Since the earliest sci-fi books and films, computers imbued with artificial intelligence have almost always been accompanied by equally clever moving machines, like androids and other robots. Over the past 15 years or so, however, AI systems that work entirely in software have grown far more sophisticated than their moving counterparts. Robots can build cars in factories and clean up after us at home but are able to carry out a relatively small range of tasks compared to the increasingly general nature of chatbots.

A startup called Physical Intelligence has set out to alter this situation. Formed this year by a team of robotics and AI experts, the company plans to create software that can add high-level intelligence to a wide variety of robots and machines. Or, as co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Karol Hausman puts it in Physical Intelligence’s first public interview since founding the company: “We aim to bring AI to the physical world with a universal model that can power any robot or any physical device basically for any application.”

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