As AI dominates the headlines some big ones today centered on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who spoke for nearly three hours at the chip maker’s packed global AI developers conference, laying out the massive transition in computing underway and announcing a raft of new projects.
One is a collaboration with Google DeepMind and Disney Research to develop an open-source physics engine called Newton that lets robots learn how to handle complex tasks with greater precision.
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Disney Research will be one of the first to use Newton to advance its robotic character platform that powers next-generation entertainment robots, such as the expressive Star Wars-inspired BDX droids that joined Huang on stage during his GTC keynote.
“The BDX droids are just the beginning. We’re committed to bringing more characters to life in ways the world hasn’t seen before, and this collaboration with Disney Research, NVIDIA and Google DeepMind is a key part of that vision,” said Kyle Laughlin, SVP at Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development, in the formal announcement. “This collaboration will allow us to create a new generation of robotic characters that are more expressive and engaging than ever before — and connect with our guests in ways that only Disney can.” Droids also wandered about recently at SXSW in a presentation by Disney Experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro and Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman called The Future of World Building At Disney.
Huang focused in the early part of his remarks on the massive transformation underway in computing. Commanding the stage in a leather biker jacket, he called it a seismic shift from “retrieval” – or creating content and then “fetching what we need.”
“Now, AI understands the content, what we are asking, and the meaning of our requests … and generates an answer for us rather than retrieving data, fundamentally changing how computing is done,” he said at his anticipated keynote address. GTC stands for GPU Technology Conference, a global artificial intelligence confab for developers, engineers, researchers, inventors and IT professionals focused on AI, computer graphics, data science, machine learning and autonomous machines. GPU is short for Graphics Processing Technology. There were thousands at the SAP Center (formerly the San Jose Arena) and many more watching on YouTube.