The former head of Meta’s augmented reality glasses initiatives announced on Monday that she is joining OpenAI to lead robotics and customer hardware, according to reports. TechCrunch reports that OpenAI has revealed to the publication that journalist Caitlin Kalinowski is set to join the artificial intelligence startup’s team.
Kalinowski leads the government hardware team that spearheaded the development of Meta’s AR glasses project since March 2022. Meta recently confirmed the launch of Orion, a groundbreaking virtual reality experience showcased at its annual Join event, where it was unveiled to great fanfare by her team. Kalinowski spearheaded the hardware team responsible for developing Meta’s digital reality goggles for approximately nine years. Prior to that, she worked at Apple, responsible for designing the hardware for MacBook products.
Kalinowski announced with enthusiasm her decision to join OpenAI, where she will leverage her expertise to shape the development of robotics and hardware solutions for clients. “As my new role unfolds, I will focus on harnessing OpenAI’s robotics expertise and strategic partnerships to successfully integrate AI into the physical realm, unlocking its transformative potential and benefits for human society.”
Kalinowski is likely to collaborate with her former superior, Jony Ive, co-founder of LoveFrom, the startup he established after departing from Apple, on a novel AI hardware device being developed jointly by OpenAI and LoveFrom. In September, I’ve described this product as a revolutionary technology that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to develop a computing expertise that is significantly less socially disruptive than the game-changing iPhone.
OpenAI has recently launched an initiative focused on helping its partners integrate its multimodal AI technology into their hardware. OpenAI’s robotics initiative has been revived approximately four years after the startup discontinued its hardware development to concentrate exclusively on software. By 2018, researchers aimed to develop a robotic system capable of grasping and manipulating objects independently.
Several corporations have already integrated OpenAI’s innovations into their hardware. Apple’s latest offering is expected to launch later this year, with the obvious choice being a prominent player in the tech industry. One notable example is the robotics company, Determine, which specializes in natural language processing and enables pure spoken conversations.
