{"id":2808,"date":"2025-12-11T22:17:36","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T22:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=2808"},"modified":"2025-12-11T22:17:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T22:17:36","slug":"backflips-are-easy-stairs-are-hard-robots-still-struggle-with-simple-human-movements-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=2808","title":{"rendered":"Backflips are easy, stairs are hard: Robots still struggle with simple human movements, experts say"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Whether it\u2019s running down a track, doing a backflip, dancing to music, or kickboxing, there are more and more videos of humanoid robots doing increasingly impressive things.<\/p>\n

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Yet speakers at the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference on Tuesday warned against getting too dazzled by the acrobatic feats. A robot doing a backflip\u2013something difficult for a person\u2013looks impressive. But ask a robot to perform seemingly easy tasks, say, climbing up stairs or grabbing a glass of water, and many of todays droids still struggle.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat looks hard is easy, but what looks easy is really hard,\u201d Stephanie Zhan, a partner at Sequoia Capital, explained, paraphrasing an observation from computer scientist Hans Moravec. In the late Eighties, Moravec and other computer scientists noted that it was easier for computers to perform well on tests of intelligence, yet failed at tasks that even young children could do.<\/p>\n

Deepak Pathak, CEO of robotics startup Skild AI, explained that robots, and computers in general, were good at doing complex tasks when operating in a controlled environment. Showing a video of a Skild robot skipping down a sidewalk, Pathak noted that \u201capart from the ground, the robot is not interacting with anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet for tasks like picking up a bottle or walking up stairs, a person is using vision to \u201ccontinuously correct\u201d what he or she is doing, Pathak explains. \u201cThat interaction is the root reason for human general intelligence, which you don\u2019t appreciate because almost every human has it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zhan explained that viral videos of humanoid robots don\u2019t show how the product was trained, nor whether it can operate in an uncontrolled environment. \u201cThe challenge for you as a consumer of all these videos is to really discern what\u2019s real and what\u2019s not,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The next step for robots<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Still, both speakers were optimistic that advances in general intelligence will soon lead to more advanced and flexible robots.<\/p>\n

\u201cRobots used to be driven more by human intelligence. Somebody super smart would look at [a task], and\u2026pre-program the robot mathematically to do it,\u201d Pathak said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But now, the robotics field is shifting from \u201cprogramming something to learning from experience,\u201d he explained. This allows for new robots that handle more complex tasks in more uncontrolled environments, and which can easily be adapted for other tasks without the cost of reprogramming and retooling them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/div>
Stephanie Zhan, partner at Sequoia Capital, speaking at Fortune Brainstorm AI in San Francisco on Dec. 9, 2025.<\/figcaption>

Stuart Isett for Fortune<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Today\u2019s robotics firms are \u201cstill constrained by having robots that are only built for specific things,\u201d Zhan argued. A robotics platform with more general intelligence can open up \u201cpossibilities that are otherwise not possible for us to achieve,\u201d including tasks that are currently dangerous for human workers.<\/p>\n

Consumers could benefit too. \u201cYou see all these household robots, but they\u2019re only capable of doing one thing,\u201d Zhan said. \u201cBut if we succeed at building general intelligent robots, you will finally have consumer robots that can tackle the whole host of household tasks that you now have.\u201d A similar point was made earlier at Brainstorm AI by Qualcomm CEO Rene Haas, who said that the general adaptability of humanoid robots will make them much better suited for factory jobs than the robotics arms used today.<\/p>\n

There are social repercussions to a robotics boom, dislodging jobs that, as of now, still needed to be done by humans. Yet Pathak was sanguine about the social benefits of spreading automation. One is safety, as robots remove the need for humans to do jobs that are hazardous or unhealthy in the long-run. Another benefit is filling the massive labor shortage for blue-collar and manufacturing jobs. (That shortfall has been a barrier to U.S. efforts to re-shore much of its advanced manufacturing from Asian economies.)<\/p>\n

Yet Pathak also envisioned a future where robots free humans from the drudgery of everyday work, even as he admitted that societies needed to figure out how to spread the gains from automation. \u201cThere lies a scenario, a good scenario, where everybody is doing things that they like,\u201d Pathak said. \u201cWork is more optional, and they are doing things that they enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

#Backflips #easy #stairs #hard #Robots #struggle #simple #human #movements #experts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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