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Complex Systems & Unpredictable Technology

AI and the Law

9/29/2020

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Hi, I’m Fuzzy

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A Few Disclaimers

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Complex Systems

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Complex Systems

&

Unpredictable Technology

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And then they would track all of these defects on this sheet of paper, where they’d draw out a line graph by hand. And eventually someone would take this piece of paper, and put it all into Excel, so they could email around reports.

So imagine you show up for your first day of work at a law firm. And you’re expecting them to give you, like, a computer and an email account. But instead of that, they drop off a typewriter on your desk, and they tell you that there’s a fax machine in the back. That’s what the experience is like for a lot of factory line workers, and the production engineers who design and manage these assembly lines. It’s not that they don’t know that there’s technology that can help, it’s that nobody’s ever bothered to build that for them.

Manufacturers spend billions of dollars a year on IT. But most of that is for back-of-house systems -- the stuff that tracks money and goods going into the factory, and coming out of the factory. There’s very little that’s designed for the actual people on the shop floor.

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Augmented workers can tackle more challenges.

90% reduction

in training time

25% faster

cycle time

98% reduction

in defect rate

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Machines depend on people. People depend on apps.

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And it’s worked out pretty well. A lot of factories are using Tulip now. But throughout our time as a company, our biggest competition wasn’t other technology companies -- it was paper.

And what makes paper and stopwatches and tally counters and horns so appealing is that you’ll never get halfway through a project and get stuck, because you can understand all of that stuff. It’s the double-edged sword of technological systems: they can do so much that nobody knows everything they can and can’t do.

Because for all the advantages technology has, and all the efficiencies you can get from it, it’s still a system that’s too complex for any single person to understand. Kinda like excel -- there are probably very few people who know every excel function. So when you ask someone “can you do XYZ in excel”, sometimes the answer is “definitely, yes” but a lot of times, the answer is “well, probably. But let’s find out.” And you don’t really know until you’ve tried, and maybe got stuck.

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I can write faster on a typewriter than you can on a computer. I do 120 words a minute, and you can't do that on a computer.

Ray Bradbury

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I can write faster on a typewriter than you can on a computer. I do 120 words a minute, and you can't do that on a computer.

Ray Bradbury

There are times where I would keep three typewriters on a table, and I'd have three complete thoughts going. With computers, you make folders, files - I don't know about those things. I have sheaves of paper polluted with words and paragraphs. I found it a good tool for me. And it keeps your hands strong for guitar playing.

Eddie Vedder

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I can write faster on a typewriter than you can on a computer. I do 120 words a minute, and you can't do that on a computer.

Ray Bradbury

There are times where I would keep three typewriters on a table, and I'd have three complete thoughts going. With computers, you make folders, files - I don't know about those things. I have sheaves of paper polluted with words and paragraphs. I found it a good tool for me. And it keeps your hands strong for guitar playing.

Eddie Vedder

My old Royal [typewriter] never crashed

Jack Limpert

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Americans don’t need to be convinced to vote, they need to be able to vote.

It is harder to vote in the United States than in any other nation with democratically elected leadership.

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50 different sets of voting laws

In many states, you have to print and mail forms, and who has a printer?

This disproportionately affects low-income voters and voters of color

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VoteAmerica removes barriers that stop people from voting.

And then we proactively reach out and encourage people to use our tools.

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In 11 states, there is no online ballot request system, but voters can submit their ballot requests electronically via email or fax.

But they’d need to either own a printer and a scanner, or know how to electronically scan their signature and put it on a PDF.

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Electronic

Signature

Digital

Signature

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Signature Extractor

The key technical challenge is going from this...

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Signature Extractor

The key technical challenge is going from this...

To this:

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Why is this hard?

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Why is this hard?

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Why is this hard?

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Why is this hard?

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Why is this hard?

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Our Results

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Simple Threshold

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Otsu Binarization

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How do we do it?

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How do we do it?

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Step 1: Grayscale

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