At Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, robots are being trained to use artificial intelligence to do everyday tasks. One curvy, tubelike robot with a claw for a hand is learning how to hang clothes. Another is being trained to help people get dressed – it can grab onto a sleeve and pull it up a person’s arm.
The robots are examples of something called physical AI: essentially, robots that use artificial intelligence to perceive their environment and make decisions with some degree of autonomy. The university sees physical AI as a technological frontier where it can plant a flag – and it’s doing this work in a building that carries echoes of Pittsburgh’s industrial past.
In a passageway between lab rooms at the institute – housed in what a top faculty member says used to be the Bureau of Mines – a pair of tracks mark the path where steel mining carts used to bring equipment to be inspected. It’s a visible reminder of Pittsburgh’s steel boom, which brought in a massive wave of manufacturing and job growth until the industry collapsed in the early 1980s.
Why We Wrote This
Pittsburgh, once known as a center of the steel industry, now wants to be a hub for the kind of artificial intelligence that makes a difference in peoples’ daily lives. What happens here could produce innovations that affect the economy on a broader scale.
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Now, Pittsburgh is banking on being a leader in a potential new industrial revolution. With a pool of talent from Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, the city ranks No. 7 on the Brookings Institution’s benchmarking of nearly 200 U.S. artificial intelligence hubs. City leaders promote Pittsburgh’s potential to be a global AI hub. They say the AI revolution is a natural extension of the region’s industrial history, and will bring in blue-collar jobs by way of data center construction. They also say Pittsburgh’s culture means its AI innovation is focused on technologies that can solve significant problems for people.
“We’re not a land of dating apps,” says Meredith Meyer Grelli, the managing director of Carnegie Mellon’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. “We’re like, figure [stuff] out that makes the world a better place to be in.”
As with all bets, Pittsburgh’s wager on AI comes with risks. After a decades-long economic slump, the AI boom has brought venture capital to the city, with investment reaching a record high of $999 million last year. But AI is still a new industry, and it’s not yet clear whether people will flock to robots that could empty their dishwashers or perform surgeries. A number of high-profile figures like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggest investors have become overexcited about the technology – and if they pull back, the boom could fizzle.
Even if AI growth continues, city leaders’ predictions could still fall short. Unlike during the steel mining boom, for example, many of the jobs created by AI – like construction jobs for data centers – so far are temporary.
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Caitlin Babcock/The Christian Science Monitor
Zico Kolter, a co-founder of Gray Swan AI and a professor at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, stands in his office at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Oct. 1, 2025.
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And although Pittsburgh has seen innovations in many areas of AI, city leaders seem especially quick to tout its capabilities in physical AI – an area that not everyone sees as the future.
“Robotics is a slow field that makes slow progress,” says Zico Kolter, a co-founder of Gray Swan AI and a professor at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, referring in part to physical AI.
But those pushing for Pittsburgh to lean into AI see reasons to be optimistic. Artificial intelligence in general is in a moment of significant growth, with AI’s global market value – generally determined based on factors including capital investment and future growth potential – projected to exceed $4.8 trillion by 2033, according to a United Nations report.
Many people already interact with AI by using chatbots like ChatGPT, or when they see an AI overview as the result of a Google search. Physical AI is more rare in everyday life, but is becoming more visible – for example, with driverless taxis in cities like San Francisco. That technology was pioneered at Carnegie Mellon.
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“These are technologies that spread through the whole economy,” says Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro. “If this technology is so important for productivity gains, it really matters who has it and who doesn’t.”
An attempt to own the moment
A one-mile corridor starting in Bakery Square, a bustling office district with housing, shopping and restaurants, offers a glimpse into the city’s rising technology profile. Dubbed “AI Avenue” by developers last year, the stretch of blocks houses 26 tech companies developing AI, including physical AI – from big names like Google and Duolingo to fast-growing startups.
Caitlin Babcock/The Christian Science Monitor
Bakery Square in Pittsburgh, shown on Sept. 29, 2025, is an office district that marks the start of a one-mile innovation corridor called AI Avenue.
