Business

Commentary: A leading roboticist punctures the hype about self-driving cars, AI chatbots and humanoid robots

Published

5 days ago

January 6, 2026

Commentary: A leading roboticist punctures the hype about self-driving cars, AI chatbots and humanoid robots

It may come to your attention that we are inundated with technological hype. Self-driving cars, human-like robots and AI chatbots all have been the subject of sometimes outlandishly exaggerated predictions and promises.

So we should be thankful for Rodney Brooks, an Australian-born technologist who has made it one of his missions in life to deflate the hyperbole about these and other supposedly world-changing technologies offered by promoters, marketers and true believers.

As I’ve written before, Brooks is nothing like a Luddite. Quite the contrary: He was a co-founder of IRobot, the maker of the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, though he stepped down as the company’s chief technology officer in 2008 and left its board in 2011. He’s a co-founder and chief technology officer of RobustAI, which makes robots for factories and warehouses, and former director of computer science and artificial intelligence labs at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Having ideas is easy. Turning them into reality is hard. Turning them into being deployed at scale is even harder.

— Rodney Brooks

In 2018, Brooks published a post of dated predictions about the course of major technologies and promised to revisit them annually for 32 years, when he would be 95. He focused on technologies that were then — and still are — the cynosures of public discussion, including self-driving cars, human space travel, AI bots and humanoid robots.

“Having ideas is easy,” he wrote in that introductory post. “Turning them into reality is hard. Turning them into being deployed at scale is even harder.”

Brooks slotted his predictions into three pigeonholes: NIML, for “not in my lifetime,” NET, for “no earlier than” some specified date, and “by some [specified] date.”

On Jan. 1 he published his eighth annual predictions scorecard. He found that over the years “my predictions held up pretty well, though overall I was a little too optimistic.”

For example in 2018 he predicted “a robot that can provide physical assistance to the elderly over multiple tasks [e.g., getting into and out of bed, washing, using the toilet, etc.]” wouldn’t appear earlier than 2028; as of New Year’s Day, he writes, “no general purpose solution is in sight.”

The first “permanent” human colony on Mars would come no earlier than 2036, he wrote then, which he now calls “way too optimistic.” He now envisions a human landing on Mars no earlier than 2040, and the settlement no earlier than 2050.

A robot that seems “as intelligent, as attentive, and as faithful, as a dog” — no earlier than 2048, he conjectured in 2018. “This is so much harder than most people imagine it to be,” he writes now. “Many think we are already there; I say we are not at all there.” His verdict on a robot that has “any real idea about its own existence, or the existence of humans in the way that a 6-year-old understands humans” — “Not in my lifetime.”

Brooks points out that one way high-tech promoters finesse their exaggerated promises is through subtle redefinition. That has been the case with “self-driving cars,” he writes. Originally the term referred to “any sort of car that could operate without a driver on board, and without a remote driver offering control inputs … where no person needed to drive, but simply communicated to the car where it should take them.”

Waymo, the largest purveyor of self-driven transport, says on its website that its robotaxis are “the embodiment of fully autonomous technology that is always in control from pickup to destination.” Passengers “can sit in the back seat, relax, and enjoy the ride with the Waymo Driver getting them to their destination safely.”

Brooks challenges this claim. One hole in the fabric of full autonomy, he observes, became clear Dec. 20, when a power blackout blanketing San Francisco stranded much of Waymo’s robotaxi fleet on the streets. Waymos, which can read traffic lights, clogged intersections because traffic lights went dark.

The company later acknowledged its vehicles occasionally “require a confirmation check” from humans when they encounter blacked-out traffic signals or other confounding situations. The Dec. 20 blackout, Waymo said, “created a concentrated spike in these requests,” resulting in “a backlog that, in some cases, led to response delays contributing to congestion on already-overwhelmed streets.”

It’s also known that Waymo pays humans to physically deal with vehicles immobilized by — for example — a passenger’s failure to fully close a car door when exiting. They can be summoned via the third-party app Honk, which chiefly is used by tow truck operators to find stranded customers.

“Current generation Waymos need a lot of human help to operate as they do, from people in the remote operations center to intervene and provide human advice for when something goes wrong, to Honk gig workers scampering around the city,” Brooks observes.

Waymo told me its claim of “fully autonomous” operation is based on the fact that the onboard technology is always in control of its vehicles. In confusing situations the car will call on Waymo’s “fleet response” team of humans, asking them to choose which of several optional paths is the best one. “Control of the vehicle is always with the Waymo Driver” — that is, the onboard technology, spokesman Mark Lewis told me. “A human cannot tele-operate a Waymo vehicle.”

