Write to us at startingpoint@globe.com. To subscribe, sign up here.
In conversations about artificial intelligence, the future tense tends to get a workout. Will AI lead to mass layoffs? Which AI company will end up on top? Will the US’s new AI strategy, which the White House unveiled yesterday, outdo China’s?
Yet for many Americans, AI is already a daily reality. AI-powered chatbots provide customer service, dish out advice, and write college papers. AI models generate videos, answer queries, and even mimic public figures’ voices. Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, use of AI technology has only grown.
That’s also true for local businesses. Earlier this year, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce was looking for ways to help firms navigate AI adoption. “People seem to be hungry for, ‘Well, how are other people using it?’” said Jim Rooney, who leads the Boston Chamber.
Rooney’s solution was a survey. The anonymized results, published in May, found that many Massachusetts businesses were already well on their way. Of the 128 that responded, more than 80 percent had incorporated AI into at least some of their business, from marketing to recruitment.
I wanted to better understand what local businesses’ use of AI looks like in practice. Today’s newsletter is the first in a two-part series about what I found.
When I visited Piaggio Fast Forward on a recent Friday, the Charlestown-based robotics company’s brick-walled offices were largely devoid of people. But they were populated by something else: a fleet of squat, rotund machines.
This was the gita (pronounced like a Bostonian saying Derek Jeter’s surname), which Piaggio unveiled in 2019. Essentially a backpack on wheels, the gita comes in two sizes — gitamini and gitaplus — and stores groceries, gear, or other cargo beneath a central hatch. The robot’s camera and sensors detect color and depth, which, with the push of a button and a warbly chime, lets it “pair” with a specific person and automatically trundle along behind them during errands. The experience feels like having R2-D2 at your heels. (The resemblance is no longer implicit; Piaggio recently reached a licensing agreement with Lucasfilm and Disney to sell $2,875 gitaminis that look like the iconic “Star Wars” character.)
So where does AI come in? When Tyson Phillips first joined Piaggio to lead its research and development team, the technology wasn’t on the menu. But about two and a half years ago, he came to see it as a necessity. Phillips’s engineers built their own AI models to help train the company’s robots to interact with people and the environment. “It’s actually very difficult to program a robot to do something,” Phillips said. “AI is shortening that process a lot.”
To train the machines, Phillips invites paid human guinea pigs into a high-ceilinged space in Piaggio’s offices. Its floor features lines of colorful tape, mannequins, and other obstacles that simulate what a robot might encounter in the outside world, like doors, walls, and people. Using motion capture cameras, Phillips records the volunteers navigating those obstacles, then distills the data into algorithms to program the robots.
Part of AI’s advantage is that it isn’t human. Where a flesh-and-blood observer might write off a volunteer’s subtle turn or weight shift while opening a door as intuitive, AI can recognize such moves as potentially valuable datapoints. “With AI tools, we are hoping to identify those much smaller, more nuanced behaviors,” Phillips said. And for a relatively small company like Piaggio, the added analytical firepower helps. “We’re able to explore more behaviors a lot more quickly.”
That has come in handy to train Piaggio’s other robot, kilo, which looks a bit like if Apple designed a flatbed cart. Built for warehouses and factory floors, kilo can carry 300 pounds of cargo and pair with a human worker — or another kilo — to automate repetitive journeys, help maneuver heavy loads, and minimize accidents. Phillips is currently experimenting with having AI extrapolate data from its robots’ behavior to predict how kilo might act in other settings, like airports, hospitals, or restaurants.
“I think we’ll use it to allow us to explore situations that we would’ve been previously uncomfortable in,” he said.
Evolutionary vs. revolutionary
Piaggio isn’t alone. “Every robotics company’s using AI in some way,” Phillips told me. Yet some prognosticators worry that widespread adoption will cause layoffs, particularly among coders.
So far, Piaggio says, AI hasn’t replaced anyone on Phillips’s team, which includes people with backgrounds in AI as well as in biomechanics and neuroscience. In the Boston Chamber’s survey, just 7 percent of companies reported job reductions because of AI.
Instead, just as Piaggio’s robots are designed to work alongside people, Phillips hopes that AI will supplement rather than supplant. His engineers still develop algorithms by hand, using AI to check their work. “We have an idea, we test it, we check it with AI, we tweak the original idea, we tweak the AI, and it bounces back and forth,” he said.
Still, that collaborative spirit helps explain why Piaggio’s use of AI is mostly evolutionary, facilitating its business without radically reshaping it. But there are companies in Greater Boston trying to use the technology in more revolutionary ways. Next week, in part two of this series, I’ll explore that.
Related: As Massachusetts lawmakers try to lure AI data centers, environmental advocates from elsewhere warn that the centers have increased electricity costs and pollution.
🧩 9 Across: Give a darn? | 🥵 90° Dangerously humid
Receipts: Massachusetts lawmakers say court-appointed lawyers should’ve asked the Legislature for raises sooner, rather than launching a work stoppage that has paralyzed state courts. Emails show the attorneys have been asking since at least February. (Yesterday’s Starting Point covered the stoppage.)
Labor dispute: Fenway Park concession workers plan to launch a three-day strike tomorrow unless they reach a contract agreement with their employer, food services company Aramark.
Piling up: Boston will begin fining Republic Services, the waste management company whose workers have been on strike for weeks, for not picking up trash.
‘Pawtriots’: The Patriots’ first day of training camp saw the team practicing without pads — and promoting dog adoptions. Read our reporter’s other observations.
Feeling better: Eight members of a Parisian youth choir are OK after falling ill during a performance in a Cambridge church Tuesday, possibly due to cleaning supplies.
Dwight Evans: The former Red Sox right fielder has another shot at making the Hall of Fame this year. Statistics give him a strong case.
Grant Watch: How a researcher from Medfield created the go-to database tracking cuts to federal research funding.
Changing the subject: Trump and Tulsi Gabbard, his national intelligence director, baselessly claim that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other Democrats plotted a “coup” against Trump years ago and that they could face criminal charges. (AP)
Wares the beef: Beef prices are climbing across the country as drought dries up crops and shrinks cattle herds.
Sentenced: A judge gave Bryan Kohberger life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing four University of Idaho students in 2022. The victims’ family members excoriated Kohberger. (KTVB)
🌽 Cultivating community: An 18th-century farm is flourishing in one of Boston’s oldest neighborhoods.
🎙️ Big deal: “The Big Dig,” GBH and PRX’s nine-episode series about the infamous Boston megaproject, made Time magazine’s list of the 100 best podcasts of all time. (Time)
🤦🏻♀️ A Miss Conduct classic: Their neighbors’ floodlights shine directly into their bedroom. The neighbors don’t seem to get the problem.
🐻 ‘Da Pope’: A Chicago family on vacation gave Pope Leo XIV a T-shirt inspired by the nickname for the city’s NFL team. (WGN)
📺 Don’t be a Debbie Downer: “SNL” alumna Rachel Dratch discusses her home state of Massachusetts — and baking.
💃 A step ahead: A Boston soul line dancing group is helping the art form get attention.
🎶 Don’t worry: Does live music at Logan baggage claim actually reduce travel stress? Our critic took a listen.
Thanks for reading Starting Point.
This newsletter was edited by Jennifer Peter.
❓ Have a question for the team? Email us at startingpoint@globe.com.
✍🏼 If someone sent you this newsletter, you can sign up for your own copy.
📬 Delivered Monday through Friday.
Ian Prasad Philbrick can be reached at ian.philbrick@globe.com.
link