Its robotaxi chief said drivers' role would change, with robotaxis set to dominate in city centers. He added Uber would still need human drivers, with self-driving cars struggling in extreme weather.

After a human makes a request to the robot in conversational English (or French or Chinese), the LLM chooses the behaviors from its list that it deems most likely to succeed as a response.

If consumers prefer human cooks, and cooks worry about losing their human jobs, making a too-human robot may backfire. Instead, Mr. Ahler believes that automation “needs to act like a toaster.” ...

AI will, naturally, be foundational to the company’s promise of “human problem solving,” while the move away from the humanoid form factor is a bid, in part, to reduce the cost of entry for ...