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2001 Archive of AI in the news articles October / November / December (a subtopic of AI in the news) |
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December 31, 2001:The
name of this game is resumes -- and fun. New UW program on thinking
inside the Xbox and GameCube fills fast. By Ruth Schubert. Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
"The UW's yearlong, evening Certificate Program in Game Development
begins Jan. 10. So many people want to while away their workdays creating
ways to have fun -- and get paid an average of $61,000 a year -- that
the university had to turn away more applicants than it accepted. ...
In the second half of the program, students will learn more advanced techniques,
including artificial intelligence and special effects." December 31, 2001: Free
translation software unveils Arab views. The Associated Press / available
from CNN.com. "In October, Cairo-based Sakhr Software released its
Arabic-to-English translation software -- free for the world to use --
on the company's Arabic language Web portal at Ajeeb.com. ... 'It's the
beginning of a solution to this misunderstanding problem,' said Fahad
Al-Sharekh, chief executive of Ajeeb.com. 'This is what's going to bridge
the gap between the two civilizations.' ... In Arabic, words that have
two dozen meanings can flow in long, un-punctuated sentences. Machine
translations require artificial intelligence, Al-Sharekh said. But artificial
intelligence takes time to instill. Since the launch of its service, Ajeeb
has employed human translators to tweak the computer's renditions of popular
pages to make them understandable in English. In doing so, the artificial
intelligence engine 'learns' from the corrections. 'Over time the accuracy
increases dramatically,' Al-Sharekh said." December 31, 2001: Students
learn high-tech lessons. Shop class is out, aerodynamics, artificial
intelligence and robotics are in. By Louisa Murzyn. The Times Online.
"On a good day, Whiskers -- an example of the world of artificial
intelligence -- completes much more sophisticated tasks. The robot is
one of about a dozen components in an introductory modular technology
course. ... Seventh-graders Michael Goldsmith and Steven O'Brien of Schererville
were programming a robotics arm to maneuver a 2-inch piece of Plexiglas.
'It pretty much moves like a human arm,' Goldsmith said. 'This class offers
a new style of technology. I tell my parents about it, and they've never
heard of this stuff. They say it's good. And it helps us decide what to
do when we get older." December 30, 2001:
Claude Shannon (b. 1916) Bit Player. By James Gleick. New York Times
Magazine; page 48 (no-fee registration req'd). "Shannon is the father
of information theory, an actual science devoted to messages and signals
and communication and computing. The advent of information theory can
be pretty well pinpointed: July 1948, the Bell System Technical Journal,
his landmark paper titled simply 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication.'
... Nor did he stop playing just because he grew up. At Bell Labs, and
then as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he amused
colleagues by building juggling machines, unicycles, chess-playing computers
and robotic turtles." December 29, 2001: The
Guardian Profile -Jaron Lanier - The virtual visionary. By Oliver
Burkeman. The Guardian. "A young geek, he went to university at 14.
He dropped out to work as a musician but made his name as a pioneer of
virtual reality. A key philosopher of the computer age, he also sounds
a warning note about the limits of technology. ... But Lanier's view of
where this leads - to an enhancement of human communication, instead of
to super-intelligent computers - baffles many proponents of artificial
intelligence, Daniel Dennett among them. Is he saying, Dennett demands,
that computers with human-like intelligence - or even more - are 'something
we couldn't develop, or shouldn't develop?' Neither, says Lanier: artificial
intelligence is something we could never know, by definition, if we had
attained it. 'Despite these ridiculous tests we give our children, there
is no measure for intelligence, and treating it as an engineering goal
puts one in a very strange position,' he says." December 28, 2001: Robots
pick up the pace. By Graeme Wearden. CNET News.com. "Consumer-oriented
robots took a number of steps forward in the past year. A start-up in
England designed a robot hound that dwarfed Sony's Aibo. Sony hit back
with a new pack of robot dogs for the consumer market. Meanwhile, researchers
at universities and in the private sector made several breakthroughs in
their quest to create an intelligent humanoid." December 28, 2001: 2001:
An Inner Space Odyssey. By Joel Achenbach. Washington Post (page C01).
"Many years ago, someone made a movie about the year 2001. It was
all about space travel, artificial intelligence and a strange black monolith
that was a sentry from an alien civilization or perhaps a portal to another
universe. There was a bit of contretemps between some astronauts and a
homicidal computer. The movie was a bit scary, extremely self-indulgent
and quite beautiful. The future -- as represented by the year 2001 --
was going to be mind-blowing. And then 2001 actually happened." December 27, 2001: Sneak
Peek 2002 - Information Technology: Software. Forbes.com. "Russell
Glitman: The Bold Prediction - Enterprise software meets the MTV generation.
Web-based CRM [customer relationship management] will be a standard issue
with improved speech recognition and agent software that will presage
the era of virtual customer service agents later this decade." December 27, 2001: Year
of Living Geekily: Even the Dogs Evolved. By David Pogue. The New
York Times (no-fee registration req'd). "For all the attention given
to computers that understand human speech in sci-fi movies, it's strange
how little fanfare surrounds this category now that it's here. In any
case, both leading Windows speech-recognition programs are available in
new versions." December 24, 2001: Tech
firm gets 2nd NASA deal. By Charles E. Ramirez. The Detroit News.
