Google Puts Boston Dynamics Up for Sale in Robotics Retreat
This is surprising to me. It seems that many prominent Googlers are very optimistic about robotics.For example, in the FAQ of Jeff Dean's recent talk in Seoul, he mentioned how Deep Learning has a lot of potential to reinvent the field of robotics. Also, Demis Hassabis recently tweeted about progress in learning 3-D environments. I'd be surprised if Google wasn't looking into general purpose robotics...Perhaps Google is disappointed in their robotics acquisitions and wants to start from scratch? It seems that they are farther on the software front than anyone at the point. I wonder what they'll do in their hardware/power divisions...(Also, it kind of seems like Tesla and Google are on a crash course here. Tesla is ahead in power/hardware and is developing a top-tier AI team for self-driving cars. Elon also seems very interested in Robotics + AI. Google seems to be working from the opposite end.)