Rodney Brooks

NASA announces major overhaul to its Artemis moon program The changes come on the heels of yet another delay for the Artemis II mission, which aims to send four astronauts on a 10-day mission around the moon.

Changes to the NASA crewed lunar landing plans were inevitable. Level headed approach from new NASA administrator. This makes for more but smaller steps, opens things to both Blue Origin and SpaceX and rescues SpaceX from its own unrealistic hubris. www.nbcnews.com/science/spac...

I think it is a bubble. I got a copy: Brooks thinks the current wave of massive investments has probably gone too far. “I don’t think they’ll pay off the way some people have imagined,” he said. “I’m not an investment advisor. But yeah, I think there’s a danger.”

I think we just saw exactly that with LLMs. Their language proficiency is way beyond what we had before; their performance vs competence (one of my "7 sins") is making some people think we have reached human level intelligence. They have not. But it is a big software only jump. So, yes, possible.

‘Check back in 15 years’: Robotics legend Rodney Brooks rejects AI hype but won’t call it a bubble - The Boston Globe The entrepreneur and former MIT professor thinks practical humanoid robots and superintelligence are centuries away.

In the Boston Globe behind a paywall. As I undertand it a *physicist* derides me as out of touch for not worrying superintelligent AI is going to kill us all. I'm not worried because we are nowhere near close to even human level. But black holes, they worry me! www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/24/b...

This economic idea transfixed Wall Street and Washington. It may be a mirage. Massive investment in AI contributed “basically zero” to U.S. economic growth last year, Goldman Sachs has calculated.

A lede today in WaPo: "Massive investment in AI contributed “basically zero” to U.S. economic growth last year, Goldman Sachs has calculated." Hype distorts people's minds. FOMO can drive stupid behavior. FOBAWTPALSL even more so.
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

YouTube video by Automated Podcast What Makes a Robot Actually Useful at Work?

Good discussion between @mikell.bsky.social (worked with her in the early days of Rethink Robotics) and @bheater.bsky.social
of A3, about the reality of building and deploying robots. Mikell has been at many robotic startups and more recently Amazon Robotics, and GM. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNLe...

Throwing that amount of money at a broad search for new ideas would make it more likely. But instead the world is throwing money at a very narrow approach and competing on how far that particular approach can be pushed. Chances are it is not yet the right approach. And a waste of money long term.

I see the two I identified (climate and pandemics) as potential existential risks for humankind. I don't see AI or erosion of democracy having that level of impact. I think humankind would survive collapse of democracy, as horribly immoral as it would be, and return to it at some point.

5/5 What I do see as the big challenges for the rest of the 21st century (all my grandchildren can be expected to live beyond the year 2100), are global warming, and rise of diseases due to vaccine deniers.

Stay calm. Love those around you. Be kind to everyone.

4/5 Individuals, corporations, and national governments may use some of these tools to influence people with bad intentions on the part of the humans using the tools.

I don't see these as existential risks for humankind.

3/5 The other risk I see is that the AI tools for synthesis of images and videos are now so good that it is sometimes hard to know what is real and what is fake in social media postings.

2/5 The risks are not in an AI system having any intentions to do anything at all. The current AI systems are more like super search engines with merging multiple results from the search into a somewhat coherent response, but often including confabulations.

1/5 I am getting more and more emails from individuals directly to me expressing fear for their children from possibly physical actions from AI. They mention that my views seem balanced and ask me to respond to their words. The attached four skeets are a response to one such that I wrote today.

2/5 The risks are not in an AI system having any intentions to do anything at all. The current AI systems are more like super search engines with merging multiple results from the search into a somewhat coherent response, but often including confabulations.

No one can agree on whether AI is the next big thing or all hype. Here’s why | CNN Business AI is either your most helpful coworker, a glorified search engine or vastly overrated depending on who you ask.

This is a pretty good write up on where we are with new AI tools. Nicely done Lisa Eadicicco @lisaeadicicco.bsky.social www.cnn.com/2026/02/19/t...

Human guided.

