Thanks to Miranda in Salem for dropping today's story in our DMs.
Conversations about artificial intelligence took off in the media after the debut of ChatGPT this year, but AI had already had it’s virtual hands in all sorts of applications for years, from conceptual art and design to robot trash pickers, like Sorty McSortface and Sir Sorts-a-Lot.
Working all day long at 80 recycling facilities across the US, Amp Robotics’ smart sorting machines pluck contaminants from waste conveyor belts or sort various plastics into bins with the accuracy of a search engine and incredible mechanical speed
Estimates are that only 9% of all plastic in America even makes its way into recycling facilities in the first place, but AI sorting machines can pick out 80 separate items from waste streams per minute while recognizing billions of different shapes, sizes, granular specifics, colors, logos, and even SKU numbers among the garbage that would often remain hopelessly entangled.