ClaimsPeople

Rodney Brooks

Rodney Brooks is a roboticist, MIT professor emeritus, and co-founder of iRobot, Rethink Robotics and Robust.AI.

1,166 claims collected, 291 researched, 88 resolved. Report of 5 November 2026, method 0.1.0+c876030c.

Scores by kind of claim

Each kind of claim is scored on its own, out of 100: the share that held up, with the range it likely falls in. Fewer resolved claims give a wider range.

  • Factual claims

    Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

    83 77 88

    High confidence, 79 factual claims resolved. From 17 documents, 2014 to 2026; 19 documents sampled from 35 candidates found.

    Not scored: 31 unresolvable, 17 checkable only against their own records.

    See the factual claims

  • Predictions

    Statements about events outside the person's control, checked once they fell due: did they come true?

    67 49 83

    Low confidence, 8 predictions resolved. From 6 documents, 2018 to 2026; 19 documents sampled from 35 candidates found.

    Not scored: 91 unresolvable. 60 more fall due later.

    Does not yet allow for how likely each prediction was when made.

    See the predictions

  • Promises

    Commitments to the person's or organisation's own future action, with something to deliver: was it delivered?

    Insufficient record: 1 promise resolved, 5 needed for a score.

    Not scored: 3 not yet due.

    See the promises

All types combined: 81 (likely 76 to 86, high confidence), from 87 claims: 79 factual claims, 8 predictions. It mixes kinds of claim in different proportions for different people, so compare people kind by kind.

