The widespread, enormous layoffs by big firms appear to affect even robots.
A report in Wired claims that Google is closing down Everyday Robots, a firm that created and trained over 100 robots to perform chores including sorting trash, opening doors, replacing chairs that are missing, and cleaning tables. The subsidiary was a part of Alphabet’s “moonshot project” X, the parent company of Google. According to a representative cited in the report, even though Everyday Robots will no longer function as a separate team, some of the personnel and equipment will continue to be used in other robotics initiatives at Google.
The automatons were created as “general purpose” robots that relied on cameras and machine learning to carry out duties in a “ordinary human context,” according to the X website. In order to fulfill employees’ regular demands for snacks and other things, the technology also included language models that are comparable to the ones powering ChatGPT.
According to the article, the company’s robots division was shut down as a result of budget cuts made by CEO Sundar Pichai in January, which also involved eliminating close to 12,000 positions.
An ex-employee claims that the Everyday Robots team members were unclear from the start as to whether the objective was to develop cutting-edge technology or provide a consumer good. According to experts, the cost of each robot to the corporation was in the tens of thousands of dollars.
According to a CNBC report from last week, Google has requested its cloud partners and employees to share desks and work on alternate days starting in the second quarter at its American locations in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Sunnyvale, California, and Kirkland, Washington.
The new method, which anticipates the vacating of some premises, is being introduced so that the business may keep making investments in Cloud’s expansion. To prevent desk collisions, employees are expected to come into the office on different days.
