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Startup Robust AI Raises $15 Million in New Funding
Robust AI Inc., a startup developing an artificial intelligence system intended to allow robots to work autonomously in open-ended environments, on Wednesday raised $15 million in venture-capital funding, bringing its total raised to $22.5 million.
Rodney Brooks
Our company is growing, we are hiring. We are making robots useable everywhere.
126d
Startup Robust.AI, Founded By Cognitive Scientist Gary Marcus And Roboticist Rodney Brooks, Raises $15 Million To Make Building Smarter Robots Easier
Robust.AI raised $15 million led by Jazz Ventures to build a cognitive engine for robotics. The goal: To allow people to build robots faster, cheaper and with more reliability.
Sweeping changes: How iRobot evolved from military robots to autonomous vacuums
For a look at iRobot maker Roomba's long and winding past and a glimpse into its future, we spoke with CEO Colin Angle and CTO Chris Jones.
Mirrors | Joe Biden For President 2020
Rodney Brooks
This political ad says so many things about Joe Biden. It also is a powerful reminder of the power of role models. Thank you Kamala Harris.
146d
Leonard Bernstein presents 7-year-old Yo-Yo Ma's high-profile debut for President John F. Kennedy
The New York Times reported that on November 29, 1962, a benefit concert called "The American Pageant of the Arts" was to be held with "a cast of 100, includ...
Rodney Brooks
This is what has always made America great. Leonard Bernstein introduces a seven year old immigrant to a Democratic President and an immediate past Republican President in 1962. We are a nation of immigrants.
162d
The Balkans are getting short of people
The demography of south-eastern Europe threatens its hopes of prosperity
Rodney Brooks
The demographic inversion is unevenly distributed but coming to a country near you before all that long. "Serbia may have more pensioners than working-age people by next year"
170d
Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’
The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.
Rodney Brooks
Our so called president: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’ [The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades]
181d
Elon Musk’s Neuralink is neuroscience theater
Rock-climb without fear. Play a symphony in your head. See radar with superhuman vision. Discover the nature of consciousness. Cure blindness, paralysis, deafness, and mental illness. Those are just a few of the applications that Elon Musk and...
Rodney Brooks
My take on the "show" was updated form factors for things that have been widespread successful lab experiments for a long time, and no advances in actual interpretability of signals to or from the brain. But plenty of hype.
185d
A Move for Driverless Mass Transit Hits Speed Bumps
Pilot projects for autonomous shuttles abound. But technical limitations and hostility from labor unions may thwart large deployments.
Rodney Brooks
Shooting fish in a barrel. Roy Amara: we overestimate technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. For AVs short run = 30+ years. Even 12mph in sleepy environments is still really tough and on a failing trajectory for real adoption.
197d
Pluralistic: 16 Aug 2020 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Rodney Brooks
Cory Doctorow (SciFi writer) on autonomous vehicles. (Spoiler alter: he thinks they are bad SciFi.)
198d
Michigan plans to redesign a stretch of road for self-driving cars
Michigan announced Thursday that it's teaming with tech and auto companies to attempt to retrofit a roughly 40-mile stretch of two roads outside Detroit exclusively for self-driving vehicles.
Rodney Brooks
No 1 for 1 drop in. I've been saying for years that for autonomous vehicles to be adopted we will need to change our road infrastructure (just as we have for all transport innovations over the last two centuries). We are starting to see it happen
201d
How Much Things Can Change – Rodney Brooks
Rodney Brooks
Today a short and whimsical blog post on how quickly accepted wisdom in science changes, along with suggestions of upcoming radical scientific reorientations. I view them as possibilities rather than probabilities.
212d
Nike's New Ad Is an Editing Marvel, and Maybe the Best Covid Spot Yet
W+K's seamless ode to the unifying power of sport
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Rodney Brooks
This Nike ad is a technological tour de force which shows the impact of research in computer vision over the last fifty years.
And the message is pretty damn powerful too.
215d
Tesla 'very close' to full self-driving, Musk says
A future software update could activate full "level-five" autonomy in cars, the Tesla founder says.
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Rodney Brooks
What Elon says here is false. We will not have level 5 autonomous cars on our roads in 2020. It will not happen.
237d
How the Roomba Became the Pandemic’s Unlikeliest Winner
In the midst of a recession, even the company was surprised by the increased demand for a $1,000 vacuum
Rodney Brooks
"there is a case to be made that the Roomba is the most underrated tech object of the 21st century ... The Roomba was never the center of attention. It just sort of whirred into our peripheral vision — and never left." Real changes can creep up on you.
247d
An understanding of AI’s limitations is starting to sink in
After years of hype, many people feel AI has failed to deliver, says Tim Cross
Rodney Brooks
Seven part article on challenges facing AI:
Today’s “ai summer” is different from previous ones. It is brighter and warmer, because the technology has been so widely deployed. Another full-blown winter is unlikely. But an autumnal breeze is picking up.
264d
Why Ta-Nehisi Coates is hopeful
The author of Between the World and Me on why this isn’t 1968, the Colin Kaepernick test, police abolition, nonviolence and the state, and more.
Rodney Brooks
This is a long and very worthwhile read. Ezra Klein interviewing Ta-Nehisi Coates.
268d