AI Insights

Intro robotics students build AI-powered robot dogs from scratch

Published

2 months ago

July 7, 2025

Equipped with a starter robot hardware kit and cutting-edge lessons in artificial intelligence, students in CS 123: A Hands-On Introduction to Building AI-Enabled Robots are mastering the full spectrum of robotics – from motor control to machine learning. Now in its third year, the course has students build and enhance an adorable quadruped robot, Pupper, programming it to walk, navigate, respond to human commands, and perform a specialized task that they showcase in their final presentations.

The course, which evolved from an independent study project led by Stanford’s robotics club, is now taught by Karen Liu, professor of computer science in the School of Engineering, in addition to Jie Tan from Google DeepMind and Stuart Bowers from Apple and Hands-On Robotics. Throughout the 10-week course, students delve into core robotics concepts, such as movement and motor control, while connecting them to advanced AI topics.

“We believe that the best way to help and inspire students to become robotics experts is to have them build a robot from scratch,” Liu said. “That’s why we use this specific quadruped design. It’s the perfect introductory platform for beginners to dive into robotics, yet powerful enough to support the development of cutting-edge AI algorithms.”

What makes the course especially approachable is its low barrier to entry – students need only basic programming skills to get started. From there, the students build up the knowledge and confidence to tackle complex robotics and AI challenges.

Robot creation goes mainstream

Pupper evolved from Doggo, built by the Stanford Student Robotics club to offer people a way to create and design a four-legged robot on a budget. When the team saw the cute quadruped’s potential to make robotics both approachable and fun, they pitched the idea to Bowers, hoping to turn their passion project into a hands-on course for future roboticists.

“We wanted students who were still early enough in their education to explore and experience what we felt like the future of AI robotics was going to be,” Bowers said.

This current version of Pupper is more powerful and refined than its predecessors. It’s also irresistibly adorable and easier than ever for students to build and interact with.

“We’ve come a long way in making the hardware better and more capable,” said Ankush Kundan Dhawan, one of the first students to take the Pupper course in the fall of 2021 before becoming its head teaching assistant. “What really stuck with me was the passion that instructors had to help students get hands-on with real robots. That kind of dedication is very powerful.”

Code come to life

Building a Pupper from a starter hardware kit blends different types of engineering, including electrical work, hardware construction, coding, and machine learning. Some students even produced custom parts for their final Pupper projects. The course pairs weekly lectures with hands-on labs. Lab titles like Wiggle Your Big Toe and Do What I Say keep things playful while building real skills.

CS 123 students ready to show off their Pupper’s tricks. | Harry Gregory

Over the initial five weeks, students are taught the basics of robotics, including how motors work and how robots can move. In the next phase of the course, students add a layer of sophistication with AI. Using neural networks to improve how the robot walks, sees, and responds to the environment, they get a glimpse of state-of-the-art robotics in action. Many students also use AI in other ways for their final projects.

“We want them to actually train a neural network and control it,” Bowers said. “We want to see this code come to life.”

By the end of the quarter this spring, students were ready for their capstone project, called the “Dog and Pony Show,” where guests from NVIDIA and Google were present. Six teams had Pupper perform creative tasks – including navigating a maze and fighting a (pretend) fire with a water pick – surrounded by the best minds in the industry.

“At this point, students know all the essential foundations – locomotion, computer vision, language – and they can start combining them and developing state-of-the-art physical intelligence on Pupper,” Liu said.

“This course gives them an overview of all the key pieces,” said Tan. “By the end of the quarter, the Pupper that each student team builds and programs from scratch mirrors the technology used by cutting-edge research labs and industry teams today.”

All ready for the robotics boom

The instructors believe the field of AI robotics is still gaining momentum, and they’ve made sure the course stays current by integrating new lessons and technology advances nearly every quarter.

A water jet is mounted on this "firefighter" Pupper

This Pupper was mounted with a small water jet to put out a pretend fire. | Harry Gregory

Students have responded to the course with resounding enthusiasm and the instructors expect interest in robotics – at Stanford and in general – will continue to grow. They hope to be able to expand the course, and that the community they’ve fostered through CS 123 can contribute to this engaging and important discipline.

“The hope is that many CS 123 students will be inspired to become future innovators and leaders in this exciting, ever-changing field,” said Tan.

“We strongly believe that now is the time to make the integration of AI and robotics accessible to more students,” Bowers said. “And that effort starts here at Stanford and we hope to see it grow beyond campus, too.”

