Altman: the world hasn’t had its ‘humanoid robot moment’ yet

OpenAI co-founder and CEO, Sam Altman, told Bloomberg this week that that the ‘humanoid robot moment’ hasn’t arrived just yet – but it’s coming soon. The sit down conversation largely revolved around the company’s massive $500 billion Stargate infrastructure play, peppered with thoughts on the competition.

The humanoid robot bit only warranted a few sentences, but did offer insight into where Altman’s head is on the matter. The subject appeared to arise somewhat organically, as Altman waxed on about AI’s future impact on how we work.

“AI is for sure going to change a lot of jobs, totally take some away, create new ones,” he explained. The executive added that such radical changes from technology are consistent through history, albeit ‘punctuated’ with moments of great advance. “The thing that is different this time is just the rate with which it will happen,” Altman said.

He went on to add that physical intelligence/embodied AI will have its own impact on jobs, in the form of humanoids.

Altman noted,

The thing I think the world is not ready for – people have maybe abstractly thought ‘it’s going to be a better programmer than me, it’s going to be better at customer support – I don’t think the word has really had the humanoid robots moment yet.

Adding that he doesn’t believe said moment is ‘far away,’ he notes a shift in perception, as these machines embed themselves in our daily lives.

“It’s coming and we have always tried to be honest about what the impact will be, realizing we will be wrong on a lot of details,” Altman said. “The first day you’re walking down the street and there’s seven robots walking past you, it’s going to feel very sci-fi.”

Altman and OpenAI have been bullish on the topic for a while now. In 2024, the firm partnered with Figure to build AI systems for humanoids. The deal was short lived, however, as Figure announced 11 months later that it was abandoned the work with OpenAI, in favor in in-house models.

The news fueled on-going speculation that OpenAI was building its own humanoid robots in-house. The company’s hardware ambitions are undeniable, of course, announcing an unprecedented $6.5 billion deal with Apple design luminary Jony Ive last month. OpenAI has also invested in a number of humanoid firms, including 1X and Figure. Whenever the 'moment' comes, OpenAI plans to be there one way or another.