#and even primarily going by lex is a recent change

[dark-elf-writes]

Recently been torn between “I kinda want to change my name” and “but Lex is such a vibe even if it is kinda gendered” but like not in the it’s causing me genuine distress way more the I’ve opened baby name websites way more than usual in the last few days

[tastydregs]

OpenAI CEO: It's Not Funny That I'm Afraid of the AI We're Creating

Be Afraid

The CEO of OpenAI has admitted repeatedly that he's scared of the tech his company is cooking up — but he doesn't think you should make fun of him for it.

"I think it's weird when people think it's like a big dunk that I say, I'm a little bit afraid," OpenAI CEO and noted doomsday prepper Sam Altman told podcaster Lex Fridman in an episode dropped this past weekend. "And I think it'd be crazy not to be a little bit afraid, and I empathize with people who are a lot afraid."

While Altman iterated during his Fridman show appearance that his concerns are primarily "disinformation problems or economic shocks" and not algorithmic "superintelligence," he has said a bunch of stuff recently that suggests that he's more than a little wigged out about AI.

Take, for instance, his recent comments to ABC News: "A thing that I do worry about is... [OpenAI is not] not going to be the only creator of this technology."

"There will be other people who don't put some of the safety limits that we put on it," Altman added.

Take Care

While it seems legit to worry about less-ethical competitors (which is kind of ironic given everything we know about OpenAI) or about the "potentially scary" AIs that will follow his company's current offerings, the comments he's referring to — when he told Fox News that it's a good thing that he has trepidations about what he's created — are pretty eyebrow-raising, even in spite of his attempts to downplay them.

"We've got to be careful here," Altman told the news network earlier in March. "I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this."

While it certainly is good that there are concerns at the top of OpenAI about what may come of artificial intelligence, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence that the CEO has been repeatedly quoted saying he's scared of it — and no amount of couching language will change how weird or funny that is, because if we can't laugh while the world burns, then what else can we do?

More on AI feelings: CEO of OpenAI Says Elon Musk's Mean Comments Have Hurt Him

The post OpenAI CEO: It's Not Funny That I'm Afraid of the AI We're Creating appeared first on Futurism.

[nileqt87]

More thoughts on how to resurrect the Indiana Jones franchise post-Harrison Ford

Perhaps a proper, modern television show would be a good way to bring back a younger, but adult Indy (with perhaps flashbacks littered throughout). You can also get away with a lot more content (definitely aim for TV-14) and characters who are allowed to be flawed. Relationship dramas are serialized storytelling's forte in a way that is disappearing more and more from blockbuster films. Complicated characters are better left to television, as the audience expects and allows for it because of the nuance and depth the serialization affords. The complicated, messy story of Abner and Marion is a story best left to being explored only after the characters have some real complexity and development. It also wouldn't be forced to play to the mass audience of under-13s that makes modern PG-13 often meaningless. In comparison, TV-14 actually pushes up harder against its limits regularly--not just violence, but also with innuendo and sexuality minus nudity. The amount of historical-style, pulpy violence, not to mention potentially comically gruesome deaths, in Indy would also necessitate the rating. Indiana Jones might be niche enough at this point with an audience veering towards adults who grew up with it (Gen-X and the older end of Gen-Y), while Gen-Z has little awareness of it, that Disney wouldn't be forced to make it a total kiddie property. It's not the same situation as back in the early '90s with Young Indy being aimed at older kids who had recently seen Last Crusade in the theater. They could reboot it for television with a young adult Indy who potentially could grow into a fully adult version. And I wouldn't try too hard to not step on the trilogy's toes with the timeline. Just let it live in its own developing continuity.

Use of long-running supporting cast (parents, Remy and returning guest stars aside) would also be a big difference from Young Indy. Characters like Belloq (could potentially go from friend to antagonist, akin to how Smallville handled Lex), Sallah, Henry, Brody, Abner, Marion, etc... could actually be around a lot more than just for an adventure here or there. These are all characters Indy had clearly known for years. Actually put the show into a seasonal, serialized format that isn't a new cast every episode. You could also stick around in locations a lot longer this way, which would help with budget.