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Dulce Maria Alavez missing: Police using AI in search for girl who vanished from Bridgeton, NJ park

Published

40 minutes ago

September 16, 2025

The Editors

BRIDGETON, N.J. (WPVI) — Tuesday marks six years since Dulce Maria Alavez vanished from Bridgeton City Park, and investigators say they remain committed to solving the case.

Dulce was 5 years old when she was last seen playing with her younger brother on the afternoon of Sept. 16, 2019. Her mother, Noema Alavez Perez, stayed in her car nearby with her younger sister. Moments later, Dulce was gone.

Surveillance video shows the last known images of Dulce Alavez before she went missing.

While marking the anniversary, Cumberland County Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae said the New Jersey State Police have begun using artificial intelligence in hopes of uncovering new clues.

TIMELINE: The search for 5-year-old Dulce Maria Alavez

“Our commitment to uncovering the truth has never wavered-we will never forget, and we remain steadfast in our mission to bring closure to the family,” said Colonel Patrick Callahan, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police.

The FBI believes Dulce’s abduction may have been a random crime of opportunity.

“We believe there are witnesses out there who saw the abductor, who saw the vehicle in the area of the park,” said FBI Special Agent Daniel Garrabrant in a 2020 interview with Action News. “They either haven’t come forward because they’re afraid or don’t realize how important the information is.”

Authorities have released several age-progression images of Dulce, the most recent in 2023.

Age-progression photos released Thursday (left) and Wednesday (right) show what Dulce Maria Alavez could look like today.

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

No arrests have been made in the case. About a month after her disappearance, police released a sketch of a man who remains a person of interest. He was described as a Hispanic male, approximately 5-foot-7, slender build, age 30 to 35, wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans and a white baseball-style hat.

On October 15, 2019, nearly a month into the case, police released a composite sketch of a person who may have information on Dulce Maria Alavez's disappearance. — On October 15, 2019, nearly a month into the case, police released a composite sketch of a person who may have information on Dulce Maria Alavez’s disappearance.

Anyone with information is urged to contact the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office at www.ccpo.tips, the New Jersey State Police Special Investigations Section at 1-833-465-2653, or the FBI’s tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324). If you speak Spanish, you can call 856-207-2732.

“This investigation is like a large puzzle,” Webb-McRae said. “There are missing puzzle pieces. We don’t know their significance or where they fit until the pieces are collected.”

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This Artificial Intelligence (AI) ETF Has Outperformed the Market By 2.4X Since Inception and Only Holds Profitable Companies

Published

2 hours ago

September 16, 2025

The Editors

For well under $100, you can buy one share of this under-the-radar AI exchange-traded fund (ETF) that looks poised to continue to outperform the market.

For this article, I asked myself: Where would I start investing if I had less than $100 to invest?

Image source: Getty Images.

An AI ETF that’s concentrated and full of leading and profitable companies

This answer to my question popped into my head: I’d want a concentrated exchange-traded fund (ETF) focused on leading and profitable companies heavily involved in artificial intelligence (AI), but with enough differences among themselves.

Why an ETF? Because I’d not want to put all my (investing) eggs in one basket.

Why AI? Because it’s poised to be the biggest secular trend in many decades or even generations.

Why concentrated? Because I believe if investors are going to buy a very diversified ETF, they might as well buy the entire market, so to speak, and buy an S&P 500 index ETF. Indeed, buying an S&P 500 index fund is a good idea for many investors, and recommended by investing legend Warren Buffett. That said, over the long run, I think an AI ETF full of only leading and profitable companies will beat the S&P 500 index.

Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF (MAGS): Overview

And bingo! There is such an ETF — the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF (MAGS 1.92%). It has seven holdings — the so-called “Magnificent Seven” stocks: Alphabet (GOOG 4.38%) (GOOGL 4.53%), Amazon (AMZN 1.42%), Apple (AAPL 1.06%), Meta Platforms (META 1.18%), Microsoft (MSFT 1.01%), Nvidia (NVDA -0.10%), and Tesla (TSLA 3.54%). This ETF closed at $62.93 per share on Friday, Sept. 12.

These megacap stocks (stocks with market caps over $200 billion) were given the Magnificent Seven name a couple of years ago by a Wall Street analyst due to their strong growth and large influence on the overall market. The name comes from the title of a 1960 Western film.

