AI robots can carve stone statues. buildings are next

9 theptip 5 9/8/2025, 12:01:51 AM fastcompany.com ↗

Comments (5)

uundur · 26m ago
uundur · 25m ago
Fricken · 8h ago
I worked as a sculptor of styrofoam for a few months in my student days. The sculptures would be sprayed with a hard enamel coating, then painted and delivered to mini-golf courses, amusement parks etc all over North America. We made kitschy stuff.

We had a CNC machine that was able to cut out the broad strokes. We didn't use it much, however because it didn't really save time. 90% of the work went into the fine details and polish. I have no experience with stone, but I imagine the breakdown to be similar.

Seeing as how they're doing all the finishing work by hand I'm wondering how much labour they can really save with their robots. For a trained sculptor the broad strokes are the easy part, and the fun part. Then it's a bunch of tedium getting everything clean and smooth.

Like with other forms of bespoke automation, such as vibe coding, I'm afraid that once you factor in everything that goes into a project from concept to deliverables, you're not actually saving yourself much trouble.

tayo42 · 7h ago
Wish it explained why Ai is necessary. We have robots that do things already?
arunbahl · 6h ago
From the article:

“We’ll be using reinforcement learning to effectively come up with the optimal toolpaths to see a 3D model, and based on the curvature and the geometric forms, to choose what are the right tools, or what are the right angles of attack,” Springut says. “And when we do that, that’s what’s going to bring the cost of fabricating stone down by 80% to 90%.”