As a pioneering robot designer, Brooks is particularly skeptical about the tech industry’s fascination with humanoid robots. He writes from experience: In 1998 he was building humanoid robots with his graduate students at MIT. Back then he asserted that people would be naturally comfortable with “robots with humanoid form that act like humans; the interface is hardwired in our brains,” and that “humans and robots can cooperate on tasks in close quarters in ways heretofore imaginable only in science fiction.”

Since then it has become clear that general-purpose robots that look and act like humans are chimerical. In fact in many contexts they’re dangerous. Among the unsolved problems in robot design is that no one has created a robot with “human-like dexterity,” he writes. Robotics companies promoting their designs haven’t shown that their proposed products have “multi-fingered dexterity where humans can and do grasp things that are unseen, and grasp and simultaneously manipulate multiple small objects with one hand.”

Two-legged robots have a tendency to fall over and “need human intervention to get back up,” like tortoises fallen on their backs. Because they’re heavy and unstable, they are “currently unsafe for humans to be close to when they are walking.”

(Brooks doesn’t mention this, but even in the 1960s the creators of “The Jetsons” understood that domestic robots wouldn’t rely on legs — their robot maid, Rosie, tooled around their household on wheels, a perception that came as second nature to animators 60 years ago but seems to have been forgotten by today’s engineers.)

As Brooks observes, “even children aged 3 or 4 can navigate around cluttered houses without damaging them. … By age 4 they can open doors with door handles and mechanisms they have never seen before, and safely close those doors behind them. They can do this when they enter a particular house for the first time. They can wander around and up and down and find their way.

“But wait, you say, ‘I’ve seen them dance and somersault, and even bounce off walls.’ Yes, you have seen humanoid robot theater. “

Brooks’ experience with artificial intelligence gives him important insights into the shortcomings of today’s crop of large language models — that’s the technology underlying contemporary chatbots — what they can and can’t do, and why.

“The underlying mechanism for Large Language Models does not answer questions directly,” he writes. “Instead, it gives something that sounds like an answer to the question. That is very different from saying something that is accurate. What they have learned is not facts about the world but instead a probability distribution of what word is most likely to come next given the question and the words so far produced in response. Thus the results of using them, uncaged, is lots and lots of confabulations that sound like real things, whether they are or not.”

The solution is not to “train” LLM bots with more and more data, in the hope that eventually they will have databases large enough to make their fabrications unnecessary. Brooks thinks this is the wrong approach. The better option is to purpose-build LLMs to fulfill specific needs in specific fields. Bots specialized for software coding, for instance, or hardware design.

“We need guardrails around LLMs to make them useful, and that is where there will be lot of action over the next 10 years,” he writes. “They cannot be simply released into the wild as they come straight from training. … More training doesn’t make things better necessarily. Boxing things in does.”

Brooks’ all-encompassing theme is that we tend to overestimate what new technologies can do and underestimate how long it takes for any new technology to scale up to usefulness. The hardest problems are almost always the last ones to be solved; people tend to think that new technologies will continue to develop at the speed that they did in their earliest stages.

That’s why the march to full self-driving cars has stalled. It’s one thing to equip cars with lane-change warnings or cruise control that can adjust to the presence of a slower car in front; the road to Level 5 autonomy as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers — in which the vehicle can drive itself in all conditions without a human ever required to take the wheel — may be decades away at least. No Level 5 vehicles are in general use today.

Believing the claims of technology promoters that one or another nirvana is just around the corner is a mug’s game. “It always takes longer than you think,” Brooks wrote in his original prediction post. “It just does.”

Business

Bay Area semiconductor testing company to lay off more than 200 workers

Published

10 hours ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

Bay Area semiconductor testing company to lay off more than 200 workers

Semiconductor testing equipment company FormFactor is laying off more than 200 workers and closing manufacturing facilities as it seeks to cut costs after being hit by higher import taxes.

The Livermore, Calif.,-based company plans to shutter its Baldwin Park facility and cut 113 jobs there on Jan. 30, according to a layoff notice sent to the California Employment Development Department this week. Its facility in Carlsbad is scheduled to close in mid-December later this year, which will result in 107 job losses, according to an earlier notice.

Technicians, engineers, managers, assemblers and other workers are among those expected to lose their jobs, according to the notices.

