Episode #69 – What the World Loses and Gains in a “Virtual” World – with Altitude’s CEO, Dan Ostrower

As the world watched, the FIFA World Cup 2014 in Sao Paulo, Brazil was officially kicked off last week by a 29-year old Brazilian named Juliano Pinto. Nothing unusual about that, until you consider that Pinto is a paraplegic and made the ceremonial kick-off through the use of an exoskeleton controlled by brain waves transmitted through a brain-machine interface (BMI). Pinto’s robotic suit was developed as part of Duke University’s Walk Again Project, led by Brazilian neuroscientist and Duke University faculty member Miguel Nicolelis and his team of over 150 scientists and researchers, representing 25 countries.

Ketan Joshi and Vishal Shah of Atheer Labs share their ideas about the immediate future of augmented reality, and how interactive computing can be facilitated though an augmented experience. We explore use-cases of the near future, as well as applications underway now.

Artificial intelligence may be making the world smarter, safer, more functional and accessible. But can it make the world more beautiful? A number of researchers hope to do so by developing AI systems that can paint, write, and colorize photographs.

On the surface, it might be easy to make the argument that the farthest thing from business operations is science fiction. Star Trek and IPOs aren't known for having any kind of direct correlation, and unless you're making futuristic video games, there doesn't seem to be any explicit reason to study Ray Bradbury or Isaac Assimov.

Episode Summary: Most of us forget that just about a decade ago, Facebook’s software was incapable of tagging people in a photo, but today can so without difficulty, sometimes without us even knowing. Machine vision has progressed to the point where it’s also common for computers to be able to pick out dogs from cats in images, another task that was not possible 10 years ago.