Huawei researchers think AI needs a body to take the next step

Artificial intelligence has taken massive leaps since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT last year. However, in order for artificial intelligence to take the next step toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), Huawei researchers say it will need a body. The researchers, who are part of Huawei’s Paris-based Noah’s Ark Lab, published a preliminary report on the matter. In the report, Huawei researchers call it “embodied artificial intelligence,” or E-AI for short. The team of Huawei researchers say that giving AI a body is the only way it can learn the world via interaction.

Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is considered to be an end goal for AI research. This is the term for AI that can think on the same level as humans and can tackle just about any task. However, there is no concrete definition for AGI. While AI has developed significantly to date, it is still far from reaching AGI. That’s why Huawei researchers propose embodied AI as a solution.

“It is a prevalent belief that simply scaling up such models, in terms of data volume and computational power, could lead to AGI. We contest this view,” the researchers wrote. “We propose that true understanding, not only propositional truth but also the value of propositions that guide us how to act, is achievable only through E-AI agents that live in the world and learn of it by interacting with it.”

The researchers’ framework of embodiment seems like a plan for the distant future. The technology doesn’t really exist today to pull off something like embodied AI. For one, the large language models (LLMs) that power AI chatbots are massive. They aren’t stored locally, which would pose a challenge for embodied AI. This is something that the researchers themselves point out as a hurdle to overcome.

Is work being done on embodied AI now?

That’s not to say that work isn’t being done on embodied AI right now. In fact, there are plenty of advanced robotics projects that could be supercharged with AI in the future. Boston Dynamics is a huge name in the robotics industry, but there’s also Tesla. Aside from the electric cars, Tesla is also working on a humanoid robot. Prototypes of the Tesla Bot already make use of AI, just like Tesla cars. However, the Tesla Bot isn’t an actual product yet.

But to take the next step, Huawei researchers say AI needs a body, like the Tesla Bot. From their view, embodied AI is “the next fundamental step in the pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).”