AI Business Podcast

This week, the editorial team at AI Business looks at the most important stories of the summer – and attempts to predict which will make the biggest impact on the AI landscape. We start with the idea of a metaverse/omniverse that is gaining serious traction, with Nvidia now offering businesses tools to create detailed 3D copies of their real-world assets that operate based on real-world data. Virtualize all the things! Next on the agenda are Facebook’s smart glasses – produced in collaboration with Ray-Ban, and ostensibly designed to film everything in sight, much like Snap’s Spectacles. Are we finally OK with the idea of being surveilled all the time, or are these liable to get the wearer punched in the face? The third trend of note is automated code generation with AI. The latest and most notable effort in this space involves Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI – exactly the names you would expect to make code auto-completion practical and easy to use. What will this mean for today’s software developers? And finally, we take a look at what’s happening with our favourite tech billionaires. They are all going to space – but unfortunately keep coming back. AI has a role to play here, too – helping us manage thousands of objects in orbit and clean up space rubbish. We also cover: Digital Twins! Second Life! Moon colonies! Svalbard! Thank you for attending this group therapy session. As always, you can find the people responsible for the circus podcast online: Max Smolaks (@maxsmolax) Sebastian Moss (@SebMoss) Tien Fu (@tienchifu) Ben Wodecki (@benwodecki)

This week, we look at the technological race between the US and China, and its implications. The latest development in what is shaping up to be a proper, old-fashioned cold war is the US Innovation and Competition Act, which was passed by the senate earlier this month. The set of legal measures is clearly designed to combat China’s growing technological might, as well as addressing the ongoing global chip shortage. It includes increased funding for AI research, and a further $50 billion to subsidize semiconductor manufacturing – intended to help build 7-10 new American fabs. However, the wording of the document has already drawn criticism from the highest levels of the Chinese government. “The world is entering a period of turbulence and transformation, and against this backdrop, the practice of continuously targeting China as a hypothetical enemy goes against the world trend, is unpopular, and is doomed to fail,” theForeign Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress said. Why can’t we all get along? We also cover: House fires! Bail-outs! Intel! Subsidies! We will plant a tree for every like we receive. As always, you can find the people responsible for the podcast online: Max Smolaks (@maxsmolax) Sebastian Moss (@SebMoss) Tien Fu (@tienchifu) Ben Wodecki (@benwodecki)

This week, we discuss ethics, government regulation, and similarities between AI and cars in the 1910s with Natalia Modjeska, research director for AI and intelligent automation at analyst firm Omdia. Natalia joined Omdia just a few months ago, having spent years implementing and benchmarking AI and analytics projects across organizations like PwC and Info-Tech Research Group – you can find some of her observations on Towards Data Science. We start with ethics in AI – which is shaping up as one of the hottest topics of 2021, often discussed in mainstream media. But why the sudden interest? And does the responsibility for preventing any potential harms created by AI-based systems sit with the executives and boards of directors, or with governments and regulatory agencies? According to Natalia, the situation around AI resembles the appearance of first mass-produced cars; these machines were clearly useful, but they were also very dangerous since they had to drive across roads designed for pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages, with no street signs, traffic lights, or highway codes. This lack of safeguards can be addressed – let’s just hope it doesn’t take 70 years to create an equivalent of a frontal airbag for AI. We also cover: The Draft EU Regulation on AI! The first traffic light! Cloning! Lawyers! China! [tired sigh] Like and subscribe. As always, you can find the people responsible for the podcast online: Max Smolaks (@maxsmolax) Tien Fu (@tienchifu) Natalia Modjeska (@NataliaModjeska)

This week, we cover the chaotic developments around synthetic voices, their generation, and ownership. We start with the news about Marvel.ai, the new service from American AI vendor Veritone that promises to enable celebrities to monetize their voices. The company calls this Voice-as-a-Service, or VAAS. The main problem with synthetic voices is it’s currently challenging  (well, pretty much impossible) to enforce copyright for an AI model based on voice recordings of a real person. Cue countless examples  of Internet denizens misusing voices with no apparent retribution –  from the mixes produced by British experimental musician and campaigner casseteboy,  who makes Boris Johnson say things like “you can tell our technology’s  going well, we’re running this whole thing in Excel,” to more recent  examples of sound clips created using Uberduck.ai,  and a variety of quickly, cheaply synthesized celebrity voices. These  include the version of Sir Patrick Stewart you’ve heard opening the  show. In other news, our own Ben Wodecki is now 25! Treasure your youth, Ben. We also cover: Hatsune Miku! Impersonators! TikTok! Cameo! Stephen Hawking! Auto-Tune! Every like we receive goes towards helping struggling podcast producers. As always, you can find the people responsible for the circus podcast online: Max Smolaks (@maxsmolax) Sebastian Moss (@SebMoss) Tien Fu (@tienchifu) Ben Wodecki (@benwodecki)