Another thought I've had since watching an absolute ton of fantasy/sci-fi dramas in the last few years is that the influence of Indiana Jones is actually pretty apparent in a number of pretty famous characters, sometimes overtly and sometimes a bit more subtly. Harrison, Indy or Raiders in general are outright name-checked in quite a few places, often by scrappy action hero types who tend to take hard beatings (the kinds of characters who should've died a hundred times over) while in situations they're way over their heads in or literally impossible odds they can't win. Like Indy, the intended prize isn't won at the end and, outside of a few gruesome baddie deaths, the shady, corrupt or evil barely get a dent. Fox Mulder and Dean Winchester are two characters who name-check the comparison overtly and you can see the writers and actors both having the influence in mind. It's obviously a male fantasy, too. The influence on The X-Files and Supernatural is definitely there. Supernatural is chock full of biblical MacGuffins (not to mention having angels and demons as most of its recurring supporting cast), so it would be a hard comparison to avoid. Raiders came up in the WWII Nazi submarine episode with a piece of the Ark onboard (it's subsequently a show to raid for Indy ideas, because they pretty much mined everything biblical), for example. The X-Files likewise was dealing with shady government officials and pretty blatantly copied the huge warehouse of government secrets loaded with alien relics (and then repeated the Cigarette Smoking Man's warehouse reveal with the tunnel of filing cabinets stretching on forever). Mulder was also very much a one-man army a lot of the time when it came to the alien conspiracy (no offense to Scully). Moments like him climbing/riding the tops of sky rides, trains and escaping the spaceship were total Indy-esque moments. Sam and Dean had literal God-tier levels of plot armor keeping them alive (repeated resurrections included). Angel is another one that, unlike Mulder and the Winchesters being very human, is a supernatural character (subsequently his level of pain tolerance and durability is at the level of regular impalement, defenestration out of skyscrapers and being set on fire), but the comparison still holds because of how often he's getting decimated and fighting forces way beyond his pay grade. Wolfram & Hart, the Shanshu and seeking redemption with the Powers that Be, like the mytharc conspiracy/alien takeover and literal God a.k.a. Chuck, is another endless, unwinnable fight that is so far beyond all the protagonists that there's no win/happily ever after and they'd be lucky just walking away from it with nothing. Angel also name-checks Indy with a blatantly Indy-inspired fantasy dream episode (Awakening in season 4) with Angelus making a crack about the Raiders fantasy. George Lucas actually visited the Angel set back in 2000 and was interested in how they were making mini movies every week and doing some pretty huge stunts on television. David Boreanaz had lunch with Lucas and has talked about it a few times over the many years. I mean, these are all shows starring action-oriented leading men and writing staffs of relatively similar age. Mostly Gen-X males with a few Baby Boomers (more so on the writing staff) with an audience that's primarily Gen-Y but appealing to a pretty broad age range (and probably a lot more female than originally intended!). Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford films in general were very formative to that generation. Harrison Ford is the ultimate leading man action star to a certain generation. Gen-Y got their familiarity with all of that by being the original home video/VHS generation and subsequently a lot more familiar with retro media (including things that were made before they were born or around that time) than Gen-Z. '80s movies have a lot of currency and familiarity still with Gen-Y, even if Baby Boomers were the stars of them and Gen-X were the ones who saw them in theaters. Gen-Y fangirls absolutely dominate the fandoms of many iconic television supernatural/sci-fi franchises (many are admittedly aging franchises). The WB/CW have catered to this group of fans for the last two and a half decades. If you're going to be reviving the character as a mid-20s-to-30s version (if the show lasts long enough, it probably will be stepping on the trilogy's toes timeline-wise by the end), I'd absolutely be aiming for this same audience and their tastes. They're also the audience who would be most receptive to and familiar with the character, IMO. If I were going to reinvent Indiana Jones for the television landscape, I would definitely be looking at those sorts of shows that have influence from the character already in their DNA. I think for the target audience, they'd definitely need to be aiming it at the same fanbases. Young Indy mostly tried to avoid stepping on Raiders' toes (despite Temple of Doom and Mask of Evil already making it ludicrous) by limiting the amount of supernatural elements, but I think a show would have to go all in on it. Indy would have to be transformed a bit in regards to trying to line him up with a character who would still be skeptical after all he's seen. Young Indy ended up forced into being a straight period drama with educational elements, which is very counter to what the audience wanted. There are things to keep from that approach (meeting historical persons, being a WWI veteran and witnessing history could absolutely be mined as backdrops to the stories), but the supernatural elements would have to exist in a revival now to get the audience who I think would be most receptive to it. While I would aim for a serialized drama format that would mean the globetrotting wouldn't have to completely change locations every episode (have it instead in arcs with some bigger MacGuffins and baddies perhaps crossing entire seasons), it's true that there would probably have to be more location filming than good, ol' Vancouver, but Disney is one of the few who could afford it (though Covid certainly would throw a wrench in it and political situations could potentially kill off certain locations). There's only so much green screen that Indy could get away with, though I imagine that a fair amount of it would have to be used for period piece reasons alone. There are a lot of modern intrusions even in historically-intact cities (Eastern Europe comes to mind as having a lot of its architecture intact and is affordable to film in) and around iconic landscapes to paint out. But at its core, it probably would need to bulk up its focus on the relationship dramas. Indy tends to have a girl at every port and to a degree you would introduce some of these love interests, but there's still a lot of relationships of every kind that could be developed and serialized. Certainly throw in a few femme fatales and tragic losses, given the Smallville-esque situation of there being an inevitable Indy/Marion endgame that should be kept--it thus becomes about the journey when it's a set conclusion. Absolutely have a strong recurring cast of Henry and friends new and old. The films actually have a lot of characters that Indy didn't just meet yesterday and could be developed to a huge extent. For a show to work now, there'd have to be a lot more connectivity to how often the recurring cast appear. Young Indy had a lot more of an anthology format with little chance of us getting attached to most of the revolving cast outside of a very tiny few. That's the biggest thing I'd change. You need characters to become regulars beyond just Indy if it were revived for modern cinematic television (the true successor to the film serials of the '30s!) in a way that isn't necessary for film installments.

