A podcast playlist on design for emerging technologies — from the IoT and AI to genomics and synthetic biology.

Emerging Technologies

Designing AI

Jonathan Follett, editor of Designing for Emerging Technologies, chats with Scott Stropkay, founding partner at Essential Design Service, and Bill Hartman, director of research at Essential Design Service to talk about the relationship dynamic between humans and robots, and ways designers are being stretched in an interesting new direction.

Designing the Dynamic Human-Robot Relationship

The age of bio-inspired technology is upon us. Whether it's DNA as data storage, transparent displays based on mollusk shells, or surveillance robots modeled after swarming bees, the possibilities abound for natural systems to serve as patterns for the products of the future.

In this episode of The Digital Life we consider the evolution of the designer as technologist and engineer in conjunction with the ever expanding importance of bio-inspired technologies.

Get the full transcript: 
http://thedigitalife.com/bull-session/designing-bio-inspired-technology



Subscribe on iTunes

Designing Bio-inspired Technology

Jon Follett, editor of Designing for Emerging Technologies, chats with Matt Nish-Lapidus, partner and design director at Normative, about the evolution of design, characteristics of post-Industrial design, and aesthetic intricacies of designing in networked systems.

Design's Return to Artisan, at Scale

Angela Rufino chats with Jonathan Follett, principal of Involution Studios, about creative class workers, product life cycles, and enhancing company-customer relationships.

Emerging Technologies are Disrupting Product Design Life Cycles

What is A.I. or artificial intelligence but the 'space of possible minds', argues Murray Shanahan, scientific advisor on the movie Ex Machina and Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London.

In this special episode of the a16z Podcast brought to you on the ground from London, Shanahan -- along with journalist-turned-entrepreneur Azeem Azhar (who also curates The Exponential View newsletter on AI and more) and The Economist Deputy Editor Tom Standage (the author of several tech history books) -- we discuss the past, present, and future of A.I. ... as well as how it fits (or doesn't fit) with machine learning and deep learning.

But where are we now in the A.I. evolution? What players do we think will lead, if not win, the current race? And how should we think about issues such as ethics and automation of jobs without descending into obvious extremes? All this and more, including a surprise easter egg in Ex Machina shared by Shanahan, whose work influenced the movie.

a16z Podcast: Artificial Intelligence and the 'Space of Possible Minds'

Can an AI create art? This week on The Digital Life we chat about the brand new "Rembrandt", 3D printed by an artificial intelligence algorithm that was trained by analyzing the artist's catalog of 346 paintings.

The Next Rembrandt project, which was recently unveiled in Amsterdam, is, of course, not exactly the work of the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn, but rather a portrait that replicates both the subject matter and the style of the artist with eerie accuracy.

If art is an expression of humanity, a reaction to the world and the events around us, what does this latest AI advancement mean? We discuss all this and more.


AI Goes to Art School

On this episode of The Digital Life podcast we discuss how bio-inspired technology is beginning to intersect with information technology in big ways. With the exponential increase of digital data, we face an ongoing problem of information storage. Today most digital information is stored on media that will expire relatively quickly, lasting a few decades at most. Because of this, we require new methods for long-term data storage, and biotech might just have the answer. DNA could be the storage media of the future: It can last thousands, even potentially tens of thousands of years. And the tech industry has taken notice. For instance, last month Microsoft agreed to purchase millions of strands of synthetic DNA, from San Francisco based Twist Bioscience to encode digital data. Of course we may be years away from a commercial DNA storage product, but the potential for a revolutionary, even disaster proof media is there.

DNA As Data Storage

In episode four of the O’Reilly Bots podcast, Pete Skomoroch and I speak with Cathy Pearl, director of user experience at Sensely, and author of the forthcoming O’Reilly book “Designing Voice User Interfaces.” She’s also a speaker at O’Reilly’s upcoming Bot Day on October 19, 2016, in San Francisco.

Cathy Pearl on Voice User Interfaces for Bots

Something remarkable is happening in the world of artificial intelligence. At the O’Reilly AI Conference two weeks ago, people weren’t just talking about AI as a far-off dream; they were talking about AI as something that exists in real products today.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Bots podcast, I talk with three artificial-intelligence practitioners about the real practice of AI: Hilary Mason, Jimi Smoot, and Roger Chen.

Real AI Products Arrive

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss ethics and bias in AI, with guest Tomer Perry, research associate at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. What do we mean by bias when it comes to AI? And how do we avoid including biases we’re not even aware of?

If AI software for processing and analyzing data begins providing decision-making for core elements critical to our society we'll need to address these issues.

For instance, risk assessments used in the correctional system have been shown to incorporate bias against minorities.
When it comes to self-driving cars, people want to be protected, but also want the vehicle, in principle to "do the right thing" when encountering situations where the lives of both the driver and others, like pedestrians, are at risk. How we should deal with it? What are the ground rule sets for ethics and morality in AI, and where do they come from? Join us as we discuss.

The Digital Life

Ethics and Bias in AI

The Digital Life http://www.thedigitalife.com is an online radio show that explores important, timely topics in the world of design and emerging technologies like genomics, robotics, and the Internet of Things.

The show is created by GoInvo http://www.goinvo.com, a studio designing the future of healthcare, whose clients include market leaders like Apple, Johnson and Johnson, and Walgreens, as well as micro startups that will create the markets of the future.

Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tdlpodcast

AI Goes to Art School

The Digital Life Podcast