Nvidia won, we all lost

I don’t want to jump on nvidia but I found it super weird when they clearly remote controlled a Disney bot onto the stage and claimed it was all using real time AI which was clearly impossible due to no latency and weirdly the bot verifying correct stage position in relation to the presenter. It was obviously the Disney bot just being controlled by someone off stage.

I found it super alarming because why would they fake something on stage to the extent of just lying.i know Steve jobs had backup phones but jsut claiming a robot is autonomous when it isn’t I just feel it was scammy.

It reminded me of when Tesla had remote controlled Optimus bots. I mean I think that’s awesome like super cool but clearly the users thought the robots were autonomous during that dinner party.

I have no idea why I seem to be the only person bothered by “stage lies” to this level. Tbh even the Tesla bots weren’t claimed to be autonomous so actually I should never have mentioned them but it explains the “not real” vibe.

Not meaning to disparage just explaining my perception as a European maybe it’s just me though!

EDIT > Im kinda suprised by the weak arguments in the replies, I love both companies, I am just offering POSITIVE feedback, that its important ( in my eyes ) to be careful not to pretend in certain specific ways or it makes the viewer question the foundation ( which we all know is SOLID and good ).

EDIT 2 >There actually is a good rebuttal in the replies, although apparently I have "reading comprehension skill deficiencies" its just my pov that they were insinuating the robot was aware of its surroundings, which is fair enough.

As I understand it the Disney bots do actually use AI in a novel way: https://la.disneyresearch.com/publication/design-and-control...

So there’s at least a bit more “there” there than the Tesla bots.

Not just you.

I hate being lied to, especially if it's so the liar can reap some economic advantage from having the lie believed.

Ableton Live is from Europe :)

I believe its RL trained only.

See this snipet : "Operator Commands Are Merged: The control system blends expressive animation commands (e.g., wave, look left) with balance-maintaining RL motions"

I will print a full retraction if someone can confirm my gut feeling is correct

oof!

You win the award for instant karma

And it has fallen vastly behind other DAWs

Having worked on control systems a long time ago, that's a 'nothing' statement: the whole job of the control system is to keep the robot stable/ambulating, regardless of whatever disturbances occur. It's meant to reject the forces induced due to waving exactly as much as bumping into something unexpected.

It's easier to stabilise from an operator initiated wave, really; it knows it's happening before it does the wave, and would have a model of the forces it'll induce.

How so?

There's also a very thick coat of hype in https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/glossary/ai-factory/ and related material, even though the underlying product (an ML training cluster) is real.

I just want Acid Pro on Mac

Yeah. I have a general rule that I don't do business with people who lie to me.

It seems to me like both cases raised by OP - the Disney droids and Optimus - are cases of people making assumptions and then getting upset that their assumptions were wrong and making accusations.

Neither company was very forthcoming about the robots being piloted, but neither seems to be denying it either. And both seem to use RL / ML techniques to maintain balance, locomotion, etc. Not unlike Boston Dynamics' bots, which are also very carefully orchestrated by humans in multiple ways.

Haters gonna hate (downvotes just prove it - ha!)

I tried to understand the point of your reply but Im not sure what your point was - I only seemed to glean "its easier to balance if the operator is moving it".

Please elaborate unless Im being thick.

EDIT > I upvoted your comment in any case as Im sure its helping

I think its cool you disagree with me, it would be nice to hear a counter argument though.

Disney are open about their droids being operator controlled. Unless nvidia took a Disney droid and built it to be autonomous (which seems unlikely) it would follow that it is also operator controlled. The presentation was demonstrating what Disney had achieved using nvidia’s technology. You can see an explainer of how these droids use machine learning here: https://youtube.com/shorts/uWObkOV71ZI

If you think the droid was autonomous then I guess that is evidence that nvidia were misrepresenting (if not lying).

Having seen these droids outside of the nvidia presentation and watching the nvidia presentation, I think it’s obvious it was human operated and that nvidia were misleading people.

'control system' in this case is not implying remote control, it's referring to the feedback system that adjust the actuators in response to the sensed information. If the motion is controlled automatically, then the control loop can in principle anticipate the motion in a way that it could not if it was remote controlled: i.e. the opposite, it's easier to control the motions (in terms of maintaining balance and avoiding overstressing the actuators) if the operator is not live puppeteering it.

It's that there's nothing special about blending "operator initiated animation commands" with the RL balancing system. The balance system has to balance anyway; if there was no connection between an operator's wave command and balance, it would have exactly the same job to do.

At best the advantage of connecting those systems is that the operator command can inform the balance system, but there's nothing novel about that.

Apologies, yes, "control system" is somewhat niche jargon. "Balance system" is probably more appropriate.

