Michiel van de Panne

Why not everything in manufacturing is automated (yet)

Every few weeks I see someone wondering why so little of manufacturing, particularly in the United States, is automated. There are tons of reasons why, but it's still very difficult to set up robots to succeed: open.substack.com/pub/itcanthi...

What coding with an LLM feels like sometimes.

The real question is not "Why is Bluesky so left-coded," the real question is "Why can't the right exist in a social media environment without algorithmic assistance, where people can ignore them"

It's that time of year when my days are spent turning coffee into reference letters. :-/

Mapping the dark-money oil and gas ads targeting a small Ontario town Dark money is paying for oil and gas ads on shadowy Facebook pages, all coordinated by a PR firm with oil and gas — and Conservative Party — connections. How did a small town in Southern Ontario find ...

I called five different numbers. Every single one led to the same man’s voicemail. My first investigative piece is out in Canada’s National Observer—uncovering a hidden fossil fuel ad network.

Satirical news headline: Danielle Smith uses notwithstanding clause to declare herself premier of B.C.

Pangram Predicts 21% of ICLR Reviews are AI-Generated | Pangram Labs Pangram performed an analysis of all papers and peer reviews submitted to ICLR, a major machine learning publication venue.

9% of papers and 21% of reviews at ICLR 2026 are predicted to be AI generated. We live in interesting times. Caveat: I’m not familiar with the detection methods. But I could easily be persuaded that these are realistic numbers. www.pangram.com/blog/pangram...

This Video of a Robot Playing Basketball Is EXTREMELY Impressive Researchers have programmed a Unitree G1 humanoid robot to play basketball, almost perfectly mimicking the skills of a human athlete.

“This Video of a Robot Playing Basketball Is EXTREMELY Impressive

…Researchers programmed a Unitree G1 humanoid robot to play basketball, almost perfectly mimicking the skills of a human athlete. A video shows the robot dribbling, taking jump shots, and even pivoting on one of its feet…”

Yinhuai on X: "First-ever real-world basketball demo by a humanoid robot 🤖🏀 Bonus: I became the first person to record a block against a humanoid🤭 #Robotics #AI #TechDemo #NBA https://t.co/mERAsHxsLI" / X First-ever real-world basketball demo by a humanoid robot 🤖🏀 Bonus: I became the first person to record a block against a humanoid🤭 #Robotics #AI #TechDemo #NBA https://t.co/mERAsHxsLI

Impressive, waiting for the paper on these humanoid basketball movements. x.com/NliGjvJbycSe...

I'm so happy to finally be able to talk about our new SIGGRAPH Asia paper "Control Operators for Interactive Character Animation". It's been by far the most work I've seen go into a SIGGRAPH paper (thanks goes to @gouruiyu.bsky.social) and a fun project all round.

theorangeduck.com/page/control...

Wake up Canada. Skate to where the puck is going (electrification of everything)

Pylons with autonomous mobility. I wonder what how a Waymo reacts to a set of moving pylons :-)

Alberta’s pipeline math still doesn’t add up The biggest obstacle standing between Alberta and its premier's repeated pledge to double oil production isn't the tanker ban, the emissions cap, or any other piece of federal legislation. It's realit...

I suspect there will be a lot of people lashing out at the Carney government over the MOU that's been leaked today.

I'd encourage them to read this first. The biggest hurdle in the way of a new oil pipeline to the west coast, by far, has yet to be cleared.

www.nationalobserver.com/2025/11/18/o...

Cartoon showing how each time vehicles have gotten bigger, it’s led other people to think their vehicles need to be bigger too. The final panel shows people discussing that they’ll need to install whirling spike clubs, or else be destroyed by other drivers…

True story.

Via @xkcd.com

Chinese delivery robots in action

Another shot of the xpeng robot. really surreal stuff.

I do like that high quality (« natural ») motions for humanoids are now very much appreciated. Welcome to the first steps beyond the « uncanny valley »!!

I’m a bit less impressed, except for the hardware (great!) as we knew how to do the control as of 2013, 2017, 2018, depending on one’s point of reference. That sim-to-real now works relatively well ( with a bit of effort) is perhaps the biggest surprise over the past 6-8 years.

For those following global surface temperature anomalies, October 2025 is going to finish 1.50C above the pre-industrial baseline and 3rd hottest on record since 1940.

Which also means that October, 2025, is likely the 3rd hottest October in the last 120,000 years.

Mark Carney needs to come clean on climate The prime minister has been conspicuously quiet about an issue that seemed to define his politics before he entered the partisan arena. That needs to change.

We know Mark Carney is trying to drive a "grand bargain" on climate and energy. It's time for him to lay out his side of the arrangement -- and learn from the communications mistakes of his predecessor. #cdnpoli

www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/30/o...

UBC Computer Science is hiring up to 2 full-time tenure-track Assistant Professor positions. Applications due Dec 10 2025

UBC Computer Science invites applications for up to two full-time tenure-track positions with the following priority areas: visualization, robotics, reinforcement learning, data management, and data mining. Applications are due Wed Dec 10, 2025. Learn more: www.cs.ubc.ca/our-departme...

Policy-Gradient Reinforcement Learning as a General Theory of Practice-Based Motor Skill Learning Mastering any new skill requires extensive practice, but the computational principles underlying this learning are not clearly understood. Existing theories of motor learning can explain short-term ad...

Our 2024 paper showed that policy gradient RL (with performance-based memory updates) predicts long-horizon motor learning. Now, @adrianhaith.bsky.social shows that policy-gradient RL also explains learning in other shorter horizon tasks. Exciting!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Vladlen Koltun’s paper on alternatives to h-indices is relevant and worth a read: vladlen.info/publications...

Burning out The international AI industry's collective risk.

A new essay on the crazy, all or nothing approach to work happening in AI today, the looming human costs, and the lack of a finish line.

I wouldn't say it's okay, but I'm not sure how to fix it.
www.interconnects.ai/p/burning-out

YouTube video by 22 Minutes When the ICE agent is Canadian… | This Hour Has 22 Minutes

N.I.C.E. Agents on the #Halifax waterfront #NovaScotia #Canada 🤣🍁

youtu.be/S1yYGb1U31o?...

YouTube video by Patrick Boyle Is AI’s Circular Financing Inflating a Bubble?

This is a great video by Patrick Boyle on the cross-investments between many tech companies.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbL7...

Deepmimic++ , i.e., Mocap tracking with RL, with appropriate retargeting and some env randomization?

Global oil surplus could stretch into 2026 on higher OPEC+ output, softening demand, IEA says The International Energy Agency says global supply may exceed demand by about 4 million bpd next year

"World oil supply will rise more rapidly than previously expected this year & a surplus could expand in 2026"
But by all means let's gamble on new oil pipelines in a world with a rapidly expanding oil glut. New pipelines are economic madness. #EndFossilFuels
www.theglobeandmail.com/business/ind...

#aaai26 | Omer Ben-Porat | 13 comments #AAAI26 This year, in addition to five human reviewers, we also received an AI review. The humans sort of liked the paper, so there's hope. The AI, however, took a bolder approach: it confidently d...

Here is a story about a AAAI paper that got 5 human reviews and 1 AI review. The AI generated review contained a page-long counterexample to a proof in the paper. The AI’s counter example contained hallucinated errors. How does one rebut an AI reviewer? www.linkedin.com/posts/omerbp...