The company offers semiconductor testing equipment, including probe cards, and other products. The industry has been benefiting from increased AI chip adoption and infrastructure spending.

FormFactor is among the employers that have been shedding workers amid more economic uncertainty.

Companies have cited various reasons for workforce reductions, including restructuring, closures, tariffs, market conditions and artificial intelligence, which can help automate repetitive tasks or generate text, images and code.

The tech industry — a key part of California’s economy — has been hit hard by job losses after the pandemic, which spurred more hiring, and amid the rise of AI tools that are reshaping its workforce.

As tech companies and startups compete fiercely to dominate the AI race, they’ve also cut middle management and other workers as they move faster to release more AI-powered products. They’re also investing billions of dollars into data centers that house computing equipment used to process the massive troves of information needed to train and maintain AI systems.

Companies such as chipmaker Nvidia and ChatGPT maker OpenAI have benefited from the AI boom, while legacy tech companies such as Intel are fighting to keep up.

FormFactor’s cuts are part of restructuring plans that “are intended to better align cost structure and support gross margin improvement to the Company’s target financial model,” the company said in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this week.

The company plans to consolidate its facilities in Baldwin Park and Carlsbad, the filing said.

FormFactor didn’t respond to a request for comment.

FormFactor has been impacted by tariffs and seen its growth slow. The company employs more than 2,000 people and has been aiming to improve its profit margins.

In October, the company reported $202.7 million in third-quarter revenue, down 2.5% from the third quarter of fiscal 2024. The company’s net income was $15.7 million in the third quarter of 2025, down from $18.7 million in the same quarter of the previous year.

FormFactor’s stock has been up 16% since January, surpassing more than $67 per share on Friday.

Business

In-N-Out Burger outlets in Southern California hit by counterfeit bill scam

Published

22 hours ago

January 10, 2026

Press Room

In-N-Out Burger outlets in Southern California hit by counterfeit bill scam

Two people allegedly used $100 counterfeit bills at dozens of In-N-Out Burger restaurants in Southern California in a wide-reaching scam.

Glendale Police officials said in a statement Friday that 26-year-old Tatiyanna Foster of Long Beach was taken into custody last month. Another suspect, 24-year-old Auriona Lewis, also of Long Beach, was arrested in October.

Police released images of $100 bills used to purchase a $2.53 order of fries and a $5.93 order of a Flying Dutchman.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office charged Lewis with felony counterfeiting and grand theft in November.

Elizabeth Megan Lashley-Haynes, Lewis’s public defender, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Glendale police said that Lewis was arrested in Palmdale in an operation involving the U.S. Marshals Task Force. Foster is expected in court later this month, officials said.

”Lewis was found to be in possession of counterfeit bills matching those used in the Glendale incident, along with numerous gift cards and transaction receipts believed to be connected to similar fraudulent activity,” according to a police statement.

A representative for In-N-Out Burger told KTLA-TV that restaurants in Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties were also targeted by the alleged scam.

“Their dedication and expertise resulted in the identification and apprehension of the suspects, helping to protect our business and our communities,” In-N-Out’s Chief Operations Officer Denny Warnick said. “We greatly value the support of law enforcement and appreciate the vital role they play in making our communities stronger and safer places to live.”

The company, opened in 1948 in Baldwin Park, has restaurants in nine states.

An Oakland location closed in 2024, with the owner blaming crime and slow police response times.

Company chief executive Lynsi Snyder announced last year that she planned to relocate her family to Tennessee, although the burger chain’s headquarters will remain in California.

Business

Newsom’s budget includes $200 million to make up for Trump’s canceled EV rebates, among other climate items

Published

1 day ago

January 10, 2026

Press Room

Newsom’s budget includes 0 million to make up for Trump’s canceled EV rebates, among other climate items

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday doubled down on California’s commitment to electric vehicles with proposed rebates intended to backfill federal tax credits canceled by the Trump administration.

The plan would allocate $200 million in one-time special funds for a new point-of-sale incentive program for light-duty zero-emissions vehicles. It was part of a sweeping $348.9-billion state budget proposal released Friday, which also included items to address air pollution and worsening wildfires, amid a projected $3-billion state deficit.

EVs have become a flashpoint in California’s battle against the Trump administration, which moved last year to repeal the state’s long-held authority to set strict tailpipe emission standards and eventually ban the sale of new gas powered cars.

Last year, Trump ended federal tax credits of up to $7,500 for EV customers that were part of President Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. In September, his administration also let lapse federal authorization for California’s Clean Air Vehicle decal program, which allowed solo EV drivers to use carpool lanes.

