Researchers in the US have trained AI to design a robot from scratch

Fed with a basic prompt, the AI system was able to develop a blueprint for a rudimentary walking robot within seconds.

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00:00 [MUSIC]

00:22 It actually starts from scratch.

00:24 And the way that it works is it generates this random body that kind of looks like a sponge.

00:29 And it evaluates its behavior.

00:32 It's probably not so good at walking or whatever you want this robot to do.

00:37 And then, thanks to a little neat mathematical trick, it can kind of see into the future

00:42 and tell how changes to the body will affect its behavior, make it better or worse.

00:48 So the AI starts changing the shape of the robot and repositioning muscles within its body

00:55 so that it becomes better and better at walking.

00:58 [MUSIC]

01:11 How can we learn about evolution?

01:13 We don't have a time machine.

01:15 We can't travel back in time to see what happened on our planet, to see how life emerged.

01:19 We don't have any means of interstellar travel.

01:22 We can't travel to other planets and observe other forms of life.

01:27 It's very difficult to do science in these conditions where you really only have a single data point,

01:32 life on Earth, and it's hard to look into that data point and see what happened over time.

01:38 Well, now anyone can watch evolution in action, and I'm hoping that this generates new ideas

01:44 and new hypotheses and leads eventually to new useful technologies.

01:49 [MUSIC]