The good, bad, and ugly of facial recognition 📷, new research in the future of work, and IDEO’s parking bot 🚗

December 2, 2018 Issue

The AI and Robotics Newsletter from Comet Labs. Subscribe here. Past issues here.

👋 Hi,

With the team back from the week-long Assessing China program with six excellent chipset startups, we’ve learned a lot about China’s current semiconductor landscape and what the technology companies there are demanding. There are many more startups in China already than we originally expected, and companies there eagerly searching for the right applications of AI for their companies.

We’re consolidating our learnings, and are excited to share them with you soon. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, we want to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving holiday and hope you have a wonderful time spending it with loved ones.

Enjoy these links from the Comet team, and enjoy the holiday break!

Follow Comet Labs for more stories and thoughts about the impact of AI and robotics.

💬 THIS WEEK AT OUR LUNCH TABLE:

Though research from economists has gone back and forth and sparked heated debate, we want to get your feelings on the subject.

Do you think this coming wave of automation technology — AI and robotics — is fundamentally different than previous industrial revolutions, and will be a net job destroyer? Or are you optimistic that new jobs will be created that we can’t predict today?

The new jobs won’t be enough.
We’ll have plenty of new jobs in the future.
Neither. (reply and let us know!)

Given the chance to take a large check from a big fund, even if it’s more money than you need, you didn’t hesitate. More than half of you said you’d take the money and grow. Sounds like the big venture checks are only going to get bigger in the future!

📚 FEATURED ARTICLE:

Robot Reality Check: They Create Wealth — and Jobs — WSJ
New research indicates that compared to many countries in Asia, the United States is lagging behind adoption of robots which will likely have longer-term impacts on our country’s overall productivity and competitiveness.

📹 WATCH THIS:

Facial recognition is used more commonly in day to day life than we might realize, even in the US. But there’s still a lot of grey area around privacy and ethics where we need to be very careful with precedents that we set.

📖 WORTH READING:

The $6 Trillion Barrier Holding Electric Cars Back — Bloomberg
Electric car sales have been booming globally, largely driven by their success in China, however the cost of vehicle parts (mostly the battery) is still holding automakers back from being able to sell a truly affordable electric vehicle.

We Built a Bot to Assign Parking Spots. It Fought Back. — IDEO
The team at IDEO Cambridge created a bot in a Slack channel to handle their parking problem, but it quickly became a power-hungry, totalitarian ruler of the lot.

The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI — WIRED
Karl Friston’s “free energy principle” is being regarded by some as a universal explanation of life, while others criticize it for being too complex, perhaps intentionally. And for many artificial intelligence researchers, Friston’s work has become a centerpiece in understanding the brain — unifying prediction, action, and perception — and recreating it.

How Cheap Labor Drives China’s A.I. Ambitions — NY Times
Accurately labeled datasets are the foundation of today’s machine learning models, and China’s market for data tagging has suddenly become competitive. The work isn’t often glamorous, but it’s better than other low-wage work and many feel they’re contributing to a larger, inspiring cause.

Fei-Fei Li’s Quest To Make AI Better For Humanity — WIRED
From creating ImageNet to leading AI at Google Cloud, Fei-Fei Li has had a massive impact on the AI world that she now wants to ensure becomes more diverse and ethically minded with initiatives like AI4All.

👏 PORTFOLIO NEWS:

Monday Morning Sales Minute — AI for Sales — November 26th — SalesHero
SalesHero founder and CEO Stefan Groschupf explains the kind of impact AI is going to have on sales and how businesses can take advantage of it.

The 10 Hottest Robotics Startups Of 2018 — IAM Robotics
In another exciting accomplishment for the team, IAM Robotics is ranked among the 10 most exciting robotics startups for their work in autonomous picking for inventory operations.

Cobalt Robot Expands Facility Security Capabilities — Cobalt
Cobalt CEO and founder Dr. Travis Deyle highlights the problems with current facility security and how autonomous robots offer a new paradigm.

Winner: Digital Design of the Year 2018 — Lightform
Congratulations to the Lightform team for winning Dezeen’s digital design of the year award!

📝 READ THIS PAPER:

MRNet: Deep-learning-assisted diagnosis for knee magnetic resonance imaging — Stanford ML Group
A team led by Prof. Andrew Ng created a deep learning algorithm to identify abnormalities in knee tissue, particularly detecting ACL and meniscal tears. The model performed best when helping physicians prevent false-positives in which case patients were held back from an unnecessary surgery. However on other detection tasks, the model performed at par and occasionally lower than radiologists. Even so, it remains a helpful contribution to make the case that human-machine collaboration can achieve higher results than one or the other alone.

🛠 STUFF YOU CAN USE:

Technological Entanglement — ASPI
This is quite possibly the best review of the state of tension between the US and China with regard to applying AI technology that we’ve come across, and the good and bad that result from it. Additionally, Elsa Kania makes many specific and relevant policy and practice recommendations that work to improve relations.

Advanced Manufacturing Trends In 2019 — CB Insights
We already saw amazing progress with intelligent manufacturing robotics this year as more startup robotics and software solutions entered the field. Download this new CB Insights report to get a sense of where we might be headed next year.

📣 HIRING:

Several Positions Available — Creator
From engineering to design, on both hardware and software teams, Creator is looking for talented folks for many different roles.

Several Available Positions — Grabango
Grabango, our portfolio company providing technology for checkout-free shopping, is looking for new members to join its stellar team.

And that’s it for this week! Find us on Twitter to stay updated with the latest news in AI and robotics.

Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox and participate in the poll!