“Despite federal interference, the governor maintains his commitment to protecting public health and achieving California’s world leading climate agenda,” Lindsay Buckley, spokesperson for the California Air Resources Board, said in an email. “This incentive program will help continue the state’s ZEV momentum, especially with the federal administration eliminating the federal EV tax credit and carpool lane access.”

Newsom had previously flip-flopped on this idea, first vowing to restore a state program that provided up to $7,500 to buy clean cars and then walking it back in September. That same month, a group of five automakers including Honda, Rivian, Hyundai, Volkswagen and Audi wrote a letter urging Newsom and state legislators to establish a $5,000 EV tax rebate to replace the lost federal incentives, Politico reported.

During his State of the State speech Thursday — one year after the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles — Newsom said California “refuse[s] to be bystanders” while China and other nations take the lead on electric vehicles and the clean energy transition. He touted the state’s investments in solar, hydrogen, wind and nuclear power, as well as its recent move away from the use of any coal-fired power.

“We must continue our prudent fiscal management, funding our reserves, and continuing the investments Californians rely on, from education to public safety, all while preparing for Trump’s volatility outside our control,” the governor said in a statement. “This is what responsible governance looks like.”

Several environmental groups had been urging Newsom to invest more in clean air and clean vehicle programs, which they say are critical to the state’s ambitious goals for human health and the environment. Transportation is the largest source of climate and air pollution in California and is responsible for more than a third of global warming emissions, said Daniel Barad, Western states policy manager with the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists.

“As federal attacks threaten California’s authority to protect public health, incentives are more essential than ever to scale up clean cars and trucks,” Barad said. “The governor and legislative leaders must act now to fully fund zero-emission transportation and pursue new revenue to grow and sustain climate investments.”

Katelyn Roedner Sutter, California senior director with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, called it “an essential step to save money for Californians, cut harmful pollution, spur innovation, and support the global competitiveness of our auto industry.”

While the budget proposal does not include significant new spending proposals, it contains other line items relating to climate and the environment. Among them are plans to continue implementing Proposition 4, the $10-billion climate bond approved by voters in 2024 for programs geared toward wildfire resilience, safe drinking water, flood management, extreme heat mitigation and other similar efforts.

Among $2.1 billion in climate bond investments proposed this year are $58 million for wildfire prevention and hazardous fuels reduction projects in vulnerable communities, and nearly $20 million to assist homeowners with defensible space to prevent fire. Water-related investments include $232 million for flood control projects and nearly $70 million to support repairs to existing or new water conveyance projects.

The proposal also lays out how to spend money from California’s signature cap-and-trade program, which sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions and allows large polluters to buy and sell unused emission allowances at quarterly auctions. State lawmakers last year voted to extend the program through 2045 and rename it cap-and-invest.

The spending plan includes a new tiered structure for cap-and-invest that first funds statutory obligations such as manufacturing tax exemptions, followed by $1 billion for the high speed rail project, $750 million to support the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and finally secondary program funding such as affordable housing and low-carbon transit options.

But while some groups applauded the budget’s broad handling of climate issues, others criticized it for leaning too heavily on volatile funding sources for environmental priorities, such as special funds and one-time allocations.

The Sierra Club called the EV incentive program a crucial investment but said too many other items were left with “patchwork strategies that make long-term planning harder.”

“Just yesterday, the Governor acknowledged in his State of the State address that the climate risk is a financial risk. That is exactly why California needs climate investments that are stable and ongoing,” said Sierra Club director Miguel Miguel.

California Environmental Voters, meanwhile, stressed that the state should continue to work toward legislation that would hold oil and gas companies liable for damages caused by their emissions — a plan known as “Make Polluters Pay” that stalled last year amid fierce lobbying and industry pressure.

“Instead of asking families to absorb the costs, the Legislature must look seriously at holding polluters accountable for the harm they’ve caused,” said Shannon Olivieri Hovis, California Environmental Voters’ chief strategy officer.

Sarah Swig, Newsom’s senior advisor for climate, noted that the state’s budget plan came just days after Trump withdrew the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a major global treaty signed by nearly 200 countries with the aim of addressing global warming through coordinated international action.

“California is not slowing down on climate at a time when we continue to see attack after attack from the federal government, including as recently as this week with the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the UNFCCC,” Swig told reporters Friday. “California’s leadership has never mattered more.”