Two other main traits I like about this ETF:

Its expense ratio is reasonable at 0.29%.
It provides equal-weight exposure to the seven stocks. At each quarterly rebalancing, the stocks will be reset to an equal weighting of about 14.28% (100% divided by 7).

Since its inception in April 2023 (almost 2.5 years), the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF has returned 160% — 2.4 times the S&P 500’s 65.9% return.

Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF (MAGS): All stock holdings

Stocks are listed in order of current weight in portfolio. Keep in mind the ETF is rebalanced quarterly to make stocks equally weighted.

Holding No.	Company	Market Cap	Wall Street’s Projected Annualized EPS Growth Over Next 5 Years	Weight (% of Portfolio)	1 Year/ 10-Year Returns
1	Alphabet	$2.9 trillion	14.7%	17.72%	55.9% / 677%
2	Nvidia	$4.3 trillion	34.9%	15.00%	49.3% / 32,210%
3	Apple	$3.5 trillion	8.8%	14.13%	5.6% / 812%
4	Tesla	$1.3 trillion	13.4%	13.81%	72.3% / 2,270%
5	Amazon	$2.4 trillion	18.6%	13.30%	22% / 762%
6	Meta Platforms	$1.9 trillion	12.9%	13.16%	44.3% / 725%
7	Microsoft	$3.8 trillion	16.6%	12.76%	20.3% / 1,250%
Overall ETF	N/A	Total net assets of $2.86 billion	N/A	100%	40.5% / N/A
N/A	S&P 500	N/A	N/A	N/A	19.2% / 300%

Data sources: Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF, finviz.com, and YCharts. EPS = earnings per share. Data as of Sept. 12, 2025.

All these companies are profitable leaders in their core markets, and heavily involved in AI. Nvidia produces AI tech that enables others to use AI, while the other companies mainly use AI to improve their existing products and develop new ones.

Alphabet’s Google is the world leader in internet search. Its cloud computing business is No. 3 in the world, behind Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. The company also has other businesses, notably its driverless vehicle subsidiary, Waymo. (You can read here why I believe Nvidia is the best driverless vehicle stock.)

Nvidia is often described as the world’s leading maker of AI chips — and that it is. But it’s much more. It’s the world leader in supplying technology infrastructure for enabling AI. It’s also the global leader in graphics processing units (GPUs) for computer gaming.

Apple’s iPhone holds the No. 2 spot in the global smartphone market, behind Samsung. However, it dominates the U.S. market. The company’s services business is attractive, as it consists of recurring revenue and has been steadily growing.

Amazon operates the world’s No. 1 e-commerce business and the world’s No. 1 cloud computing business. It also has many other businesses, notably its Fresh and Amazon Prime Now (Whole Foods) grocery delivery operations.

Meta Platforms operates the world’s leading social media site, Facebook, as well as Instagram, Threads, and messaging app WhatsApp.

Microsoft’s Word has long been the world’s leading word processing software. Word is part of Microsoft Office, a suite of popular software for personal computers (PCs). Its Azure is the world’s second-largest cloud computing business.

Tesla remains the No. 1 electric vehicle (EV) maker, by far, in the U.S. despite struggling recently. In the first half of 2025, China’s BYD surpassed Tesla as the world’s leader in all-electric vehicles by number of units sold. CEO Elon Musk touts that the company’s robotaxi and Optimus humanoid robot businesses will eventually be larger than its EV sales business.

In short, the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF is poised to continue to benefit from the growth of artificial intelligence. Technically, it doesn’t have a long-term history. But if it had existed many years ago, it’s easy to tell that its long-term performance would be very strong because the long-term performances of all its holdings have been anywhere from great to spectacular.

Beth McKenna has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends BYD Company and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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OpenAI’s new GPT-5 Codex model takes on Claude Code

Published

2 hours ago

September 16, 2025

The Editors

OpenAI is rolling out the GPT-5 Codex model to all Codex instances, including Terminal, IDE extension, and Codex Web (chatgpt.com/codex).

Codex is an AI agent that allows you to automate coding-related tasks. You can delegate your complex tasks to Codex and watch it execute code for you.

Even if you don’t know programming languages, you can use Codex to “vibe code” your apps and web apps.

But so far, it has fallen a bit short of Claude Code, which is the market leader in the AI coding space.

Today, OpenAI confirmed it’s rolling out the Codex-special GPT-5 model.

In a blog post, OpenAI stated the GPT-5 Codex model excels in real-world coding tasks, achieving a 74.5% success rate on the SWE-bench Verified benchmark.

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