If you look at the video he says " this is real time simulation .. can you believe it" basically : https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jD5y1eQ3Y_o

Yet he lists all the RL stuff that we know is used in the robot, he isnt being silent and saying " this robot is aided by AI" , or better yet, not commenting on the specifics, ( which would have been totally ok ), instead he is saying " This is real life simulation", which it isnt.

EDIT > apparently I am wrong - thank you for the correction everyone!

Thank you for the explanation

I have written motion control firmwares for 20+ years, and "this is real time simulation" has very domain-specific meaning to me. "Real time" means the code is responding to events as they happen, like with interrupts, and not via preemptible processing which could get out of sync with events. "simulation" is used by most control systems from simple PID loops to advanced balancing and motion planning.

It is clearly - to me at least - doing both of those things.

I think you're reading things into what he said that aren't there.

Well "control system" is a proper term understood by anyone with a decent STEM education since 150 years ago.

I assume any green accounts that are just asking questions with no research are usually lying. Actual new users will just comment and say their thoughts to join the community.

Yea, this seems like the initial poster has reading comprehension skill deficiencies and is blaming NVIDIA for lying about a point they never made. NVIDIA is even releasing some of the code they used to power the robot, which further proves that they in no way said the robot was not being operator controlled, just that it was using AI to make it’s movement look more fluid.

ok thanks

I can’t even imagine what kind of person would not follow that rule.

Do business with people that are known liars? And just get repeatedly deceived?

…Though upon reflection that would explain why the depression rate is so high.

fair enough, upvoted.

Only as opposed to what? VLAM/something else more trendy?

> I don’t want to jump on nvidia but I found it super weird when they clearly remote controlled a Disney bot onto the stage and claimed it was all using real time AI which was clearly impossible due to no latency and weirdly the bot verifying correct stage position in relation to the presenter. It was obviously the Disney bot just being controlled by someone off stage.

I don't know what you're referring to, but I'd just say that I don't believe what you are describing could have possibly happened.

Nvidia is a huge corporation, with more than a few lawyers on staff and on retainer, and what you are describing is criminal fraud that any plaintiff's lawyer would have a field day with. So, given that, and since I don't think people who work at Nvidia are complete idiots, I think whatever you are describing didn't happen the way you are describing it. Now, it's certainly possible there was some small print disclaimer, or there was some "weasel wording" that described something with ambiguity, but when you accuse someone of criminal fraud you want to have more than "hey this is just my opinion" to back it up.

"RL is not AI" "Disney bots were remote controlled" are major AI hypebro delulu moment lol

Your understanding of AI and robotics are more cucumber than pear shaped. You're making very little technical sense here. Challenges and progress in robotics aren't where you think they are. It's all propagandish contents you're basing your understandings on.

If you're getting information from TikTok or YouTube Shorts style content, especially around Tesla bros - get the hell out of it at Ludicrous Speed. Or consume way more of it so thoroughly that you cannot be deceived anymore despite blatant lies everywhere. Then come back. They're all plain wrong and it's not good for you.

They're soaked eyebrows deep in Tiktok style hype juice, believing that latest breakthrough in robotics is that AGIs just casually started walking and talking on their own and therefore anything code controlled by now is considered proof of ineptitude and fake.

It's complete cult crazy talk. Not even cargocult, it's proper cultism.

I seem to remember multiple posts on large tech websites having the exact same opinion/conclusion/insinuation as the one you originally had, so not necessarily comprehension problem on your part. My opinion: Nvidia's CEO has a problem communicating in good faith. He absolutely knew what he was doing during that little stage show, and it was absolutely designed to mislead people toward the most "AI HYPE, PLEASE BUY GPUs, MY ROBOT NEEDS GPUS TO LIVE" conclusion

Tefal literally sells a rice cooker that boasts "AI Smart Cooking Technology" while not even containing a microcontroller and just being controlled by the time-honored technology of "a magnet that gets hot". They also have lawyers.

AI doesn't mean anything. You can claim anything uses "AI" and just define what that means yourself. They could have some basic anti-collision technology and claim it's "AI".

Crazy talk. All the others have been playing catchup and still aren’t there with some things.

> what you are describing is criminal fraud that any plaintiff's lawyer would have a field day with

"Corporate puffery"

Not sure why my comment got so upvoted, all my comments are my personal opinion based solely on the publicly streamed video, and as I said, I’ll happily correct or retract my impression.

> "control system" is somewhat niche jargon

Oh my god. What the hell is happening to STEM education? Control systems engineering is standard parlance. This is what Com Sci people are like?

To be fair, lots of fields have a notion of a "control" system. Control Theory doesn't have a monopoly on the term, for all that the field revolves around 'control systems'.