Beyond Automation: AI and the Evolution of Robotic Intelligence

The rise of generative AI has rapidly expanded the pool of AI users and reshaped workflows across disciplines, from software engineering to marketing and other knowledge work. Paired with recent advances in humanoid robotics, this momentum has inspired ambitious visions for general-purpose robots in industry and society. Yet automation in production and logistics has remained largely unchanged, and the gap between impressive lab demonstrations and robust, scalable real world automation has widened. This talk highlights the evolution of robotic intelligence and particularly the recent rise of generative AI and foundation models in robotics. It explains how this evolution unlocks new automation opportunities as well as the key challenges that remain