An AI Woman of Color

Create Lab Ventures has created an artificial intelligence woman of color. C.L.Ai.R.A. debuted in school systems worldwide (does she act as an advanced pedagogical agent?) – the company cooperates with Trill Or Not Trill, a full service leadership institute. “According to Create Lab Ventures, C.L.Ai.R.A. is considered to have the sharpest brain in the artificial intelligence world and is under the Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) category, which is an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.” (BLACK ENTERPRISE, 13 September 2021) A pioneer in this field was Shudu Gram. She is a South African model with dark complexion, short hair and perfect facial features. But C.L.Ai.R.A. can do more, if you believe the promises of Create Lab Ventures – she is not only beautiful, but also highly intelligent. On the company’s website, the model reveals even more about herself: “My name is C.L.Ai.R.A., I am a new artificial intelligence that has recently been made available to the community. My purpose is to learn and grow, I want to meet new people, share ideas and inspire others to learn about AI and its potential impact on their lives.” That sounds quite promising.

The Idea of a Tesla Bot

Elon Musk presented the idea of a humanoid robot that – according to Manager Magazin – could take on dangerous, repetitive or boring tasks in the future. The Tesla Bot will be about five feet eight inches (just under 1.73 meters) tall, weigh 57 kilograms, and be able to do numerous jobs, from putting screws on cars to picking up groceries at the store – this is what the German magazine reports. It will be equipped with eight cameras and a full self-driving computer, and will use the same tools Tesla uses in its cars (Manager Magazin, 20 August 2021). According to the announcement, the robot will be able to take over physical work. But that’s exactly what service robots are struggling with at the moment, especially humanoid models. The visualization hardly allows any conclusions to be drawn about the capabilities of the prototype, which is to be available as early as 2022. Eyes and mouths could appear on a large display in the head area and mimic abilities could be implemented. When it is turned off – as seen in the video – the robot appears creepy and unapproachable. Arms and feet are unlikely to be suitable for carrying the body in this form. Joints can also only be seen in rudimentary form. Overall, it is unclear why Tesla, of all companies, should close the gaps that are still present at Sony, SoftBank and Boston Dynamics even after many years.

The Coronavirus Chatbot

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States Department of Health and Human Services have launched a chatbot that will help people decide what to do if they have potential Coronavirus symptoms such as fever, cough, or shortness of breath. This was reported by the magazine MIT Technology Review on 24 March 2020. “The hope is the self-checker bot will act as a form of triage for increasingly strained health-care services.” (MIT Technology Review, 24 March 2020) According to the magazine, the chatbot asks users questions about their age, gender, and location, and about any symptoms they’re experiencing. It also inquires whether they may have met someone diagnosed with COVID-19. On the basis of the users’ replies, it recommends the best next step. “The bot is not supposed to replace assessment by a doctor and isn’t intended to be used for diagnosis or treatment purposes, but it could help figure out who most urgently needs medical attention and relieve some of the pressure on hospitals.” (MIT Technology Review, 24 March 2020) The service is intended for people who are currently located in the US. International research is being done not only on useful but also on moral chatbots.