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Joanna Doven, a founding CEO of a government consulting firm, says AI Avenue produced a “light bulb moment” a couple years ago. She recalls noticing a flurry of tech-related leasing in the area, and wondered, “Is anybody paying attention?”
Her thinking was, “This is a moment we should own.” Now she leads Pittsburgh’s newly formed AI Strike Team, a 13-member group that strives to unite key players in business, academia, and the government to make the city a leading technology hub. The team’s pitch includes the intangible factor of Pittsburgh’s industrial culture.
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“We have founders that are here for a reason,” says Ms. Doven. “The gritty, hard-work ethic of Pittsburgh is still here, and that’s something that they need to succeed.”
She says Pittsburgh’s technological development focuses on health care, physical AI, and defense. This year, the city saw three new AI companies become “unicorns” – companies worth more than $1 billion. All three fit at least one of those categories.
Pittsburgh is still no Silicon Valley, says Mr. Muro, a co-author of the Brookings AI report. The California region known as a center of tech boasts at least 60 of these “unicorn” companies. But he says Pittsburgh’s manufacturing legacy allows it to offer unique contributions.
“The U.S. AI boom is impressive but it’s imbalanced – oriented too little toward real-world, often manufacturing, use cases,” writes Mr. Muro in an email to the Monitor. “But this is what Pittsburgh is working on and good at. … We need a bridge that connects AI and manufacturing.”
The jobs question
A short drive from AI Avenue is Carnegie Mellon University, home to the country’s top-ranked AI program according to the U.S. News and World Report, and widely considered to have one of the strongest robotics programs – a combination that’s a fit for physical AI.
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On a recent afternoon, a drone hovers over the sidewalk bridging the campus with the neighboring University of Pittsburgh. Inside the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship on CMU’s campus, students work at a cluster of tables piled with cables and other equipment, next to a small human-shaped robot that hangs from a cable. They’re collecting data on how to make an AI algorithm inhabit a physical form.
Carnegie Mellon is at the center of “so many developments, so many companies and so many economies,” says Mike Embrescia, the chief development officer of the physical AI company Carnegie Robotics, which is not directly connected to the school.
Caitlin Babcock/The Christian Science Monitor
A humanoid robot hangs near students working at Carnegie Mellon University’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship in Pittsburgh, Oct. 1, 2025.
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College graduates have gone on to found businesses like Aurora Innovation, a Pittsburgh-based company that recently became the first to launch an AI-based commercial driverless trucking service on public roads.
But these college graduates are also bearing the brunt of a softening labor market, according to new data. And many people speculate that AI development may lead to unemployment, as robots could be created to do tasks more efficiently than humans, without having to be paid.
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When people find out he works in AI, Mr. Embrescia says, “You typically get the remark, oh, they’re gonna take my jobs someday.”
Pennsylvania has made an effort to link AI with job creation. In June, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and leaders from Amazon announced a $20 billion investment in AI infrastructure resulting in the construction of two new data centers in the state. Gov. Shapiro says the data centers will result in 10,000 temporary construction jobs as well as 2,400 permanent jobs.
Ms. Doven thinks that rather than just taking jobs, AI can help fill positions that are already vacant. “In the Pittsburgh region, there’s two available jobs for every one person that wants a job,” she says as she grabs a late lunch in Bakery Square. Pointing to the restaurant’s kitchen, she says the staff here have been hiring dishwashers at well above market rate because of the difficulty in finding workers.
She admits the effects of AI on job security are uneven across industries.
“Software jobs are in peril,” she says. “Highly specialized AI jobs are in demand.”
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For some people, job loss from AI is already a reality. Language learning company Duolingo drew criticism for laying off about 10% of its contractor workforce early last year as it expanded reliance on AI.
A recent Brookings report found that the U.S. labor market had not yet been notably impacted by AI, although the report’s writers emphasized that could change as the technology develops.