[asagimeta]

Look not to be naive and fall for The Bait again but it's just the tiniest bit odd that Supergirl, as a show, hasn't given Kara anything CLOSE to a male love interest since season three, and even in the crossovers, the two she's easily closest to are a married man and a lesbian so it's not like Crisis gave her a possible new male shipmate to play with for the "hey everyone shares an Earth now so...... infinite crossovers?" thing

The fact that there's been very consistant relationship build-up for both Supercorp and Kanvers over the last two years- and that those involved in the show have flat out admitted their focus on the relationships of Kara/Lena and Kara/Kate respectively so it isn't just fans imagining that they're getting on well or the actors having chemistry- and yet Kara has essentially been totally devoid of men in her life since Mon-El... honestly says something

It's very significant for any show, but especially one with a primarily female demographic and with a female lead- to have absolutely NOTHING in terms of a love interest for an entire two seasons and what can essentially constitute as a TV movie, and it certainly isn't because Supergirl doesn't want to focus on relationships, since it currently puts a pretty nice amount of time into Dreamy and Alex/Kelley (I'm so sorry I don't know the shipname) wich, might I note, are currently the only canon relationships in the main cast.... and both involve atleast one canonically queer charector....

Furthermore, both Lena and Kate are available too

This isn't like alot of tease and bait things where one or more potential love interest is already spoken for, Lena recently broke up with James and considering he's taking a step back from the show, I don't think that decision would be reversed in the new continuity, and Kate is not only a single pringle herself, but also is canonically gay, wich is WAY more than most of these situations get

Now wile I definitely wouldn't expect Kanvers to ever be canon because, to be entirely fair, there's just no way Batwoman and Supergirl can maintain two shows at once and cross over into eachother's show often enough for a relationship to be a thing, so one would (at the least) have to get cancelled first and I'm sure we don't want that to happen (although in the future when one of them does eventually go the way of Arrow that would actually be a pretty nice way to keep the charectors alive without having to give them the full show, and thus without having to kill off either Kara or Kate; Supergirl just isn't the "dark, gritty" type of show that could get away with that kind of stunt and wile Batwoman's genre could stand it I don't think the fact that Kate being the first openly gay superhero to have her own TV show and then getting killed off at the end would go over well with many people, so there's that) I DO think it could make for a very interesting self-discovery story, we've gotten all but a full confirmation that these crossovers will be happening more often now, it's unlikely that Kate's sexuality will just never come up between them if they are, indeed, supposed to be the new Oliver and Barry- who were quite close- and especially if Kate is, within ONE day of the Earths being merged, already watching TV with Kara and Alex; Kate could be an incredible way for Kara to come out, be it by starting to notice that some of Kate's experiences with her sexuality mirror her own, or by Kate having a "woah wait a minute you're straight? ..................really?" moment, or even just Kara figuring things out on her own and going to Kate for advice that she feels weird asking Alex for (because there are just some things you don't talk about with your sister)