Rodney Brooks's claims

60 claims

60 claims, sorted by newest said. Choose a claim to read it in full.
VerdictKindSaidClaimTopic
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Most of the early humanoid robot companies will quietly shut down and disappear, as happened with self driving car companies. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Economics and markets
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Lack of robotics progress will negatively affect the quality of life of newly elderly people for the next couple of decades. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 AI capabilities
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Without new types of mechanical systems, walking humanoid robots will remain too unsafe to be in close proximity to real humans. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 In the next ten years deployable robot dexterity may improve markedly, but not in the way the current humanoid robot hype suggests. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 AI capabilities
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Boeing's Starliner will fly again, potentially twice in 2026. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Other
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 There will be many interesting demonstrations, but ten years is too short a period for a clear winner to emerge. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 AI capabilities
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 The number of people launched to orbit in 2026 may not rise above the high twenties, despite the Artemis II flight. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Other
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 No clear winner among new neural computation approaches beyond linear threshold systems will emerge by 2036, though there will be multiple candidates. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 AI capabilities
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 It seems likely that Waymo has a good shot at getting operations running in five additional US cities (Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando) in 2026, which would double its total number of US cities to 10. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Over the next ten years there will be a lot of activity developing guard rails around LLMs to make them useful. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 AI safety and alignment
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 The trends do not look like EVs will reach 12% of US new car sales in 2027, even with a huge uptick. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Economics and markets
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Brooks seriously doubts a human will land on Mars before 2040, and says the earliest Mars settlement will not happen before 2050. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Other
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Brooks says he is confident that he is right on his points (a) and (b) from his blog post, at least for the next ten years; the material does not say what (a) and (b) are. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 AI capabilities
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Weekly suborbital paying-customer flights (Blue Origin) may become feasible by 2028 if customer demand exists. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Other
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Brooks does not think any robot able to do the last 10 yards of delivery from the street will be deployed this decade, and perhaps not even demonstrated. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 AI capabilities
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Human spaceflight will change from its stasis in 2026. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Other
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Putting humans on Mars will take much longer than putting a crewed colony on the Moon. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Other
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Private space stations may lead to more humans flying on orbital flights than the current roughly 28 per year. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Other
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 The current hype does not mean that results over the next decade will pay back the massive investments going into AI and robotics. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Economics and markets
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 There will likely be a jump in the number of Blue Origin suborbital flights in 2026. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Other
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Deployable robot dexterity will remain far worse than human hands beyond 2036. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 AI capabilities
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 The SpaceX Starship-based crewed Moon landing will not happen in 2027, and may never happen. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Other
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Brooks is doubtful that a new quantum error-correction method will emerge, be fully tested and reach production at scale within the next ten years. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Space station building will pick up markedly over the next few years in anticipation of the ISS's end. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Other
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Over the next 10 years the winning quantum computers will be those solving real problems in materials science, chemistry and physics. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2026 Blue Origin may make a soft landing on the Moon in 2026. Prediction · 1 Jan 2026 Other
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2025 Robotaxi service, even with remote operators, will not be operating in 50 US cities by 2028. Prediction · 1 Jan 2025 Economics and markets
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2025 Humanoid robots will not take away jobs for decades. Prediction · 1 Jan 2025 AI, the economy and work
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2025 US battery electric cars will not reach 30% of new car sales in 2027, given a Q3 2024 share of 8.9%. Prediction · 1 Jan 2025 Economics and markets
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2025 Brooks says he "got suckered by his hype" and that the development he discusses, which the surrounding text links to a "taxi" service in 50 of the 100 biggest US cities, is unlikely to happen in the first half of this century. Prediction · 1 Jan 2025 Economics and markets
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2025 Brooks said he is quite confident that SpaceX will not fly 400 Starship launches in the four years 2025 through 2028. Prediction · 1 Jan 2025 Economics and markets
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2025 The aircraft type whose last unit was built in 1963 is expected to keep flying until at least 2040, and perhaps longer. Prediction · 1 Jan 2025 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2025 Rodney Brooks said he was quite confident that SpaceX would not fly 400 Starship launches in the four years 2025 through 2028, while saying it was certainly plausible he might live to see 400 Starship launches in some four-year period. Prediction · 1 Jan 2025 Other
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2025 The official mid-2027 Starship lunar landing schedule will likely slip by a few years. Prediction · 1 Jan 2025 Economics and markets
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2025 Brooks thinks that if Waymo cannot make its taxi service succeed within the next two years, the idea of large-scale use of limited ('watered down') autonomy will be dead for at least a decade or two. Prediction · 1 Jan 2025 Economics and markets
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2025 Brooks assessed that regular weekly suborbital paying-customer flights in 2026 were looking impossible, given the data from 2023 and 2024 and one of the two companies being on hiatus for all of 2025 and well into 2026. Prediction · 1 Jan 2025 Other
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2024 Regular weekly suborbital tourist flights by 2026 are doubtful. Prediction · 1 Jan 2024 Economics and markets
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2024 Humanoid robots will not play any significant role for at least another 25 years from 2024. Prediction · 1 Jan 2024 AI timelines and forecasting
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2024 Brooks said his estimate that electric vehicles would reach 30% of US car sales by 2027 is very much at risk, since reaching it from 7.2% in 2023 would need two more full doublings while manufacturers are slowing things down. Prediction · 1 Jan 2024 Economics and markets
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2023 The level of sales Brooks had predicted could plausibly be reached in one of 2026, 2027 or 2028. Prediction · 1 Jan 2023 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2023 There will be human drivers on roads for decades to come. Prediction · 1 Jan 2023 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 18 Aug 2020 For autonomous vehicles, the 'short run' of overestimated expectations will last 30 or more years. Prediction · 18 Aug 2020 AI timelines and forecasting
Not yet due Prediction 15 Jul 2018 Brooks suspects that human-level AI is much more complex than detecting gravity waves, controlled fusion or chemistry, and that it will take hundreds of years. Prediction · 15 Jul 2018 AI timelines and forecasting
Not yet due Prediction 15 Jul 2018 Brooks said that, of the practical systems built since 2006, the biggest practical impact for most people recently, and likely over the next couple of decades, is on speech transliteration systems. Prediction · 15 Jul 2018 AI capabilities
Not yet due Prediction 15 Jul 2018 Brooks said that perhaps, as he tends to believe, getting there is just really hard and will take a hundred years or more of concerted effort. Prediction · 15 Jul 2018 AI timelines and forecasting
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2018 There is a real possibility that a flying car will not be purchasable by any US resident with enough money even by 2050 (original prediction: not before 2036). Prediction · 1 Jan 2018 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2018 Hyperloop will not happen in Brooks's lifetime, i.e. not by 2050. Prediction · 1 Jan 2018 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2018 The generally agreed 'next big thing' in AI beyond deep learning will be something already being worked on with published papers, emerging no earlier than 2023 and by 2027. Prediction · 1 Jan 2018 AI capabilities
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2018 No self driving car will be faced with an instance of the trolley problem until beyond 2050. Prediction · 1 Jan 2018 Philosophy, ethics and society
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2018 Flying cars will reach 0.01% of total US cars no earlier than 2042. Prediction · 1 Jan 2018 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2018 There will be no commercially viable passenger-carrying hyperloop systems within the next 32 years (by 2050). Prediction · 1 Jan 2018 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2018 Rodney Brooks said he thinks landing cargo on Mars by 2026 is optimistic, though it might be pushed to happen as a statement that it can be done rather than for a pressing practical reason. Prediction · 1 Jan 2018 AI timelines and forecasting
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2018 A flying car will not be available for purchase by any US resident with enough money before 2036, and there is a real possibility this will not happen at all by 2050. Prediction · 1 Jan 2018 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 1 Jan 2018 A major city banning parking and human-driven cars from part of the city will be the starting point of a turn toward driverless cars, no earlier than 2027 and by 2031. Prediction · 1 Jan 2018 AI policy and governance
Not yet due Prediction 7 Sep 2017 People will still be in the loop worrying about physical wiring of robotics and AI systems for decades to come. Prediction · 7 Sep 2017 AI, the economy and work
Not yet due Prediction 7 Sep 2017 Widespread deployment of self-driving cars will take decades, not years. Prediction · 7 Sep 2017 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 7 Sep 2017 Real deployment of self-driving cars could come four, five or six decades after 1987. Prediction · 7 Sep 2017 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 7 Sep 2017 Because many of the non-self-driving cars bought today will likely still be on the road in 2040, this puts an inherent limit on how soon all cars will be self-driving. Prediction · 7 Sep 2017 Technology
Not yet due Prediction 16 Dec 2014 Brooks said he did not think robots over the next fifty, or even a hundred, years would be able to do everything, and that people would see more and more collaboration with machines during their lifetimes. Prediction · 16 Dec 2014 AI, the economy and work
Not yet due Prediction 18 Sep 2012 Over the next twenty years no one will mistake a robot for a person, but people will interact and collaborate with robots, which will become as common in daily life as search engines are today. Prediction · 18 Sep 2012 Technology
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Rodney Brooks

Open its page

Prediction Economics and markets

“As with self driving cars, most of the early players in humanoid robots, will quietly shut up shop and disappear.”

Rodney Brooks, blog author 1 January 2026 Predictions Scorecard, 2026 January 01 (rodneybrooks.com)

Most of the early humanoid robot companies will quietly shut down and disappear, as happened with self driving car companies.

Not yet due The date it refers to has not come.

Reasoning

No deadline stated and 'most' companies shutting down is a future outcome that hasn't yet played out.

Cite this claim

Rodney Brooks, “Most of the early humanoid robot companies will quietly shut down and disappear, as happened with self driving car companies.” (said 1 January 2026). Verdict: not yet due. Reliability API, claim c_060ea8ea3c4d, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_060ea8ea3c4d

Claims without a verdict

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