Caitlin Babcock/The Christian Science Monitor
Mark Henderson, a vice chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh and a member of Pittsburgh’s AI Strike Team, sits in his office, Sept. 30, 2025.
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“The new steel”
The Lawrenceville neighborhood in Pittsburgh was once labeled a blighted community. When the steel industry collapsed, the steel mills and foundries shuttered, leaving the buildings as hollow reminders of past prosperity.
Now, Lawrenceville has a new identity. Underpinning the community is the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC), a technology organization formed by Carnegie Mellon University that’s housed in what used to be a steel foundry. The surrounding area has been dubbed “Robotics Row” for the cluster of robotics and artificial intelligence companies that have sprung up largely within the last decade.
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This is where the self-driving unit of Uber got its start about 10 years ago. And this is where Carnegie Robotics, operating out of an old steel mill across the street from NREC, recently designed a piece of AI software, which clips onto soldiers’ backpacks, that can translate languages onto soldiers’ eyeglasses or map out battlefields in 3D.
It’s the kind of innovation Pittsburgh strives to be known for.
“We were the center of the world around steel,” says Mark Henderson, vice chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh and a member of Pittsburgh’s AI Strike Team. “AI is the new steel.”
The Pittsburgh Pirates could use some bats, and the A’s are still looking to add some pitching this winter, so how likely is it that these clubs come together on a deal?
According to Colin Beazley of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Pirates are still on the lookout for some help on the left side of the infield. Over at Roster Resource, their starters at short and third as listed as Nick Gonzales (82 wRC+ in 2025) and Jared Triolo (86).
While the A’s are having a little showdown of their own at third base this spring, they have a number of players in the mix. Perhaps they could move one of them in a deal with Pittsburgh in order to land a relief pitcher with some upside.
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The proposed deal that we have in mind is the A’s sending third baseman Brett Harris, who may be starting as the third option at the hot corner this spring. Harris has a tremendous glove at third, and statistically it appears to be at least on par with the glove what Triolo provided last season.
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In just 183 2/3 innings with the A’s in 2025, Harris put up a +5 DRS, and +2 in both OAA and FRV. Triolo, in roughly 80 extra innings finished with a +7 DRS and +4 in both OAA and FRV. Both players are solid defensively.
Triolo has had more experience in the big leagues, which does account for something, but if you’re the Pirates, do you consider making a change and taking a chance on a similar defender with more upside in the bat? Their current option hit .227 with a .311 OBP and an 86 wRC+ last season in 376 plate appearances. Harris could put together a double-digit home run season at the very least.
Harris played in just 32 games (84 plate appearances) and hit .274 with a .349 OBP and a 96 wRC+. While he certainly looked like an improved player over his initial stint in the big leagues with the A’s in 2024, there was also some luck involved in his improvement—mainly his .377 BABIP. The risk for the Pirates would be taking the chance on that bat being for real.
In exchange, the proposed piece that the Pirates would send back in 30-year-old Yohan Ramírez. The right-hander ranks in the 94th percentile in extension on top of sitting at 96.4 miles per hour with his heater, which is quite appealing. He also held a 5.40 ERA (3.80 FIP) last season, so he’s far from a finished product, and given his age, he’s a flier himself.
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This is the type of pitcher that the A’s have had success with in recent seasons—guys that can collect strikeouts but also tend to issue free passes. In 2025 with the Pirates, he struck out 29% of the batters he faced and walked 10.3%.
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There are two interesting tidbits in his profile that could cause a little worry. The first is that he’s bounced around quite a bit in recent seasons, including spending time with the Dodgers, Mets, Orioles and Red Sox in 2024. Those are all teams that love to pull extra value from guys, and if they all gave up on him, then that’s not the greatest track record.
All of those teams seemed to view him as a guy that could provide a few innings when their bullpens were gassed, which led to him having short stints with each club, totaling a 6.20 ERA (4.26 FIP) across 45 innings.
