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When will robots be able to make peanut butter sandwiches?
Making peanut butter sandwiches is an example of a simple problem that is extremely hard to specify precisely or programmatically. It’s my benchmark for when we have “sci-fi robots.”
I bet a friend last year $100 that we’d have sci-fi robots within 2 years. Is that a reasonable bet? Is there a better benchmark?
- coldtea 3y agoThankfully you didn't bet more.
- rl3 3y agoThat capability exists today, courtesy of Toyota Research Institute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-CGSQAO5-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-CGSQAO5-Q You can probably collect your $100 now.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bell-cot 3y agoReaction: Problem is poorly defined. You could easily make a "PB&J assembly machine" with 1950's factory technology - uniform slices of Wonder Bread go into the hopper, peanut butter goes into the first extrusion feeder, jelly goes into the second extrusion feeder, and the assembled sandwiches come out on a conveyor belt. Vs. a "real sci-fi" robot has to cope with a wide variety of bread types & loaf shapes (perhaps cutting the bread), then various sort of containers for peanut butter, then peanut butters of various consistencies - including spreading very thick, cold peanut butter on thin & fragile bread slices. Oh - and it's got to cope with a new jar of "natural" peanut butter - unscrew the top, remove the tamper-proof seal, and mix up the separated oil & peanuts.
- dr_dshiv 3y agoPrecisely. The point is the general purpose nature of it, akin to general purpose digital computing or general AI vs narrow AI. Thanks, these are a good set of tests for a PBJ eval benchmark!