AI 'N Stuff

Geospatial Data Demystified: Satellites, AI, and Earth’s Hidden Data

This week, my guest was Yohan Iddawela [https://x.com/yohaniddawela?lang=en]. Yohan is a geospatial data scientist at the Asian Development Bank and previously worked for the World Bank. He has a PhD in economic geography from the London School of Economics. In this episode, we talked about all things related to geospatial analysis, including fascinating use cases for geospatial data, the integral role of satellites, how AI and machine learning are helping improve geospatial data quality, and a grab bag of other geospatial topics. Be sure to check out Yohan’s newsletter! It's called Spatial Edge [https://yohaniddawela.substack.com/], and you can find it on Substack. It covers all the latest innovations in geospatial analysis. You can view a condensed transcript of this conversation along with relevant links here [https://www.96layers.ai/p/geospatial-data-demystified-satellites].

The weird, wonderful AI art of Niceaunties

My guest this episode was Niceaunties, the pseudonym of a Singaporean-based AI artist that uses her cultural heritage and childhood experiences growing up with 11 aunties, plus parents and grandparents, as inspiration for an imaged reality she created called the Auntieverse, short for Auntie Universe. I spoke with nice aunties while she was exhibiting her work at the Zona Maco festival in Mexico City in partnership with the gallery Patricia Conde. This was part of a group show sponsored by Fellowship AI, a collective that helps support AI artists. She also recently completed an online solo show with the Fellowship that included more than 1,000 still images of her own work that she curated, many of them selling through Fellowship’s online platform Daily.xyz. We spoke about her inspiration, the AI tools she uses and how her artistic process has changed over time, and about the criticism of AI art from traditional artists. I had a great time speaking with her and I think you’ll enjoy our conversation. - Aunties Nail Spa video [https://twitter.com/niceaunties/status/1752345033871912989] discussed in the intro - Niceaunties [https://twitter.com/niceaunties] on Twitter and Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/niceaunties/?hl=en]. - Full transcript with links to everything discussed is available here [https://www.96layers.ai/p/the-weird-wonderful-ai-art-of-niceaunties].

Mitigating Catastrophic AI Risk Through Tort Law

Earlier this spring, I had the chance to sit down in person with Professor Gabriel Weil [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1648032] here in New York to discuss his proposal for mitigating catastrophic risk from artificial intelligence. Professor Weil's proposal involves instituting a new punitive damages framework, which would increase defiance to AI companies in near miss scenarios where an AI generated harm was limited in its impact, but could have been catastrophic. Much of our discussion comes from Professor Weil's paper, “Tort law is a tool for mitigating catastrophic risk from artificial intelligence [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4694006].” Professor Weil is a Professor of Law at Toro University, and his work is now partially funded by Open Philanthropy [https://www.openphilanthropy.org/]. We start by discussing the definition of harmful AI activity before walking through a case study to demonstrate how the proposal would work in practice. We also contrast Professor Weil's proposal with the current state of law and talk about some criticisms he's received in his response. I thought it was a fascinating conversation, and I think you will, too.

AI-inflicted harms: Can insurance fill the gaps?

Full show notes are available ⁠here⁠ [https://www.96layers.ai/p/ai-inflicted-harms-can-insurance]. If you follow AI you’ve probably heard about the growing volume of proposed AI legislation in the U.S. and beyond as well as the increasing number of AI-related cases being brought before the courts. Today’s guest argues there is another industry that is a key in handling AI-inflicted harms. Everyone’s favorite, the insurance industry. Anat Lior [https://drexel.edu/law/faculty/fulltime_fac/Anat%20Lior/] is a professor at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law and has written broadly about the intersection of insurance and emerging technologies. In our conversation today we’ll be focusing largely on her paper which appeared in the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology called “Insuring AI: The role of insurance in artificial intelligence regulation [https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v35/2.-Lior-Insuring-AI.pdf].” We discuss insurance’s role in society and its intersection with emerging technology, how insurance can supplement the courts and government regulation, and end with a discussion about specific insurance proposals related to autonomous vehicles. I thought it was a fascinating conversation and I think you’ll enjoy it.

AI's impact on artist creativity and productivity

This week, my guest was Eric Zhou [https://ericbzhou.github.io/], a PhD student at Boston University researching the impact of generative AI on art and artists. We discussed one of Eric's recent research projects, where he acquired access to a vast dataset of activity on a major online art platform. Eric used this data to assess how adopting generative AI tools impacted both the productivity and creativity of thousands [https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/3/pgae052/7618478?login=false] of artists across 18 months, totaling about 4 million artworks. This is an important topic, and there were some pretty interesting findings. I think you'll enjoy the conversation. Full show notes available here [https://www.96layers.ai/p/ais-impact-on-artist-creativity-and].