And then there's Lena

Lena has been THE plot of Supergirl since LAST SEASON, and to go through this entire plot of love/hate/love with her for any reason other than Love Interest Complications seems... odd.... it's clear that at this point they're not setting Lena up to be the villain for the rest of the season or else the thing with Lex wouldn't have happened because villain!Lena is more than strong enough to lead a plot of her own, they obviously want the primary point of Kara and Lena's relationship right now to be one of internal conflict, of Kara knowing that this is wrong- with Lex and what he's doing -but wanting to keep Lena's love so much that she has to fight with herself to do what's right

Kara is an extremely moral person, that's....... alot of desire to be loved by one person

For the conflict to be that internal and that extreme.....

Don't get me wrong, I'm still totally prepared for this all to be subtext and for Supergirl to end with Kara and Lena both in relationships with dudes or neither in a relationship at all or some mix of the two, but... the circumstances are pretty interesting... and to give credit where credit's due, two out of six of the Arrowverse shows ARE lead by queer women, and Supergirl as a show it's self has THREE canonical queer women in it's main cast.. and in the past two years alone, the CW has been responsible for both introducing TV's very first openly trans superhero AND making the first superhero TV show to center around an open lesbian, and at this point the majority of the Arrowverse does have atleast one canonically queer charector as part of their main cast and those charectors seem to be growing in screentime lately...

Do I think we REALLY will get Supergirl into a same sex relationship? ...No, if nothing else because she's still part of the Super franchise wich DC and Warner Brothers probably have a death grip around to keep anyone with "Super" in their name as clean-cut American Pie as possible (wich is ironic considering things like Red Son) but do I think there's atleast some small chance of it? ...I mean.... maybe...? If you'd asked me two years ago I would have flat-out said "no" but the truth is that Batwoman has really changed the game for what can be acceptable on the CW, and from DC, so there's possibly a small chance of it....

Or atleast I hope there is

[aion-rsa]

Dark Nights: Death Metal Resurrects the Entire DC Universe

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV had a chance to chat up their big current projects as part of Metaverse, this year’s pandemic margarine to New York Comic Con’s butter, and there were some surprising reveals to be had. Most surprising? Snyder spoiled the ending of Dark Nights: Death Metal.

Sort of.

Death Metal is many things. It is primarily the capstone to Snyder’s decade driving the DC line, first as writer of New 52 Batman with Greg Capullo, then on All-Star Batman and the Dark Nights: Metal/Justice League/Death Metal Crisis triptych. It’s the culmination of his partnership with Capullo, whose collaboration and friendship with Snyder have forever changed Scott’s storytelling ambitions. And, as Snyder relayed to new DC EIC Marie Javins and Tynion in the panel, it’s a way to put DC’s history back.

All of it.

“At the end of the day, [Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman] have to reckon with the whole DCU. Every story they’ve been through has happened and the only way forward is to not only accept that, but have that in their arsenal to fight with,” Snyder said.

Through the Metal cycle, Snyder has been telling a story that, in its own cartoonish, superheroic way, reflects back some of the horrors of the world we currently live through. The premise of Year of the Villain was essentially that the people of Earth Prime chose evil, decided that psychotic billionaire businessman Lex Luthor made them an offer too good to refuse in a world collapsing from forces beyond their control, so screw it.

In the panel, Snyder hints that he ties that in a bow in Death Metal by making a point about the through line to all the various Crises in DC history. They’re all about selfishness. The Anti-Monitor, Superboy Prime and Darkseid (in Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis, and Final Crisis respectively) were all trying to erase history and make their moment more important than the weight of the history of the DC universe behind them.

He says the way out for the heroes in Death Metal is to embrace what many have found to be the most appealing aspect of the DC heroes: legacy.

“What it says is all of these great stories that you’ve grown up with whether you love them or hate them, they all matter. They’re all real, they’re all part of this epic generational story,” he told Tynion. “At the end, we say all of that was material, all of that was consequential, and now, whatever DC is going to be going forward, both narratively within the story of the characters, and as a company, because there have been a lot of changes as well, we’re excited for that and we welcome it with open arms and we hope that it’s going to be even better than it was before.” 

