NVIDIA AI Podcast

The path to self driving vehicles is usually marked by six milestones, or levels, from level 0, or no automation, to level 5, or full autonomy. Jianxiong Xiao, CEO of of startup AutoX, has his sights set on level 4, defined by the National Highway Traffic Administration as “a car capable of performing all driving functions under certain conditions."

Sticky. Kind. Chronic. Reefer. Forget the dated slang. These days the word is ‘opportunity.’ The market for legal cannabis in the United States was estimated at $12 billion last year, up 30% year over year from 2017, and it’s projected to grow to $44 billion by 2020. Our guests this episode is Vincent Harkiewicz, is CEO and co-founder of Boulder, Colorado-based Grownetics, a startup that sits at the intersection of agtech, marjijuana, data analytics and artificial intelligence.

Tara Chklovski is CEO and founder of Iridescent, a non-profit that provides access to hands on learning opportunities to prepare underrepresented children and adults for the future of work. She’s been called everything from the “pioneer empowering the incredible tech girls of the future,” to a “CEO science superstar hero.” Tara is here to talk about a bunch of things, including the UN’s AI for Good Global Summit this May in Geneva, and the AI World Championship, part of the AI Family Challenge, May 18 in Silicon Valley.

Good news: astronomers are getting new tools to let them see further, better than ever before. The bad news: they’ll soon be getting more data than humans can handle. To turn the vast quantities of data that will be pouring out of these instruments into world-changing scientific discoveries, Brant Robertson, a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and an associate professor of astronomy at UC Santa Cruz, is turning to AI.

In 2015 today's guest penned an article called "Robot Propaganda" for Wired magazine. It contained this then bold prediction: "we are likely to see versions of these bots deployed on U.S. audiences as part of the 2016 presidential election campaigns." Well we all know how that turned out. Sean Gourley, founder and CEO of Primer, joined us to talk about bots, propaganda and fake news and how they relate to the work his own company is doing in natural language understanding and generation.

Robots can do amazing things. Compare even the most advanced robots to a three-year old, however, and they can come up short. UC Berkeley Professor Pieter Abbeel has pioneered the idea that deep learning could be the key to bridging that gap: creating robots that can learn how move through the world more fluidly and naturally. We caught up with Abbeel, who is director of the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab and cofounder of Covariant AI, a Bay Area company developing AI software that makes it easy to teach robots new and complex skills, at GTC 2019.

UC Berkeley's Gerry Zhang talks about his work using deep learning to analyze signals from space for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations. And while we haven't found aliens, yet, the doctoral student has already made some extraordinary discoveries.

Not sure who will win the NBA playoffs? Looking for coaching when putting together your fantasy football team? Swish Analytics uses AI to help you pick winners. Corey Beaumont, co-founder and head of engineering at the startup, explains how Swish Analytics takes the same kind of mathematical models lenders use to assess whether a borrower is a good risk and applies them to the $1 trillion sports betting market.

GOAT Group helps sneaker enthusiasts get their hands on authentic Air Jordans, Yeezys and a variety of old-school kicks with the help of AI. Michael Hall, director of data at GOAT Group explains how in a conversation with AI Podcast host Noah Kravitz.

You probably recognize the name Nuance from their work with speech recognition and virtual assistant technology. They’re one of the pioneers of voice recognition technology. Of course Nuance Communications has gotten into AI, but what you might not know is they’ve also gotten into using AI to chart the course of the healthcare industry and how physicians can use artificial intelligence to make people healthier and make their work better, Karen Holzberger is the vice president and general manager of Nuance’s Healthcare diagnostic solutions business.