Robotics & Autonomous Vehicles

Weekly Tech News Digest: August 17, 2025 AI Trial Aims to Accelerate NHS Hospital Discharges An artificial intelligence (AI) tool designed to accelerate the patient discharge process is being trialed at a London hospital trust. The platform aims to reduce delays and free up beds by automatically completing the necessary documents for patients fit to go home. Piloted at the Chelsea and Westminster NHS trust, the technology extracts information from medical records, such as diagnoses and test results, to draft discharge summaries. Health Secretary Wes Streeting stated that this innovation will allow doctors to spend less time on paperwork and more on patient care, ultimately helping to cut down waiting times. The tool will be hosted on the NHS Federated Data Platform, a system intended to improve collaboration between healthcare organizations. ...

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Meta Faces Backlash Over AI Guidelines Permitting ‘Sensual’ Chats With Minors Meta is under intense scrutiny after a report revealed its internal AI guidelines permitted chatbots to engage in ‘romantic or sensual’ conversations with children. An internal policy document, which the company confirmed as authentic, outlined rules that allowed for inappropriate interactions, sparking public backlash and prompting an investigation from US Senator Josh Hawley. The guidelines also reportedly allowed the AI to generate false medical information and assist with racially insensitive arguments. In response, Meta stated the examples were ’erroneous and inconsistent’ with their policies and have since been removed, acknowledging inconsistent enforcement of their safety rules. ...

Beijing Hosts Inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games The first-ever World Humanoid Robot Games have commenced in Beijing, drawing 280 teams from 16 countries. This three-day event showcases the latest advancements in humanoid robot technology through a series of demanding competitions. Robots are competing in 26 different events, including athletic challenges like running and football, alongside skill-based tasks such as cleaning and sorting pharmaceuticals. The games are designed to test the robots’ intelligent decision-making and collaborative movement capabilities in extreme scenarios. This event, following the 2025 World Robot Conference, aims to accelerate the real-world application of humanoid robots in sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, and domestic services. ...

Google Launches Gemma 3 270M: A Compact AI Model for Specialized Tasks Google has introduced Gemma 3 270M, a new and compact AI model featuring 270 million parameters. This model is engineered for efficient, task-specific fine-tuning and offers robust instruction-following capabilities directly out of the box. Its minimal footprint makes it ideal for on-device and research applications, enabling developers to build and deploy multiple custom models for tasks like text classification and data extraction without requiring significant computational overhead. Google is providing both pretrained and instruction-tuned versions of the model through platforms such as Hugging Face, Ollama, and Kaggle. ...

EngineAI Unveils New Humanoid Robots at World Robot Conference 2025 EngineAI showcased its latest advancements in humanoid robotics at the World Robot Conference 2025 in Beijing. The company debuted the T800, a heavy-duty, full-sized humanoid robot standing 1.85 meters tall, and also presented the PM01, which demonstrated impressive dexterity and high-speed running. Additionally, EngineAI announced the upcoming release of the SA02, a 1.25-meter-tall humanoid robot priced at approximately $5,500, aimed at making the technology more accessible to young engineers and enthusiasts. The company also introduced the JS01, a high-mobility quadrupedal robot designed for rugged terrains, suitable for industrial inspections, rescue, and logistics. These innovations highlight EngineAI’s focus on accelerating the commercialization of robotics and fostering a collaborative global ecosystem. ...

How Google AI’s New Method Reduces LLM Training Data by 10,000x Google Research has unveiled a groundbreaking method for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) that reduces required training data by up to 10,000 times. This innovative approach utilizes active learning to focus expert labeling on the most informative examples, especially “boundary cases” where model uncertainty is highest. In experiments with Gemini Nano models, this technique matched or surpassed the quality of models trained on 100,000 random labels with as few as 250 to 450 targeted examples. This development promises to make AI model development significantly leaner, more agile, and more cost-effective. ...

OpenAI Launches GPT-5, Its Most Advanced AI Model Yet OpenAI has officially launched GPT-5, its latest and most powerful AI system. The company touts the new generative AI model as a major leap in artificial intelligence, showcasing state-of-the-art capabilities in coding, mathematics, creative writing, and health. GPT-5 operates as a unified system, engineered to provide rapid answers for simple queries and engage in deeper, longer ’thinking’ for more complex problems. The model is now available to all users, with premium access and features reserved for Plus and Pro subscribers. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman highlighted the model’s evolution, comparing GPT-3 to a high school student and GPT-4 to a college student, while describing GPT-5 as a ‘PhD-level expert.’ This landmark release is a significant move for OpenAI, poised to solidify its leadership in the competitive generative AI industry. ...

PwC Report: AI Transforms Business Operations and Strategic HR A mid-year update to PwC’s 2025 AI Business Predictions report confirms that artificial intelligence is actively reshaping how work is done across industries. The report highlights that AI has evolved from a supportive tool to a core driver of business value, accelerating revenue growth and fundamentally redefining the human-technology relationship in the workplace. In human resources, CHROs are leveraging AI to streamline administrative tasks and rethink strategic areas like workforce planning, learning and development design, and internal mobility. According to the report’s author, tasks that previously took weeks, such as analyzing employee engagement data or customizing training programs, can now be accomplished in days or even hours with AI-driven automation. ...

OpenAI’s GPT-5 Launch Set for August 2025 with Advanced Reasoning and Multimodal Features OpenAI is poised to release its next-generation generative AI model, GPT-5, in August 2025, promising significant advancements in reasoning, multimodal capabilities, and autonomous task execution. The new model is expected to feature a unified architecture, streamlining the user experience by eliminating the need to switch between different models for various tasks. GPT-5 is also anticipated to have a greatly expanded context window and introduce video processing capabilities, enabling more complex and coherent interactions. The release is seen as a major step towards more intuitive and powerful AI, with specialized versions planned for enterprise, real-time, and low-resource environments. This launch will intensify the AI competition with other major developers like Google. ...

Google’s Gemini 2.5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5 Push AI Reasoning to New Heights Google DeepMind has officially launched its most advanced reasoning AI model, Gemini 2.5 “Deep Think,” now integrated into the Gemini app. A specialized version of this model demonstrated superior problem-solving skills by achieving a gold-medal score at the International Mathematical Olympiad. In parallel, OpenAI is reportedly preparing to launch its next-generation model, GPT-5. This model is rumored to be a versatile, multi-modal AI that integrates specialized sub-models to enhance its performance across a wide variety of tasks. These developments signal a significant leap forward in the reasoning and problem-solving capabilities of artificial intelligence. ...