Tynion also got a chance to talk up his run on Batman, which just hit a high water mark with the recently released issue #100 that capped off the Joker War story. His future plans are along the same lines as what we’ve seen so far.

“Grounded realism isn’t something I’m trying to go for here,” said the writer who just wrapped a storyline about the Joker unleashing an army of clowns on Gotham City to wreak chaos after emptying Bruce Wayne’s bank accounts.

Tynion sees Batman runs as a way to dig into one aspect of the sprawling world of Gotham – his time on Detective Comics was focused on expanding and deepening the Bat family, just as he’s focused on the villains for Batman. He wants to work on elevating them, examining their individual roles in the city, even using some of them as regular supporting cast members. He said Harley’s appearances in Joker War are a tease of more to come: “She’ll continue to be a key part of the run,” he told Snyder.

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The post Dark Nights: Death Metal Resurrects the Entire DC Universe appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2SOlSjz

[duaneodavila]

Legal Tech Disruption And Stagnancy At Legalweek 2019

Another Legalweek has come and gone. It was a whirlwind of meetings and conversations about the future of legal tech, and before I knew it, it was over and I was back on a plane and headed home.

What struck me about this year’s show was how much has changed, and yet how much has stayed the same. Technology has bulldozed through the legal industry, just as it has in other industries and our culture in general, and left a trail of wreckage behind it.

For example, over the past few years, traditional legal publishing has been impacted tremendously, and many of the traditional publishing companies, both newspaper and treatise-focused, are struggling to find a foothold in the new world order. Some have declared bankruptcy, others have restructured, and still others have significantly reduced spending and and overhead by closing offices and cutting their budgets.

Bar associations are likewise struggling to stay afloat and few have found a way to provide value in what is now primarily a digital world. Membership is down at national and local levels and bar executives are testing out many different tactics to increase membership and interest, but are having a hard time finding success.

Similarly, mainstay legal conferences, like Legalweek, are also facing challenges. In recent years, attendee numbers for many conferences have declined, as have the number of sponsors and vendors. Lawyers now have more cost effective ways to obtain information and CLE credits online and many are taking advantage of those opportunities and choosing not to attend conferences. This, in turn, causes companies to question the value of exhibiting at the conferences, since doing so tends to be a costly endeavor.

But even as technology has undeniably restructured and torn apart the industries that support the legal profession, many members of the profession have chosen to remain blissfully unaware of its impact on their practices. That’s why, by all accounts and despite the urgings of legal tech futurists, some aspects of legal tech adoption have occurred at a slower pace than anticipated. At the same time, legal tech companies are sprouting up left and right, at rates never before seen, ever intent on meeting the perceived needs of a profession that is ambivalent, at best, to some of their offerings.

And then, in the midst of all this tumultuous change — and  collective stubborn resistance to the same — came Legalweek 2019. Despite the hustle and bustle of the show, the dark cloud of change was ominously evident. It was hard to gauge attendee numbers, but the Expo Hall seemed smaller than it had in previous years, with some mainstay exhibitors appearing off the beaten path in much smaller booths than in years past.

That being said, you couldn’t walk two feet without tripping over an eDiscovery vendor, and it’s safe to say that tech adoption in that space is thriving. And if talking about legal tech with people who have a passion for it is your thing, then Legalweek is the place to do it. It’s definitely one of my favorite things to do, and as in prior years, I was lucky enough to meet up with lots interesting people and had many engaging discussions about the future of legal practice and how technology will impact the legal industry.

First I met with Josh Becker, Head of Legal Analytics and Chairman at Lex Machina. I learned that since its acquisition by LexisNexis, Lex Machina has not rested on its laurels and continues to add new practice areas to its litigation analytics platform. We spent a lot of time talking about the importance of the quality of data provided by Lex Machina, since that impacted the quality of the analytics derived from the data. Or, as Josh repeatedly opined, “it’s better to have no analytics than bad analytics.”

I also spoke with Eric Pfiefer, VP of Product Management at LexisNexis. He provided an overview of the progress being made following the recent acquisitions Lex Machina, Ravel Law, and Intelligize and shared his vision for the continuing development of those artificial intelligence tools. As always, I was impressed with the direction LexisNexis is taking these products, the way that they’re approaching the incorporation of these platforms into their own, and the speed at which they’re moving, especially given LexisNexis’s size.

