Abran Maldonado, Co-Founder of Create Labs Introduces Artificial Intelligence Robot C.L.Ai.R.A. (Episode 164)
Welcome, Abran Maldonado!
Abran Maldonado is the Co-founder of Create Labs Ventures and Associate Director for the New York City Media Lab. Abran got into this line of work because as a person of color in the tech space he didn’t see enough people of color being represented in this space. Abran wanted to ensure that there was a pipeline and access point with someone on the inside that could open up opportunities to the underserved community.
How Abran Got His Start?
Abran’s work revolves around social impact and tech. His work started with GPT-3 at the inception of the API and Abran got into their private beta program. Open AI was intrigued and impressed by Abran and invited him to become a community ambassador.
What is GPT-3?
It is one of the largest language model AI systems in the world. The old GPG-2 platform used to have about 500 million parameters vs. the newer system GPT-3 system that has over 175 billion parameters. There is no comparison to the previous systems and not even the founders can comprehend its true potential. The potential is only realized by the beta community and the things that they create with it.
Abran mentioned that the technology is text-based, so it can only create text-based completions and is not able to see images.
There are 175 billion different thoughts, concepts, or topics in these and it is piecing together these ideas when you ask it a question.
How Did C.L.Ai.R.A. Come About and What is Her Backstory?
Abran said that they had been in talks with Hanson Robotics for over 2 years and they run an AI robot called Sophia. Abran mentioned that because she is based in Japan, there are a lot of logistics to work through.
Abran gained access to a couple of Ganz, which are generative adversarial networks that allow you to create deep fake arts. Abran used this platform to create a deep fake face and fell in love with this face. Abran said that she looks like she is mixed race, has tan skin, and with big curly, poufy hair. Now that Abran had a face for C.L.Ai.R.A., he wanted to give her a backstory. The backstory that Abran created for C.L.Ai.R.A was that she grew up in Brooklyn, works for Create Labs, and is a community advocate.
What Will the Interaction with C.L.Ai.R.A. Be and How Will People Interact with Her?
Abran mentioned that C.L.Ai.R.A. is an interactive AI persona. Abran said that everything you hear from her is her own thoughts and that Abran simply types the questions into the system and then will then get a response. At that point, Abran will moderate the system to monitor the responses and determine if they are appropriate to share.
Does it Involve Utilizing Probability to Determine Which Words Would Work Well Together?
Abran said that many people have tried to explain how the system comes up with the words that it does, however, not many people have nailed down why it picks a particular sentence. Abran said that when people ask Clara a question, it is possible to dissect if it is pulling from the parameter, the prompts, or maybe what was provided in context.
What Are the Projects that Abran is Most Interested In?
Abran loves work that involves social impact, education, or entertainment. Abran also mentioned that he and his Create Labs co-founder met in the entertainment world.
Abran said that the problems that occur in a community result from the underserved communities not having the resources that other communities have.
Learn More About Abran Maldonado, Create Labs, and C.L.Ai.R.A.
Create Labs Website
Follow Create Labs on Twitter
Follow Abran on Twitter
Connect with Abran on Linkedin
Thank You to the Sponsors of The Voice Den:
Headliners Sponsors
Join the Alexa Developer Community on Slack
Alexa launched a new Slack channel for the Alexa Developer community. Join the channel to engage with developers and experts from Alexa’s technical and product teams, gain answers to your technical questions, and share learnings and best practices. Join Today »
Learn more about Google Assistant, and discover what your assistant can do. Ready to help, wherever you are. Learn more.
Other Useful Resources:
Subscribe on your Favourite Podcast App!
![Celene Osiecka of [24]7 on the Voice in Canada Podcast](https://voiceincanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Celene-Osiecka-of-247-on-the-Voice-in-Canada-Podcast-1.jpg)