibrant physical 3D World in my lab
we're fusing the digital intelligence of AI with a mechanical prowess of robots
moving AI from the digital world into the physical world is making machines
intelligent and leading to the next great breakthrough what I call physical
intelligence physical intelligence is when ai's power to understand text images
and other online information is used to make real world machines smarter this
means AI can help pre-programmed robots do their tasks better by using Knowledge
from data with physical intelligence AI doesn't just reside in our uh computers
but walks rolls flies and interacts with us in surprising ways imagine being
surrounded by helpful robots at the supermarket the one on the left can help you
carry a heavy box to make it happen we need to do a few things we need to rethink
how machines think we need to um reorganize how they are designed and how they
learn so for physical intelligence AI has to run on computers that fit on the
body of the robot for example our soft robot fish today's AI uses server Farms
that do not fit today's AI also makes mistakes this AI system on a robot car does
not detect pedestrians for physical intelligence we need small brains that do not
make mistakes we're tackling these challenges using inspiration from a worm
called sea Elegance in sharp contrast to the billions of neurons in the human
brain Seance has a happy life on only 32 neurons and biologists understand the
math of what each of these neurons do so here's the idea can we build AI using
inspiration from the math of these neurons we have developed together with my
collaborators and uh students a new approach to AI we call Liquid networks and
liquid networks results in much more Compact and explainable solutions than
today's traditional AI Solutions let me show you this is our self-driving car
it's trained using a traditional AI solution the kind you find in many
applications today this is the dashboard of the car in the lower right corner you
see the map in the upper left corner the camera input stream and the big box in
the Middle with a blinking lights is the decisionmaking engine it consists of
tens of thousands of artificial neurons and it decides how the car should steer
it is impossible to correlate the activity of these neurons with the behavior of
the car moreover if you look at the lower left side you see where in the image
this decision-making engine looks to tell the car what to do and you see how
noisy it is and this car uh drives by looking at the bushes and the trees on the
side of the road that's not how we drive people look at the road now contrast
this with our liquid Network solution which consists of only 19 neurons rather
than tens of thousands and look at its attention map it's so clean and focused on
the road Horizon and the side of the road because this model are so much smaller
we actually understand how they make decisions so how did we get this
performance well in a traditional AI system the computational neuron is the
artificial neuron and uh the artificial neuron is essentially an onoff
computational unit it takes in some numbers adds them up applies some basic math
and passes along the result and this is complex because it happens across
thousands of computational units in in liquid networks we have fewer neurons but
each one does more complex math here's what happens inside our liquid neuron we
use differential equations to model the neural computation and the artificial
synapse and these differential equations are what biologists have mapped for the
neural structure of the worms we also wire the neurons differently to increase
the information flow well these changes yield phenom Al results traditional AI
systems are frozen after training that means they cannot continue to improve when
we deploy them in the physical world in the wild we just wait for the next
release because of what's Happening inside the liquid neuron liquid networks
continue to adapt after training based on the inputs that they see let me show
you we train traditional Ai and liquid uh networks using summertime videos like
these ones and the the task was to find things in the woods all the models learn
how to do the task in the summer then we tried to use the models on drones in the
fall the traditional AI solution gets confused by the background look at the
attention map cannot do the task liquid networks do not get confused by the
background and very successfully execute the task so this is it this is the step
forward AI that adapts after training liquid networks are important because they
give us a new way of getting machines to think that is rooted into physics models
a new technology for AI we can run them on smartphones on robots on Enterprise
computers and even on new types of machines that we can now begin to imagine and
design the second aspect of physical intelligence so by now you've probably
generated images using text to image systems we can also do text to robot but not
using today's AI Solutions because they work on statistics and do not understand
physics in my lab we developed an approach that guides the design process by
checking and simulating the physical constraints for for the machine we start
with a language prompt uh make me a robot that can walk forward and our system
generates the designs including sh shape materials um actuators sensors the
program to control it and the fabrication files to make it and then the designs
get refined in simulation until they meet the specifications so in a few hours we
can go from idea to controllable physical machine we can also do image to robot
this photo can be trans uh transformed into cuddly robotic bunny to do so our
algorithm computes a 3D representation of the photo that gets sliced um unfolded
printed then we fold the printed layers we string some Motors and sensors uh we
write some code and we get the bunny you see in this video we can use this
approach to make anything almost uh from an image from a photo so the ability to
do uh to transform uh text into images and to transform IM into robots is
important because we are drastically reducing the amount of time and the
resources needed to prototype and Test new products and this is um allowing for a
much faster Innovation cycle and now we are ready to even make the leap to get
these machines to learn the third aspect of physical intelligence these machines
can learn from humans how to do tasks you can think of it as human to robot in
my lab we created a kitchen environment where we instrument people with sensors
and we collect a lot of data about how people do kitchen tasks um we need
physical data because videos do not capture the Dynamics of the tasks so we
collect muscle pose even gaze information about how people do tasks and then we
train AI using this data to teach robots how to do the same tasks um and the
result is machines that move with Grace and Agility as well as adapt and learn
physical intelligence we can use this approach to uh teach robots how to do a
wide range of tasks food preparation cleaning and so much more the ability to
turn images and text into functional machines coupled with using liquid networks
to create powerful brains for these machines that can learn from humans is
incredibly exciting because this means we can make almost anything we imagine
today's AI has a ceiling it requires server Farms it's not sustainable it makes
in inexplicable mistakes let's not settle for the current offering when AI moves
into the physical world the opportunities for benefits and for breakthroughs is
extraordinary you can get personal assistance that optimize your routines and
anticipate your needs bespoke machines that help you at work and robots that
Delight you in your spare time the promise of physical intelligence is to
transcend our human limitations with capabilities that extend our reach amplify
our strength and refine our precision and grant us ways to interact with a world
we've only dreamed of we are the only species so Advanced so aware so capable of
building these extraordinary tools yet developing physical intelligence is
teaching us that we have so much more to learn about technology and about
ourselves we need human guiding
hands over AI sooner rather than later after all we remain responsible for this
planet and everything living on it I remain convinced that we have the power to
use physical intelligence to ensure a better future for Humanity and for the
planet and I'd like to invite you to help us in this Quest some of you will help
develop physical intelligence some of you will use it and some of you will invent
the future thank you