We talk about the rapid uptake of self-driving vehicles in China, the climate impact of video streaming, and the English town of Milton Keynes, which has emerged as one of the primary hubs for autonomous vehicle tech in the UK. All of this, and more, is discussed in What’s the News With Wodecki, a segment in which Ben takes us through the stories of the week, with the podcast team deciding whether – in hindsight – they were worthy of coverage. This is an editorial bootcamp, and there’s a timer on comments to stop Sebastian. The stories on offer include: Alibaba’s AutoX subsidiary sharing, in excruciating detail, what a trip in one of its robo-taxis is like. The company has been running the service for 100 days in Shenzhen, a city that has relaxed its regulations to become a playground for domestic autonomous vehicle developers; Baidu launching the first robo-taxi service in Beijing – but in a much more limited capacity; China’s Pony.ai partnering up with LiDAR superstar Luminar [right?] for its own autonomous vehicles; iSize raising $6.3 million in Series A to develop AI-based video compression algorithms that could shrink the environmental impact (and costs) of streaming, without compromising picture quality as perceived by the human eye; The tiny little robots from Starship Technologies arriving in Milton Keynes to deliver coffee. We also cover: Star Trek TNG! Urban planning! Mango and passion fruit coolers! Check out Part One of the podcast that aired earlier this week, where we share some thoughts on the ransomware attack against the Colonial Pipeline. Give us a loike, Hairy Biscuits and Cheese, guv'nor*. As always, you can find the people responsible for the circus podcast online: Max Smolaks (@maxsmolax) Sebastian Moss (@SebMoss) Tien Fu (@tienchifu) Ben Wodecki (@benwodecki)

This week, we share some thoughts on the ransomware attack against the Colonial Pipeline – which will be discussed for years to come as one of the first notable examples of a successful cyber attack against physical infrastructure. This is nightmare fuel for the CISO. This is not a story about AI – but it goes to show the dangers of indiscriminate data collection, and once again highlights the pitfalls of putting every device on the Internet. Digital transformation cannot be stopped! So the only option left is to think much more thoroughly about cyber security. Fortunately, so far nation states have not shown much willingness to attack critical infrastructure – it’s the squirrels you need to be worried about. The content of this podcast should not be taken as actual cyber security advice. Pay the professionals to give you advice, and run some penetration testing. One place where you can find them is at Black Hat USA, which starts on August 4 as a hybrid event, with physical presence in Las Vegas. We also cover: Y2K! SCADA systems! Stockpiling zero-days! Look out for Part Two of the podcast later this week, in which we will look at an assortment of stories in our regular segment, What’s The News With Wodecki. All your likes are belong to us. As always, you can find the people responsible for the circus podcast online: Max ‘Air gap enthusiast’ Smolaks (@maxsmolax) Sebastian ‘Come friendly bombs’ Moss (@SebMoss) Tien ‘Two shots’ Fu (@tienchifu) Ben ‘Young blood’ Wodecki (@benwodecki)

This week, we mourn the death of the Digidog and descend into the greasy, fragrant world of robot-powered kitchens. Miso Robotics, the company responsible for Flippy, the burger-flipping robot, has launched a commercial service for restaurants that uses computer vision and AI to automatically identify and track ingredients, dishes and tasks. But would you pay more for robot-made food, or would you pay less? We start with the untimely demise of the Digidog, a version of the Boston Dynamics’ four-legged Spot robot that was employed by the New York Police Department. The vehicle was “put down,” in the words of mayor De Blasio, after it turned out the NYPD couldn’t actually use it because it failed to declare it as a surveillance device. The public opinion on the matter could have also played a part – it turned out the residents of New York weren’t all that exited about the noisy, confusing machine participating in run-of-the-mill arrests. Another robot, Flippy – previously discussed in Episode 6 – is now part of an expanded service from Miso, called CookRight – enabling restaurants to “apply precision cooking to a variety of grilled food items on their menus.” The software comes with a self-installation kit that includes a user interface tablet, cameras, and a small computer. Miso president, Buck Jordan, says automation will keep the industry alive and stimulate growth – but we are not entirely convinced. We also cover: John Cheese! Working at Maccy D’s! The return of Retiarii! Truckers (again)! Did you smash that like button? As always, you can find the people responsible for the podcast online: Max ‘Eighteen Wheels’ Smolaks (@maxsmolax) Sebastian ‘Hunter of East Sussex’ Moss (@SebMoss) Tien ‘Secret Millionaire’ Fu (@tienchifu) Ben ‘Ginger Spice’ Wodecki (@benwodecki)