The other interesting piece here is that when he has been with the Pirates, in both 2025 and back in 2022, his velocity has ticked up considerably. In 2022, he also spent time with the Mariners, and he was sitting 94.2. But with Pittsburgh, that went up to 96.5. In 2024, he topped out at 95.3 mph with the O’s and Mets.
This past season he was back to 96.2 mph. Is there something special for him about pitching in Pittsburgh? Do their radar guns run a little hot? Is this more of a time of year situation that gets hammered out over longer stints (like with the Pirates)? It’s unclear.
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But if he’s truly a 96-mile-per-hour reliever that the A’s could add to their ‘pen, then this trade may be worth some heavy consideration.
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Of course, Ramírez is out of options which would make this a little tricky, and Harris has roughly double the amount of team control, so the value may have to be squared away by adding another piece or two to the ledger. But these two players, Harris and Ramírez, could do a lot of good for the opposite clubs.
Days after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officer fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis, Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor reaffirmed that he will not cooperate with ICE.
Former Mayor Ed Gainey had taken the same position.
“My stance never changed,” O’Connor told TribLive on Friday. “We’re not going to cooperate.”
O’Connor said the same thing on the campaign trail, promising his administration would not partner with ICE.
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“My priority is to turn the city around and help it grow,” O’Connor said. “For us, it’s got to be focusing on public safety in the city of Pittsburgh.”
President Donald Trump has sent a surge of federal officers into Minneapolis, where tensions have escalated sharply.
O’Connor said he had spoken this week with Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, who heads the Democratic Mayors Association. The group has condemned ICE’s actions in the wake of Wednesday’s fatal encounter in Minneapolis, where an ICE officer shot and killed 37-year-old Nicole Macklin Good, a U.S. citizen described as a poet and mother.
“Mayors are on the ground every day working to keep our communities safe,” the association said in a statement Thursday. “If Trump were serious about public safety, he would work with our cities, not against them. If he were serious, he would stop spreading propaganda and lies, and end the fear, the force, and the federal overreach.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has come out strongly against the Trump administration and ICE, penning an op-ed piece for the New York Times with the headline, “I’m the Mayor of Minneapolis. Trump Is Lying to You.”
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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said an ICE officer shot Good in self-defense. Noem described the incident as “domestic terrorism” carried out against ICE officers and claimed Good tried to “run them over and rammed them with her vehicle.”
The circumstances of the incident are in dispute.
In December, ICE agents were involved in a scuffle in Pittsburgh’s Mount Washington neighborhood as they arrested a Latino man.
According to neighbors, two unmarked vehicles sandwiched a white Tacoma in the 400 block of Norton Street, broke the driver’s side window, pulled a man from the vehicle and got into a physical altercation. Pepper spray was deployed and seemed to get in the eyes of both the man being detained and at least one immigration agent.
At least some of the officers on the scene in that incident belong to ICE.
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They targeted the man, Darwin Alexander Davila-Perez, a Nicaraguan national, for claiming to be a U.S. citizen while trying to buy a gun, according to court papers.
Mike Darnay is a digital producer and photojournalist at CBS Pittsburgh. Mike has also written and produced content for Vox Media and the Mon Valley Independent.
He often covers overnight breaking news, the Pittsburgh Steelers and high school sports.
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A longtime staple near Pitt’s campus is closing its doors after more than four decades of business in Oakland.
Hemingway’s Cafe announced Thursday that it will be closing for good in May after more than 40 years along Forbes Avenue in the heart of Oakland.
“Since opening in 1983, Hemingway’s has been more than just a bar – it’s been a home, a meeting place, and an Oakland staple for generations of students, alumni, locals, and friends at the heart of the University of Pittsburgh,” the bar said.
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Hemingway’s Cafe in Oakland has announced it will be closing for good in May after more than four decades of business near the University of Pittsburgh’s campus.
KDKA Photojournalist Brian Smithmyer
The bar said while they are sad to be closing, they’re also grateful for the decades of memories, laughter, friendship, and traditions over the years.
“Thank you for making Hemingway’s what it has been for over four decades,” the bar said.
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A final closing date for Hemingway’s hasn’t been announced.
