Sangbae Kim
Professor
Mechanical Engineering,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
April 11, 2025
Physical Intelligence and Cognitive Biases Toward AI
Abstract:
When will robots be able to clean my house, dishes, and take care of laundry? While we source labor primarily from automated machines in factories, the penetration of physical robots in our daily lives has been slow. What are the challenges in realizing these intelligent machines capable of human level skill? Isn’t AI advanced enough to replace many skills of humans? Unlike conventional robots, which are optimized mainly for position control with almost no adaptability, household tasks require a kind of ‘physical intelligence’ that involves complex dynamic interactions with overwhelming uncertainties. While advanced language models exemplify AI’s prowess in data organization and text generation, a significant divide exists between AI for virtual and physical applications. In this conversation, we’ll delve into the cognitive biases that often lead us to underestimate this technological gap.
Bio:
Sangbae Kim has been the director of the Biomimetic Robotics Laboratory and a professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT for the last 16 years. Kim’s achievements include creating the world’s first directional adhesive inspired by gecko lizards and a climbing robot named Stickybot that utilizes the directional adhesive to climb smooth surfaces. One of Kim’s recent achievements is the development of the MIT Cheetah, a robot capable of stable running outdoors up to 13 mph and autonomous jumping over obstacles at the efficiency of animals. The design paradigm of electric motor of MIT cheetah is widely adopted by industries including Unitree and Boston Dynamics. Kim is a recipient of best paper awards from the ICRA (2007), King-Sun Fu Memorial TRO (2008) and IEEE/ASME TMECH (2016). Additionally, he received a DARPA YFA (2013), an NSF CAREER award (2014), a Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching (2015) and Nagamori Award (2023). He is a member of DSSG (Defense Science Study Group) 2019~2024. He gave talks at prestigious meetings such as TED xMIT, DAVOS economic Forum, Amazon MARS meetings, and Keynote speech at IROS2019.