This week, we observe how lofty ambitions are crushed against the jagged rocks of reality: Lyft is selling Level 5, its self-driving car business, to Toyota, just a few months after Uber announced it would offload its autonomous vehicle lab to Aurora. Where does this leave the autonomous car dream? According to Sebastian, the reasons are likely financial, rather than technological: you can only be involved one loss-making, hyped-up enterprise at a time, and ride-hailing is yet to make any money. Uber lost $6.77 billion in 2020, while Lyft was in the red to the tune of $1.8 billion. So, what happened at Lyft? The company is selling its self-driving business to Toyota, where it will become part of 'Woven Planet Holdings' – a new division dedicated to autonomous vehicles and smart city tech. In exchange, Toyota is set to pay $550m, which could offset Lyft’s losses for a quarter or two. The best thing about Woven Planet Holdings is the Woven City – a miniature smart city built up with the latest technologies in mind, a polygon for innovation in urban planning that will start with 360 residents, and gradually expand to 2,000. Such innovation includesthree types of roads “interwoven with each other on the ground level, one dedicated to automated driving, one to pedestrians, and one to pedestrians with personal mobility vehicles.” Besides Toyota, the big players to watch in the autonomous driving space – the ones currently acquiring smaller competitors – are GM-backed Cruise, proudly independent Aurora, Google’s Waymo, Amazon's Zoox, and potentially, Apple. But Apple moves in mysterious ways. In related news, the UK is expected to permit a limited type of autonomy on the country’s roads, looking specifically at Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS) – which have been available in production vehicles for years. This goes to show that even if car manufacturers are willing and able, it is ultimately up to the state to decide just when autonomous cars will appear on a road near you. We also cover: Hangovers! HTC! Bioshocking it! Smash that like button.

This week on the AI Business podcast, we look at the draft European Regulation on artificial intelligence, a.k.a. the Artificial Intelligence Act. This long-expected piece of legislation will be the first attempt to regulate AI on a super-national level – but does it go far enough to meet the aim of stopping AI systems that pose a ‘clear threat’ to citizens’ rights and livelihoods? Is not just a draft, but a declaration of intent – the proposed policy offers a vision that’s very different from both the relaxed regulatory approach seen in the US, and the embrace of AI for the purposes of the state that is practiced in China. The EU framework Proposes to categorize AI systems in terms of their impact, and the risk they pose. ‘Unacceptable risk' would cover systems that are deemed to be a "clear threat to the safety, livelihoods, and rights of people” – like systems designed to manipulate human behavior, or those used for ‘social scoring.’ The ‘High-risk’ category would cover systems for critical infrastructure, and some systems for law enforcement. ‘Limited risk’ and ‘Minimal risk’ categories would cover products like chatbots, AI-enabled video games, and spam filters. The draft seems to take a strong position on biometric surveillance systems in public spaces. At first sight, these appear to be banned, but the document lists a large number of potential exceptions. We’re not the only ones confused by this; the EU's chief data protection supervisor is confused too. We also cover: Gonzo the Cat! Bernie memorabilia! Reasons to distrust the intelligence services! Apple VS Facebook! As always, you can find the people responsible for the circus podcast online: Max Smolaks (@maxsmolax) Sebastian Moss (@SebMoss) Tien Fu (@tienchifu) Ben Wodecki (@benwodecki)

We discuss the announcements from last week’s GPU Technology Conference, along with AI hardware news from elsewhere, and look at Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of language AI specialist Nuance for $16 billion – actually closer to $20bn once you account for debt. We start with our regular segment chronicling the revolution in hardware for AI – it’s Chip Wars! When Joe Biden is waving around silicon wafers, you know interesting things are going to happen. Nvidia is busy building its first ever CPU to support machine learning workloads, codenamed Grace – after the absolute legend that was rear admiral Grace Hopper. Plus, Nvidia’s DGX family of ‘building blocks’ for supercomputers will now feature Data Processing Units (DPUs) by default, running a wide variety of networking tasks. DPUs weren’t originally developed at Nvidia – these came out of the Mellanox acquisition, which equipped the company with clever networking silicon. Intel’s Habana – which has designed its own family of chips for AI – has landed a contract with the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and will build a supercomputer called Voyage. But is it the kind of customer that Intel needs at this point? Meanwhile, SambaNova – which has designed its own family of chips for AI – has announced a massive $676 million funding round, just a few mounts after emerging from stealth. Its CEO Rodrigo Liang appeared on this podcast just a few short weeks ago – making participation a sure indicator of future success. Next, we talk about Nuance, the AI company built from countless acquisitions, now being acquired by Microsoft. The speech recognition and language specialist has helped shape the emerging virtual assistant market – can it give Cortana a shot in the arm? We also cover: Shopping for prying mantises! The importance of haircuts! Chaos at Arm China! And there’s even a rendition of the national anthem of the USSR. As always, you can find the people responsible for the circus podcast online: Max Smolaks (@maxsmolax) Sebastian Moss (@SebMoss) Tien Fu (@tienchifu) Ben Wodecki (@benwodecki)