Spot the Robot Tries Painting With Embodied AI (Full Transcript)

[00:00:03] Speaker 1: Okay, so what they are about to show you is on a whole other cool factor level, and it's all powered by AI. Oh my gosh, that is so cool.

[00:00:12] Speaker 2: Well, this is Spot, Basia Spot, and she's a robot girl, and she's a combination of latest robotics, embodied AI, and computing technology. You can pet her, but only say good and nice things to her. Hello Spot, welcome. You are so beautiful. How old are you? Well, she's pretty young. I think of her in human years, maybe seven-year-old, so still has an amazing potential to learn, and she's figuring things out, needing a lot of human guidance. That's so cool. Is that seven years in dog years? Well, sort of, but she will grow much faster than a dog, plus she will live much longer. She has some similarities to dogs in that she already helps humans, and she does dangerous things that normal dogs can't do, so as AI is improving very fast, so Spot is growing with it.

[00:01:08] Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Okay, I heard that you have trained Spot using AI to do something truly amazing. You have trained her to be an artist. That's incredible. Yes, exactly. We can't wait to show you what Spot can do. Okay, well, to make sure she has enough time. Let's have her start now. Okay, Brooke, what do you think Spot should paint? Why doesn't Spot just surprise us? Okay, yeah, Spot, surprise us.

[00:01:33] Speaker 2: I hope she will surprise us, but not too much, though. So, well, let's see, so Basia, she's like my young apprentice, so she was taught by me manually, but now she's fully autonomous. Uh-oh, I'm not sure she's going to reach. She's a little far from the canvas. So she's like a child, so she's discovering the shapes as she draws, and kind of like a child would do, like a seven-year-old, and her drawings are not trying to imitate human art. She's trying to find her own voice.

[00:02:07] Speaker 1: Okay, well, now that Spot is kicking off her artistic masterpiece, can we take a step back and talk about how you met Spot and your journey together? Of course.

[00:02:16] Speaker 2: I am a classical artist. I work across mediums, and I love exploring the relationship between humans and technology. So Boston Dynamics is the manufacturer of Spot, and when I first met Spot, I thought I could show engineers how to do something super cool and creative that Spot wasn't really built for. So yeah, so we like to pairing art and technology, and it's a bit unconventional, but I think that's the beauty of it. Spot is, again, he's like my intern. He's learning about art and creativity, and bringing those dreams to life, and learning a lot from the art world, from history, from technique, and she's been a very good student. Wow. She's still a kid, but going to art school. Exactly. Hands-on, embodied AI, so a lot of data and information to get history, and so she's learning from human history, and perhaps one day she will create something very important like the Mona Lisa, or she will find a style of her own. So I'm very excited to see what happens, very focused on her education. Spot needs a lot of direction, just like AI, and just giving her the right prompts, just like you do to your chats. Okay. Awesome.

[00:03:40] Speaker 1: So tell me, how does Spot work? How does she know what to paint?

[00:03:45] Speaker 2: So she can do three things really well. She can sense, she can decide, and then move. She uses computer vision, cameras to understand environment, and turn data into simple commands, like for example, paint on this wall. So she uses a lot of data for guidance, for locomotion, to know how to avoid obstacles. So she takes all that information, and some that I trained her on, and she will hopefully create something, well, hopefully special.

[00:04:18] Speaker 1: Yeah. I am learning so much today about the possibilities of AI. Okay, let's move from Spot to you. How did you get the idea to experiment with AI and art?

[00:04:29] Speaker 2: Well, so I first met Spot, I came to paint her portrait, and then when I met her, I thought, well, she really needs to be an artist on her own. So this is how it all happened.

[00:04:39] Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh. What an amazing journey both of you have been on. I bet you never thought your career would turn out like this. I mean, you have matching outfits.

[00:04:48] Speaker 2: No way. Like, this is a job? Yeah. This is amazing. So the idea of a robot becoming an artist might sound silly to some people, but, well, we are here today.

[00:04:58] Speaker 1: Do you think AI will change the job opportunities of the future? Oh, yes, absolutely.

[00:05:04] Speaker 2: So that's why I encourage students not to be afraid of AI, but get creative with it and dream really big, just like kind of I did pairing art and technology. And AI isn't just for scientists or coders. It's for artists, creators, for anyone with curiosity. And no matter what you are passionate about, you can use AI to help you and to imagine what's possible. Oh. And Basia embodied AI. Interesting. It's like a child just broke her crayon. Like my daughter does. So again, so she's just learning. So this is an example of learning for the future and making mistakes, but keeping curiosity and going forward. She's like, can you help me? Yeah, she's looking at you. Oh, she's embarrassed. Okay.

[00:05:47] Speaker 1: God, how beautiful. It was so beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Basia. You did very well. So she's still learning. So because of that, the audience is still learning. Yeah. It's amazing.