Kai–Fu Lee who is a venture capitalist, technology executive, writer, and an artificial intelligence (AI) expert is speaking with Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity and Google’s self-driving cars program, about: ✅the realities of AI in business ✅which companies are leading AI development ✅how employees can adapt their skills for ever-changing technology.
Kai-Fu Lee is speaking with Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity and Google’s self-driving cars program, about:
Posted in robotics/AI
All this seems to indicate that the robotics industry isn’t going away anytime soon. If anything, the fact that investors are being more critical with their investments, paying more attention to market forces than to visionary-led promises means we’re entering a reality-driven age of investing in AI. The trouble is that this reality phase seems to be limited (so far) to the robotics industry. Tech companies in other corners of AI are still being wooed by investors with deep pockets and more patience than they have for robotics. Will the investments continue at the amounts and valuations currently supporting the industry? Or will these investors also be dragged down to earth by market and competitive realities? All that still remains to be seen. The hope is that the investment does continue, because after all, the quest for the intelligent machine has yet to be fully realized.
This is particularly perplexing since many AI companies are flush with cash and raising money at increasingly eye-watering levels and valuations. How could it be that these robotics firms, run and operated by some of the most celebrated people in the AI industry could be failing when seemingly less-compelling solutions such as process automation tools and facial recognition applications are raising billions of dollars? Is robotics really that hard or is there something else going on in the industry?
With the rapid advances in drone technology spanning the 20th century, it should come as no surprise that miniature flying robots are on the horizon: Between now and 2020, Goldman Sachs’ forecasts a $100 billion market opportunity for drones, helped by growing demand from the commercial and civil government sectors.
What is surprising is that it has taken researchers more than two decades to finally come up with a fully autonomous version. That’s because the electronics needed to power and control the wings were so heavy that, until now, flying robotic insects had to be tethered to a wire attached to an external power source.
Yet a team of engineers at the University of Washington, led by assistant professor Sawyer Fuller, were able to figure it out. Relying on funding from UW, they created RoboFly, a robo-insect powered by an invisible laser beam that is pointed at a photovoltaic cell, which is attached above the robot and converts the laser light into enough electricity to operate its wings.
To be fair to Tesla, this problem isn’t unique to the company. Most emergency braking systems on the market today won’t stop for stationary objects at freeway speeds. These systems are not sophisticated enough to distinguish a stationary object on the road from one that’s next to or above the road. So to make the problem easier to handle, the cars may just ignore stationary objects, assuming that the driver will steer around them.
Florida man says Tesla oversold Autopilot’s capabilities.
