AIs are products of bits and code, existing within simulations and servers. Robots are their bridge, their interface with the real world. If AI represents the automation of information, robotics is the automation of the material, the physical instantiations of AI, a step change in what it is possible to do. Mastery of bits comes full circle, directly reconfiguring atoms, rewriting the bounds not just of what can be thought or said or calculated but what can be built in the most tangible physical sense. And yet the remarkable thing about the coming wave is that this kind of blunt atomic
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