Aaron Ames
Aaron D. Ames is the Bren Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering at Caltech, where he leads the AMBER Lab in bipedal and humanoid robotics and directs the Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies.
3
APPEARANCES
3
PODCASTS
Oct 16, 2026
Aaron AmesGUEST
What I mean is I think people kind of put AI in this big bucket, and I think AI is not a great word because it's too big and includes too many things, including standard things that are not AI, right? I think control algorithms are, are now called AI in a broad level, right? So things that run in your car are called AI, but they're not.
Aaron AmesGUEST
They're, they're not, like- They're not an LLM, they're not intelligent, they're not, you know, inferring off something.
Aaron AmesGUEST
So, so I think we need to separate out these pieces a little bit to understand where we're at, right? So LLMs, large language models, have, have really moved the needle for what we can do with computer intelligence, right? With machine learning.
12 MINS LATER
Aaron AmesGUEST
... happening on the, on the top, and this- Also gets back to this physics idea.
Aaron AmesGUEST
What I mean is I think people kind of put AI in this big bucket, and I think AI is not a great word because it's too big and includes too many things, including standard things that are not AI, right? I think control algorithms are, are now called AI in a broad level, right? So things that run in your car are called AI, but they're not.
Aaron AmesGUEST
They're, they're not, like- They're not an LLM, they're not intelligent, they're not, you know, inferring off something.
Aaron AmesGUEST
So, so I think we need to separate out these pieces a little bit to understand where we're at, right? So LLMs, large language models, have, have really moved the needle for what we can do with computer intelligence, right? With machine learning.
12 MINS LATER
Aaron AmesGUEST
... happening on the, on the top, and this- Also gets back to this physics idea.
Aaron AmesGUEST
What I mean is I think people kind of put AI in this big bucket, and I think AI's not a great word because it's too big and includes too many things, including standard things that are not AI, right? I think control algorithms are, are now called AI in a broad level, right? So things that run in your car are called AI.
Aaron AmesGUEST
They're, they're not, like- They're not an LLM, they're not intelligent, they're not, you know, inferring off something.
Aaron AmesGUEST
So, so I think we need to separate out these pieces a little bit to understand where we're at, right? So LLMs, large language models, have, have really moved the needle for what we can do with computer intelligence, right? With machine learning.
12 MINS LATER