OpenAI Names Meta Augmented Reality Vet Caitlin Kalinowski to Head Robotics Project

The one-time head of Meta’s augmented reality glasses project is headed to OpenAI.

Caitlin Kalinowski has been hired to oversee the artificial intelligence startup’s robotics effort, according to a Monday (Nov. 4) post on LinkedIn.

Kalinowski began leading Meta’s AR glasses team in March 2022, guiding the development of its Orion prototype, according to her LinkedIn page. She was also in charge of the hardware team behind the tech giant’s virtual reality goggles and helped design the hardware for Apple’s MacBooks.

“I’m delighted to share that I’m joining OpenAI to lead robotics and consumer hardware,” Kalinowski wrote in the LinkedIn post. “…In my new role, I will initially focus on OpenAI’s robotics work and partnerships to help bring AI into the physical world and unlock its benefits for humanity.”

Several media outlets reported on the possibility of Kalinowski collaborating with her former Apple boss Jony Ive, who is developing an AI hardware device with OpenAI and his LoveFrom.

OpenAI has begun hiring research engineers for a robotics team designed to help the company’s partners incorporate its multimodal AI into their hardware, TechCrunch reported Monday. This comes about four years after the startup dissolved its hardware research to focus on software. OpenAI constructed a robot in 2018 that could learn how to grip objects.

Meanwhile, this week saw robotics startup Physical Intelligence, an OpenAI-backed company, raise $400 million in an early-stage funding round, valuing the company at $2 billion. Physical Intelligence is developing software that would work on any robot, eliminating the need to create software for individual tasks.

In other robotics news, PYMNTS wrote in August about the debate among experts on the impact of humanoid robots on the future of work and commerce.

While companies are looking at these robots for tasks such as assembly and customer service, there is a range of opinions on their adoption rate and implications. These machines will be integrated gradually, with their rollout held back by technology development, workforce adaptation and customer acceptance, according to experts.

“As Henry Ford said, ‘Why is it that I always get a whole person when all I want is a pair of hands?’ This sentiment applies here too,” Ding Zhao, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, told PYMNTS at the time.

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