Nvidia’s leather jacket-clad CEO, Jensen Huang, seems to enjoy conducting recent keynotes flanked by an entourage of robots.

Part of this might be the futuristic vibes—a Star Wars-inspired droid is more fun on stage than the utilitarian chips that power it. But lately, these displays seem less about showmanship and more about staking a claim on an increasingly heated space.

Roboticists have been talking about a nearing inflection point. Certain advances in generative AI stand to change the way that general-purpose robots are trained and how they perform tasks. But risks also abound when applying foundation models to real-world scenarios, and truly general-purpose robots are still a ways off.

The feeling is evident in some recent investments from Big Tech companies. OpenAI began hiring new robotics staffers in January (it disbanded its previous team in 2021), and Meta was reported to be forming a humanoid robotics team in February. Google DeepMind demonstrated robots infused with its Gemini LLMs last month.

“The ChatGPT moment for general robotics is just around the corner,” Huang declared at CES this year.

Keep reading here.—PK

While Microsoft’s Copilot may be most familiar as an officemate right now, the tech giant wants its AI assistant to be of more use off the clock, too.

At a 50th anniversary event in Redmond, Washington, last week, Microsoft touted a slew of consumer-focused improvements to its Copilot product, including personalized memory and the ability to help with tasks like shopping and booking reservations.

Copilot will also have more integration with Bing search and Deep Research, and custom podcast generation—Microsoft suggests creating a podcast to digest information on a “vacation plan or home purchase,” for instance.

Despite making early headway into consumer AI with Bing search and its OpenAI partnership, Microsoft’s enterprise dominance has meant a heavy workplace focus for Copilot thus far, as Microsoft has woven the assistant across its productivity software suite. Much of its branding has focused on business-centric uses.

But the company has been working to shore up the consumer side as well. Last year, it poached former Inflection CEO Mustafa Suleyman and many of his startup colleagues to bring their know-how developing emotionally intelligent chatbots to Microsoft’s consumer AI business (Inflection has since pivoted to enterprise).

Microsoft’s decision to put the consumer chatbot front and center at its golden anniversary event may also speak to how much of a priority it is for the company.

Keep reading here.—PK

For many homeowners, making energy-efficient upgrades is a no-brainer: Money-back promises include lower energy bills on average, specific savings per appliance, and tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act.

But there are up-front and extra costs associated with maintaining energy-efficient upgrades—like smart home energy management or HVAC systems—and a majority of consumers say the savings don’t overcome those costs for at least five years.

A new survey from Home Energy Club, an electricity consumer advocacy organization, found that a fifth of the more than 1,000 homeowners they surveyed said they were saddled with more than $2,000 in “unexpected expenses” after they upgraded their home with energy-efficient appliances. Those costs, which include repairs, system upgrades, and home modifications, went up to $5,000 for one in 10 respondents. And though a majority of homeowners surveyed said that the energy efficient upgrades they made to their homes delivered the “expected savings,” that was only after a number of years.

All that said, energy savings—no matter how long it takes to overcome the initial upgrade costs—are only available to homeowners who can afford the up-front cost of buying energy-efficient equipment: Nearly three-fourths of respondents said “high up-front costs” have prevented them from making the switch.

Andrew Pattison, Colgate University professor of environmental studies, told Tech Brew that “any efficiency upgrade that you can do to your home allows you to capture that savings only if you can invest in the initial outlay,” and that the more money a person has, the more likely they’ll be able to dedicate time to installation.

Keep reading here.—TC