Pure Vision SLAM was not practical in large spaces until the last three years. BTW, Gemini started a year late. At a 1985 conference, Chatila&Laumond had one paper and I another where we independently invented loop closing. Then Cheeseman fixed our independent but lousy probabilistic computations.

Visual SLAM is now real. Paul Mandel at Robust.AI (where I am CTO) says: We just moved into a new office and it took our team under an hour from uncrating Carter to driving around autonomously, including bringup, mapping the entire (large!) new space and annotating locations of interest. Incredible!

The CIA World Factbook has been a great source of data over the years. As of 10 days ago it is just gone with a bland announcement. And the archives, e.g., the-world-factbook/about/archives/2021 @ www cia gov have vanished. Wayback machine has them. The announcement: www.cia.gov/stories/stor...

Forbes 250: America’s Greatest Innovators The Forbes Innovator 250: America's Greatest Innovators showcases the visionaries shaping our future. Find the full list of great minds and the mark they are leaving on our history.

For US 250th birthday Forbes got humans to nominate and rank living US innovators and then let ChatGPT and Gemini have their say to get greatest 250. Surprised to learn about the list and that I am #44. Started as a pure mathematician, ended up in vacuum cleaner sales. www.forbes.com/sites/alexkn...

The SpaceX-xAI Merger Isn't About Data Centers in Space. It's About Bailing Out Musk's Biggest Gamble The list of broken promises Musk has made about fantastical technological achievements leaves a lot of room for doubt.

SpaceX plays a serious role in US Defense. "folding xAI into SpaceX, Musk is...taking the profits from...Starlink subscription and ... buy[ing] chips for Grok...turns SpaceX from a disciplined aerospace logistics company into...capital fund for Musk’s other interests." www.inc.com/jason-aten/t...

YouTube video by Anthropic How can I communicate better with my mom?

When the prize stakes are perceived to be enormous then the stakes that are wielded in the battle are sharp. A new advertisement. www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBSa...

SpaceX Delays Mars Plans To Focus on Moon Elon Musk’s rocket company had aimed to reach the red planet in 2026

SPACE RACE! SpaceX is abandoning short term Mars plans to get an uncrewed (needs mods) Starship on the Moon by March '27. It will require orbital refuels (never done by anyone). Blue Origin flight lander in final test at Johnson, say they will launch this qtr w/o refuels. www.wsj.com/science/spac...

This is really helpful, and the most complete description I have seen. Cheers to the Wayback Machine!!

It Turns Out That When Waymos Are Stumped, They Get Intervention From Workers in the Philippines During a Congressional hearing, Waymo's chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, was grilled over the company's reliance on overseas workers.

We've known for a while that Waymo has remote people in the loop (they were overwhelmed with "no green light" exec decisions during the Dec 20 SF power failure), but we did not know that many of them are in the Philippines--suggests a large scale contingent. futurism.com/advanced-tra...

Thank you. You make my point exactly. You are confusing time scales from hype and research ideas onto large scale deployment. "almost" tells you everything.

On Jan 18 I skeeted about people mushing 4 different timescales together as one and getting confused about what AI/Robotics milestones will happen when. Since then I have included this slide in two talks filling out the details, with instances of the four scales.

I think it is confidence, and that with the reopening of lunar contract bids in October they have a shot at crewed lunar landing without doing an in-space refuel, which has never been demonstrated. They already planned to do an uncrewed lunar landing this year.

Merging xAI with SpaceX is not good for US capability in space. Argument is SpaceX will launch 1TW of electricity producing solar + data centers (modulo unsolved thermal physics) per year, on a so far 11 flight rocket that has not gotten to orbit. US needs Falcon 9 to be stable workhorse. Danger.

Blue Origin pausing space tourism flights for at least 2 years to focus on moon plans "The decision reflects Blue Origin's commitment to the nation's goal of returning to the moon and establishing a permanent, sustained lunar presence."

Looks like Blue Origin is serious (as I discussed in my Jan 1st annual tech analysis) about leap frogging SpaceX to land humans on the Moon first, and this story also confirms their intention for an uncrewed lunar landing in 2026. www.space.com/space-explor...