Next I spoke with Mike Jones, Chief Sales Officer of ThoughtRiver, a company that provides AI-powered contract review that allows lawyers to pre-screen and triage the due diligence and risk analysis review process. He shared that one of the more interesting sessions he’d attended at the conference involved a discussion of “the current and future value around assigning a contract risk score for contracts and what you could do with that data and how it could drive your decision making.” You can watch the full interview here.

My next meeting was with Erin Hichman, Senior Analyst at ALM Media. We spent a lot of time talking about one of the trending topics at Legalweek this year: companies insourcing and building out their own legal teams rather than using outside counsel. According to Erin, “the legal service provider landscape is really going to change. We see the Big Four moving in, ASPs are making a lot of moves, and lots of tech investment. The landscape is going to change drastically in the next few years.” You can watch the full interview here.

I also caught up with Allen Alishahi and Chao Cheng-Shorland from ShelterZoom, a multi-party real estate blockchain platform that streamlines real estate rental and purchasing processes. Chao explained that although ShelterZoom began as a real estate platform, they are now expanding its application and envision it as “an industry-agnostic legal contract platform…which turns the…contracting concept into completely digital, and it’s secure and audit-able, and also transparent on Blockchain.” You can watch the full interview here.

Next I sat down with Jim Brock, founder of Trustbot.io, a tool that streamlines and automates a company’s NDA contractual process. He explained that Trustbot.io is designed to bring “the contract process into workflows like Slack, Microsoft Office, and Teams not just to get the contract done, but to predict when it needs to be done.” You can watch the full interview here.

And last, but not least, I talked to Mike Sanders, Senior Solutions Expert, and Marriott Murdock, Regional Director, and learned about the latest news from NetDocuments. We talked about the insourcing trend a bit and Mike offered up an example of a law firm that developed a software tool to solve an internal problem, which NetDocuments later acquired: “A law firm who happens to be a NetDocuments customer that does deal closings and creates deal binders, and it was taking them a lot of money and a lot of time. They digitized the entire process and integrated that into the NetDocuments platform.” You can watch the full interview here.

And that’s it folks. It’s a wrap! Legalweek 2019 has come and gone, but the good news is that there are many more legal tech conferences ahead of us in 2019. And if you missed Legalweek this year, never fear —there’s always next year! Hope to see you there!

Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and the Legal Technology Evangelist at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

Legal Tech Disruption And Stagnancy At Legalweek 2019 republished via Above the Law

[bigyack-com]

