Working Smarter

For our second episode of Working Smarter, we’re talking to University of Toronto law professor Abdi Aidid about AI, the law, and the “possibility of an intelligent division of labor between human and machine.”

Aidid is interested in how AI can help legal professionals be better at their jobs and improve the delivery of legal services. He’s also the former vice president of legal research for Blue J—a legal tech company that uses machine learning to help lawyers review, analyze, and synthesize information faster and more efficiently than they could on their own—and the co-author of The Legal Singularity: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Law Radically Better.

Hear Aidid talk about using AI to spend more time on the things humans do best, how lawyers are already using AI-powered tools, and why he thinks AI could actually make legal services more accessible and better able to meet people’s needs.

Show notes:

• To hear more from Abdi Aidid, read our previous interview on Work in Progress.
• Visit the University of Toronto website to learn more about Abdi Aidid and his work.
• The Legal Singularity: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Law Radically Better by Abdi Aidid and Benjamin Alarie is available now.
• Read the full transcript of this interview on our website.

~ ~ ~

Working Smarter is a new podcast from Dropbox about how AI is changing the way we work and get stuff done.

You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai

This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard, namely: our producers Samiah Adams and Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith. Special thanks to Benjy Baptiste for production assistance, our marketing and PR consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and our illustrators, Fanny Luor and Justin Tran. Our theme song was created by Doug Stuart. Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga.

Thanks for listening!

For our fourth episode of Working Smarter we’re talking to Babak Hodjat, the chief technology officer for AI research at Cognizant. If you’ve ever used Apple’s smart assistant Siri, then you’re almost certainly familiar with his work.

Hodjat has been doing AI research for nearly four decades, and if there’s one thread that runs through his career, it’s how to make working with digital agents feel as natural or effortless as working with a colleague. At Cognizant—an IT services and consulting firm—Hodjat’s team puts this work into practice by helping other companies integrate AI tools into their workflows.

Hear Hodjat discuss why it’s still so hard for machines to understand exactly what we want them to do, the problems he’s helping his customers solve, and how the latest generation of workplace assistants can help us make better decisions and improve the way we do our jobs.

Show notes:

• Learn more about Cognizant's Advanced AI Lab
• Links to Hodjat’s research
• The Perceptive Assistant that Learns (PAL)
• The Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes (CALO)

~ ~ ~

Working Smarter is a new podcast from Dropbox about how AI is changing the way we work and get stuff done.

You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai

This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard, namely: our producers Samiah Adams and Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith. Special thanks to Benjy Baptiste for production assistance, our marketing and PR consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and our illustrators, Fanny Luor and Justin Tran. Our theme song was created by Doug Stuart. Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga.

Thanks for listening!

For our first episode of Working Smarter we’re talking to Kate Darling, a research scientist at MIT’s Media Lab and author of The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots.

Darling has spent more than a decade studying human-robot interaction through a social, legal, and ethical lens. She’s interested in how people relate to robots and digital constructs, socially and emotionally—whether it’s an AI-powered chatbot or one of the many robotic dinosaurs that Kate has in her home.

Hear Darling talk about the bonds we’re already forming with our smart—and not-so-smart—devices at work and at home, and why our relationship with animals might be a better way to frame the interactions we’re having with increasingly intelligent machines.

Show notes:

• Visit katedarling.org to learn more about Kate Darling and her work.
• The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots is available now.
• The two papers mentioned in this episode are "Bonding with a Couchsurfing Robot: The Impact of Common Locus on Human-Robot Bonding In-the-Wild" by Joost Mollen, Peter van der Putten, and Kate Darling, and "How does my robot know who I am?: Understanding the Impact of Education on Child-Robot Relationships" by Daniella DiPaola.
• Read the full transcript of this interview on our website.

~ ~ ~

Working Smarter is a new podcast from Dropbox about how AI is changing the way we work and get stuff done.

You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai

This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard, namely: our producers Samiah Adams and Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith. Special thanks to Benjy Baptiste for production assistance, our marketing and PR consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and our illustrators, Fanny Luor and Justin Tran. Our theme song was created by Doug Stuart. Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga.

Thanks for listening!