[joe_the_user]

Even if this is true, that weakens your point that hardware is the fundamental limit for robots. If there are situations where software giving human like behavior to a robot could be extremely valuable, then there's certainly a motivation for generic AI companies to be in that area.

That doesn't mean OpenAI robotics leaving wasn't a good idea. It seems like it was but for other reasons.

[modeless]

Giving robots human-like behavior is mostly useful for general-purpose robots. Specialized robots don't need general AI to do their jobs. OpenAI is trying to develop general human-like AI. There's no general-purpose robot for them to put it in, and developing one is a hardware problem, not a software problem.

[joe_the_user]

Specialized robots don't need general AI to do their jobs.

Self-driving cars have been unable to succeed based on their lack of a broad understanding of what's happening on the road (ie, "too many corner cases"). Self-driving cars would be a huge change and their failure is very significant.

[Dylan16807]

We can build perfectly good robot arms for a huge swath of assembly/warehouse/retail tasks, but there's no AI that can aim them well enough and carefully enough. An overqualified AI would still be a valid solution and extremely valuable.