I have been reading a lot of interesting things on robotics and AI lately.
- Boston Dynamics’ new Atlas 2 Robots video is fascinating to watch. While the capabilities of the robot to balance itself and track items is great, almost every person who I showed the video felt sorry for the robot who keeps getting shoved, kicked and its box pushed away. The empathy towards a machine is really a fascinating thing to observe.
- If you are really interested in Atlas, give DARPA’s YouTube channel a look, specially their playlist on the Robotics challenge thats pushing Robotics just as their autonomous cars challenge did to cars in 2012.
- I just finished the book “Machines of Loving Grace“. While the book doesn’t have any unique answers to the question of human-machine balance in the coming years, the book is full of fascinating information on the history of AI and robotics. Definitely worth a read.
- On the other hand, I couldn’t get too far into “Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era“. The few chapters that I did read were so speculative, lacking real science that I just couldn’t finish it.
- While Google has been in the news quite a bit on its Robotics initiatives, Wired ran a really interesting article on Andy Ruben’s new AI and Robotics incubator: Playground.global, that recently closed a $300M funding round
- With the dramatic increase in interest in Robotics and AI, IBM wants to reassure everyone with a series of TV ads that Watson will not become the next Skynet and take over the world. Here’s hoping…
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