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Mitchell: Real-world robotics imposes strict latency constraints absent in disembodied AI

Eric Mitchell · No Priors Ep. 113 | With OpenAI's Eric Mitchell and Brandon McKinzie · May 1, 2025 · at 23:22

OpenAI research scientist Eric Mitchell contrasts test-time compute scaling in disembodied reasoning models with the real-time physical constraints of robotics.

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“The real world is like an interesting litmus test because at the end of the day, like there is a, you know, frame rate in the real world you need to live on. And it doesn't matter if you get the right answer after you think for two minutes, like, You know, the ball is coming at you now, and you have to catch it. Gravity's not gonna wait for you. So you, that's an extra constraint that we get to at least softly ignore when we're talking about these purely disembodied things.”

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