I would hope that they can use a framework that's general enough to adapt to other form factors. So, making a humanoid is a way of giving themselves a difficul

I would hope that they can use a framework that's general enough to adapt to other form factors. So, making a humanoid is a way of giving themselves a difficult enough initial problem that they're less likely to be fooled by early success: the humanoid robot will have to self-balance, walk, open doors, and do a lot of the complex things that humans do without thinking in order to be considered a minimum-viable product. In the long run if this pans out, I'd expect to see farming and weeding hexapods, equipment-hauling centaurs, wheeled platforms with arms for getting around office spaces, construction bots with long-fingered hands and asymmetrical multi-jointed appendages, and so on. If the AI has a general capacity for motor-skill learning, then you can just give it whatever body is most optimal for the task at hand. I'm reminded of this video on training an AI to walk through simulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgaEE27nsQwh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgaEE27nsQwh