A City Locks Down to Fight Coronavirus, but Robots Come and Go

If any place was prepared for quarantine, it was Milton Keynes. Two years before the pandemic, a start-up called Starship Technologies deployed a fleet of rolling delivery robots in the small city about 50 miles northwest of London.The squat six-wheeled robots shuttled groceries and dinner orders to homes and offices. As the coronavirus spread, Starship shifted the fleet even further into grocery deliveries. Locals like Emma Maslin could buy from the corner store with no human contact.“There’s no social interaction with a robot,” Ms. Maslin said.The sudden usefulness of the robots to people staying in their homes is a tantalizing hint of what the machines could one day accomplish — at least under ideal conditions. Milton Keynes, with a population of 270,000 and a vast network of bicycle paths, is perfectly suited to rolling robots. Demand has been so high in recent weeks, some residents have spent days trying to schedule a delivery.In recent years, companies from Silicon Valley to Somerville, Mass., have poured billions of dollars into the development of everything from self-driving cars to warehouse robots. The technology is rapidly improving. Robots can help with deliveries, transportation, recycling, manufacturing.But even simple tasks like robotic delivery still face myriad technical and logistical hurdles. The robots in Milton Keynes, for example, can carry no more than two bags of groceries.“You can’t do a big shop,” Ms. Maslin said. “They aren’t delivering from the superstores.”A pandemic may add to demand but does not change what you can deploy, said Elliot Katz, who helps run Phantom Auto, a start-up that helps companies remotely control autonomous vehicles when they encounter situations they cannot navigate on their own.“There is a limit to what a delivery bot can bring to a human,” Mr. Katz said. “But you have to start somewhere.”Industry veterans know this well. Gabe Sibley, an engineer and a professor who previously worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, started Zippy for sidewalk deliveries in 2017. But the San Francisco company quickly ran into challenges. The robots could move only at the pace of walking, around 1 mile per hour. That severely limits the delivery area, particularly for hot food, Mr. Sibley said.The company never deployed any robots, selling in 2018.“In this country, where we designed our cities around the car, the solution to sidewalk delivery is to use the roads,” Mr. Sibley said.Founded in 2014 and backed by more than $80 million, Starship Technologies is based in San Francisco, and it has deployed most of its robots on college campuses in the United States. Equipped with cameras, radar and other sensors, the robots navigate by matching their surroundings to digital maps built by the company in each new location.The company chose Milton Keynes for a wider deployment in part because the robots could navigate it with relative ease. Built after World War II, the city was carefully planned, with most streets laid out in a grid and bicycle and pedestrian paths, called “redways,” running beside them.When the Starship robots first arrived in Milton Keynes, one of the fastest-growing cities in Britain, Liss Page thought they were cute but pointless. “The first time I met one, it was stuck on the curb outside my house,” she said.Then, in early April, she opened a letter from the National Health Service advising her not to leave the house because her asthma and other conditions made her particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus. In the weeks that followed, the robots provided a much-needed connection to the outside world.Smaller deliveries suit Ms. Page because she lives alone. A longtime vegan, she can order nut milk and margarine straight to her door. But like the grocery vans that deliver larger orders across the city, the Starship robots are ultimately limited by what is on the shelves.“You pad out the order with things you don’t really need to make the delivery charge worthwhile,” Ms. Page said. “With the last delivery, all I got were the things I didn’t really need.”Residents like Ms. Page set deliveries through a smartphone app. They typically pay a British pound (about $1.20) for each delivery, but in Milton Keynes, Starship has raised the price to as much as £2 during the busiest times so more people will shop in off hours.The robots deliver groceries to doctors, nurses and other employees of the N.H.S. for free. They even join the Thursday night tribute to the N.H.S., blinking their headlights as residents clap and cheer from their doorsteps. The fleet of 80 robots will soon expand to 100.Though this may be the most extensive deployment of delivery robots in the world, others have popped up in recent years. In Christiansburg, Va., Paul and Susie Sensmeier can arrange drugstore and bakery deliveries via flying drone. Wing, which is a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has been offering drone deliveries in the area since the fall.They can order penne pasta, marinara sauce and toilet paper. But they can’t order prescription medicines via Wing — the drones are stocked at a Wing warehouse, not at a drugstore — and like the robots in Milton Keynes, the drones can carry only so much.“I can only get two muffins or two croissants,” Susie Sensmeier, 81, said.Companies like Wing and Starship hope they can expand the reach of these services and refine their skills. Now there is new impetus.“Overnight, delivery has gone from a convenience to a vital service,” said Starship’s chief executive, Lex Bayer. “Our fleets are driving nonstop, 14 hours a day.”In Milton Keynes, Starship has gradually expanded the reach of its service, doubling its fleet and teaming up with several new grocery stores. It recently started a service in Chevy Chase, Md., not far from Washington. The company can create digital maps for the robots in days.Ms. Page, a 51-year-old business analyst who has lived in Milton Keynes for more than a quarter-century, believes the service can become a viable business.“It just seemed like a vanity project before,” she said. “The pandemic has given them a platform to launch a real business.”But as much as the pandemic has lifted start-ups like Starship, it has also hurt them. Many of the college campuses where Starship deployed its robots have shut down. Though the company has worked to shift those robots to nearby locations, it has been forced to lay off employees and contractors. Janel Steinberg, a company spokeswoman, said the cuts were “primarily about rebalancing our work force to adapt to the demand in different locations.”Nuro, a start-up in Silicon Valley, has long promised larger robots that can drive on public roads. But it has not yet deployed these robots, and like most self-driving car companies, Nuro has been forced to curtail its testing. Rather than making deliveries, its robots are shuttling supplies across an old basketball stadium in Sacramento that has been converted into a temporary hospital.Sidewalk robots and flying drones also require human help. Starship and similar companies must monitor the progress of each robot from afar, and if anything goes wrong, remote operators take over. With social distancing, that has become more difficult. Remote operators who once worked in call centers have moved into their homes.Mr. Katz’s company, Phantom Auto, is now helping companies make the transition. “This is a very, very difficult problem to solve,” Mr. Katz said. “We are in the autonomy-doesn’t-quite-work-yet business.” Read the full article