Computers with AI have sneaked into the society. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT4 and Google’s Bard have created a great impact. They can generate a combination of text, images and videos. There is some misgiving about such stand-alone intelligence since the machine may not perceive the surrounding the living beings do while using intelligence. AI has its limitations. Human intelligence is housed in the physical body. There are experiments to pair the large language models with a body, say a robotic body. The processor converts sound into text and the text is fed into LLM. It then responds verbally and physically. Such a robot can offer condolences on the death of your loved ones. It uses sensors to respond to the physical cues and to bodily gestures. Such a robot learns from the behaviour of the people around it. It also mimics them. It is akin to wireless communication.

Google too is integrating its LLM models and physical machines. They developed a robot called PaLM-E in March, 2023. This robot can assimilate visual features of the environment. It also absorbs information about its physical position. All this is translated into natural language. The robot in fact conveys its own space relative to other objects. It can open a drawer and pickup a pack of Schrewburys. Such robots are capable of performing basic tasks without special programming, say making you a drink or picking a fallen object while responding to simple commands.

However, living beings have a mind that is inextricably integrated to body’s actions and reactions happening in the real world. These interactions have been shaped over a long period, say of millions of years.

While AI-assisted machines respond to language, living beings performed the basic tasks even when they had not learnt language. Robots thus lack a deeper connect between the real world and theoretical world. Intelligence emanates from the living body.

Scientists have developed small robots out of live cells, say of frogs. They are called xenobots. They can do basic tasks and do move around. They are not as creative as ChatGPT, but in a sense they resemble human intelligence.