Why humanoid robot demos still fail the generalization test

In Episode 265 of The Robot Report Podcast, our guest is Jeanine Sinanan-Singh, director of generative AI Research at Appen. She discusses the continuing importance of humans in the loop for training robots.

Sinanan-Singh works on agentic evals, RL environments, and dataset design for post-training frontier AI models. She also explains why impressive demonstrations don't necessarily prove that robotic behavior can be generalized.

Sinanan-Singh previously founded a pharmacy automation startup built on a 3D-printing platform to manufacture personalized medications. A Harvard graduate with prior experience at Microsoft and Surge, she is a frequent voice on AI evaluation and reasoning.

Show timeline

• 8:10 — News of the week

• 29:06 — Jeanine Sinanan-Singh, director of GenAI Research at Appen

News of the week

• Boston Dynamics appoints former Amazon exec Rohit Prasad as new CEO

• PTC acquisition positions Schneider Electric to challenge Siemens

• Also mentioned: Berkshire Grey CEO discusses physical AI, European expansion

• Locus gets a grip on robotic manipulation with Nexera technology

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To learn how you can sponsor a future episode of The Robot Report Podcast, contact Jami Brownlee at [email protected]

Would you like to be a guest on a future episode? Contact Mike Oitzman at [email protected]