Lerrel Pinto takes a swipe at billion-dollar robot demos
He named no company and no demo, and Mahi Shafiullah replied with a quoted line and a link.
Lerrel Pinto posted a one-line shot at well-funded robotics startups, saying they claim a major AI breakthrough and then show off something a few students with a handful of GPUs could already do. He did not name a company, a robot, or a demo.
Mahi Shafiullah replied to him with a quoted sentence, "The robot arrives with no additional training and starts doing useful work", plus a link. That line reads like marketing copy from whatever set Pinto off, but neither post says where it came from or who wrote it. So the target is unconfirmed.
The robot arrives with no additional training and starts doing useful work
What is actually in the posts
Not much, and that matters. There is no benchmark, no video, no side-by-side, no company. It is a swipe from a researcher with a large following, backed by a colleague, and the thing being swiped at is invisible to anyone reading it cold.
The claim being mocked is the interesting part. "No additional training" is the strongest version of the zero-shot promise, a robot that shows up at a new site and works without being taught that site's tasks. If a startup is making that claim, it is the kind of claim that needs numbers attached, and none are in view here.
A second exchange, also unreadable
Separately, Tony Zhao replied to @OwenBrakes with a line about people saying whatever they want these days. The post he was replying to is not visible in the sources, so what he was defending or mocking is unknown. Do not stitch the two threads together. Nobody in the sources says they are about the same thing.
Shown versus claimed cuts both ways here. Academic labs have been publishing home manipulation work for a while, which is why a startup saying "first" gets return fire within the hour. But a dunk with no named target and no data does not settle anything either. Until someone points at a specific demo and puts numbers next to it, this is field chatter between people who know each other.
Fascinating how multi-billion dollar startups can claim a major AI breakthrough, then demo what smart kids with a few GPUs can do today 馃う
ya just want to be nice. you can just say things these days