Altman Says Everyone Will Have a Personal Robot as OpenAI Expands Robotics Push

OpenAI has outlined a long-term vision in which everyone has a personal robot. The company is turning its push to extend generative artificial intelligence beyond software and into the physical world into a concrete effort through robotics hiring.

On June 1, OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “OpenAI Robotics is hiring,” saying the company is seeking full-stack hardware, operations, systems and machine-learning engineers. They would help “program and manufacture robots that are useful to society,” he wrote.

Altman also laid out the direction of the robotics effort. AI should be able to help people in the physical world, he said. In the near term, OpenAI will focus on robots that support skilled workers building future infrastructure. Over the longer term, the company envisions “everyone having a personal robot that helps with whatever they need.”

OpenAI’s robotics organization grew out of its world-simulation research program. Altman said the program, led by Aditya Ramesh, has evolved into OpenAI Robotics over the past year. Ramesh is known for contributing to the development of the image-generation model DALL·E.

Altman said robotics is advancing quickly, driven by an approach that designs robot hardware and machine-learning research together. He added that anyone interested in working across the full robotics stack and building the future should consider joining.