From parking tickets to parkour, robots are excelling at anything they put their artificial intelligence to.  This episode jumps right into action with the story of a robotic attorney accessed through Joshua Browder’s DoNotPay app and how he has continued to extend the capabilities of this agent beyond parking tickets, now including filing suit against companies who have had data breaches.  Will be interesting to see how robotic attorney processes may wind up meeting their judicial counterparts, as one bot can talk to the other to arrive at a fair settlement in mere fractions of the time it would take to go to court.

The co-hosts then take a (quantum) leap to the Boston Dynamics Atlas humanoid robot leap up stairs alone, or presumably in pairs, with all the skill and ease of an accomplished parkour athlete.  The graceful side-to-side jumps involve the Atlas robot moving in the X, Y and Z axes. And all this without any tethers.  Simply amazing.  

Speaking of amazing, the Salto-1P is a one legged robot that uses precision jumping and balance to get where it needs to go — something that an audio podcast just can’t do justice to.  See the link below and check out the video of this bot.  A humanoid structure is not necessarily the only means for successful locomotion.

Michael and Michael conclude this episode with a mixed reality discussion about Varjo’s detailed resolution and how AI might be able to handle the in-classroom differentiation so that each child is operating in their optimal performance zone.  This reminds the team very much of Neal Stephenson’s cyberpunk novel The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer.

We hope you enjoy this week’s show! 

Selected Links

Business Insider Australia article: The 21-year-old who built a robot lawyer to fight parking tickets has a new tool to help you automatically sue companies who get hacked — https://www.businessinsider.com.au/donotpay-lock-security-down-sue-after-hacks-2018-10 

DoNotPay app — https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1427999657 

TechCrunch article: Watch Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robot leap up massive stairs like it’s nothing — https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/11/watch-boston-dynamics-humanoid-robot-leap-up-massive-steps-like-its-nothing/ 

TechCrunch article: The Salto-1P now does amazing targeted jumps — https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/09/the-salto-1p-now-does-amazing-targeted-jumps/ 

TechCrunch article: Atomico leads $31M Series B in Varjo, the Finnish startup developing ‘human-eye resolution’ VR and XR — https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/07/varjo/ 

Forbes article: 100% Literacy: Or What if AI Could Fix Our Broken Educational System? — https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2018/10/08/100-literacy-or-what-if-ai-could-fix-our-broken-educational-system/#3246b2a777b4 

Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age 

Games the co-hosts are playing nothing new this week!