Episode 324 — With Glorious Purpose

Cape Fear River, Southport NC 2017 — Cape Fear River, Southport NC – Picture by Michael Martine, 2017

SlothBot in ATL, row-bots in AMS, silly stringing drones, new functionality and iPad drops at #WWDC21, AI SlothBot in ATL, row-bots in AMS, AI discovers art with potential NFT monetization, NetHack, silly stringing drones, new functionality and iPad drops at #WWDC21, playdate, and a new old LEGO typewriter for glorious purpose.

Andy and Michael start off the show in a slow deliberate way with a discussion about SlothBot. SlotBot conserves energy by moving slowly only to recharge the batteries via solar panels on its back, and therefore does not spook the wildlife it observes. Moving from the SlothBot in Atlanta, the co-hosts then virtually visit Amsterdam, where AI-controlled electric vehicles are being tested in the canals.

Sticking with AI, the team considers a story about the painter Modigliani, who like many of his peers, reused canvases, painting over their artwork. AI systems are able to recreate what the underlying art looked like — something that has been more and more common in recent years. This sparks an interesting idea about who owns the newly discovered old artwork, and whether NFT (non functional tokens) could be used to monetize the newly discovered works.

Games have often been used to test AI systems – famous examples such as chess and go spring readily to mind. There have been examples of AI learning to play video games that uncover unexpected win conditions (see example of Q-bert discussed in episode 225). Andy and Michael talk about the Facebook AI team’s investigation of NetHack/Rogue. They consider whether the AI may determine that the win condition for this unending generated dungeon game might be to never go downstairs and “stay in the village” so to speak. Will be interesting to see what NetHack teaches the Facebook AI team as it learns the game.

The pair discuss a simple and non-lethal way to down a drone with a silly string-like substance and a speculative article about Facebook watch with two cameras. Of course, this reminds the co-hosts of the Dick Tracy 2-Way Wrist TV.

While Andy and Michael M are reserving most of the WWDC commentary to when all the co-hosts have reassembled next week, there were a couple of intriguing things to discuss. The new Digital Legacy functionality to provide your next-of-kin the ability to access your content is no foreign subject to the Games At Work team. In episode 247, a Wirecutter article prompted a good discussion on preparing ones’ digital accounts. This may spark an interesting discussion for ownership of artwork, come to think of it. The second piece of Apple news was a song & video made by the artist Jonathan Mann featuring a remix of Apple’s Craig Federighi’s WWDC21 keynote presentation.

Winding things up for this episode, Andy and Michael talk about the playdate gaming device, drop in a reference to the Disney+ show about Loki and hit the carriage return on an awesome LEGO Ideas implementation of an old fashioned typewriter. Give this episode a listen and check out the show notes.

No iPads were harmed in the making of this podcast.

Selected Links

Popular Mechanics article: This Lazy ‘SlothBot’ Could Change Conservation Forever — https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a36356683/slothbot-conservation-robotics/

GA Tech News Center article: ‘SlothBot in the Garden’ Demonstrates Hyper-Efficient Conservation Robot — https://news.gatech.edu/2020/06/16/slothbot-garden-demonstrates-hyper-efficient-conservation-robot

💚 THIS ⚡️ 🚤🚤🚤

Amsterdam sets sail with fully #autonomous boats ease traffic 🚦 on its congested streets#Sustainability #SmartCities #IoT #AI #innovation #ElectricVehicles #EV #AutonomousVehicles

pic.twitter.com/VK41AIAWmR
— Glen Gilmore (@GlenGilmore) June 4, 2021