"I/NET's technology -- which it calls Complex Event Recognition Architecture,
or CERA -- can analyze complex situations in hostile environments, monitor
situations and prompt operators to act or in some cases correct problems
itself. 'I/NET is doing some really interesting things with artificial
intelligence,' Peter Bonasso, an artificial intelligence and robotics
consultant at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. ... The tech firm
will use the second NASA contract to fund efforts to develop a conversational
interface for CERA so users can command the system with everyday speech.
... Will Fitzgerald, I/NET's chief technology officer, said automobile
or home appliance manufacturers could harness the technology to let people
talk to products." [A related AP story is available from New Jersey
Online - Michigan
company to help NASA keep people alive in space.] December 21, 2001: Building
The Web of Tomorrow - Creators Say 'Semantic' Web Will Be Smarter.
By Sophia Kingman. ABCNEWS.com. "The Semantic Web will not produce
computers with artificial intelligence. Semantic means 'of or relating
to meaning,' and this new Web will have content better identified so that,
for example, future search engines will be able to understand context
and discard the irrelevant. 'We're not talking about, you know, computers
taking over science or discovery or something like that. But being able
to make simple inferences,' said David Truog, principal analyst for Forrester
Research. ... 'Ontologies are nothing but names with standard meanings.
And in a world of data exchange names are incredibly important, because
you and I cannot exchange information about a thing unless we agree on
the name for the thing,' [R.V.] Guha said." December 20, 2001: Commentary - The
Deepest Reaches of Space: A down-to-the-wire screening provides a timely
opportunity to fathom the wonders of "2001." By Bill Desowitz.
Los Angeles Times. "But now that time has finally caught up with
'2001,' 33 years after its celebrated release, is it any wonder that we
view the film differently? Here in 2001, the film becomes more scorecard
than prophesy, but that in no way diminishes its significance. After all,
our place in the cosmos is still unknowable. What we do know, of course,
is that most of the scientific probability put forth in the film has become
scientific fact. We are completely computer-dependent and goal-oriented
but have only just begun perfecting artificial intelligence." December 20, 2001: Computer
crack funnier than many human jokes. By Will Knight. New Scientist.com.
"Jason Rutter, a research fellow at Manchester University, says:
'Humour is a very interesting way to look at artificial intelligence because
at some point something has to have two meanings, which is not easy to
do with a computer.'" December 20, 2001: Project
Oxygen's New Wind. By Eric S. Brown. Technology Review. "An umbrella
for more than 30 faculty members, Oxygen supports research aimed at replacing
the PC with ubiquitous - often invisible - computing machines. Projects
run a gamut from video recognition to nomadic networking to chip design.
... [Victor] Zue: 'Oxygen tries to ensure that the technology and artifacts
are human-centered by attending to their needs and wants in a way convenient
to them rather than to the computers.' ... 'Privacy is one of four interlocking
issues that we must address in a pervasive, human-centered world.'" December 20, 2001: Artificial
intelligence 2001: a disappointment? The Economist. One of [Stanley]
Kubrick's clearer preoccupations was the evolution of technology. Humans
had evolved, from dawn-of-man apes, and so had technology, from bone clubs
to sentient machines. Machines may not yet be intelligent. But they are
clearly evolving, and in a way that, more and more, seems intimately related
to the evolutionary mechanisms of life." December 19, 2001: Humans
extinct by 2040, says BT boffin. By Chris Lee. vnunet.com. "The
human race will be extinct by 2040 unless it puts serious controls on
its own technological advances, according to BT 'futurologist' Ian Pearson.
... According to Pearson, artificial intelligence (AI) will soon make
robots that are more intelligent than humans, and which will pre-empt
human actions and possibly assume control of critical assets." December 2001: Will
Spyware Work? By Kevin Hogan. Technology Review. Monitoring voice
and e-mail traffic sounds like a good way to thwart terrorism. The problem?
Sorting through the results takes too long for early warning. ... How
the actual process of data sifting works remains a mystery. ... Some experts
suspect, however, that Echelon's data processing is based on a variety
of technologies in use in the commercial world today, including speech
recognition and word pattern finding. 'Word pattern recognition is nothing
new,' says Winn Schwartau, a security consultant in Seminole, FL, and
the author of Information Warfare and Cybershock. 'We've been using that
sort of stuff for years. But if you look at how advanced the searching
abilities for the average person have become, I can only imagine the type
of stuff that government security agencies have in operation.'" December 16, 2001: Computer
to grade school test essays. By Eleanor Chute. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
"This month, pupils around Pennsylvania are taking a test that will
be graded by an expert who never needs a cup of coffee, can work for 12
hours straight without a bathroom break and can grade a written essay
in a matter of seconds. The essay tests, being taken by more than 35,000
pupils in grades five, eight and 11, are being graded by a computer that
uses artificial intelligence. ... The computers can't grade every writing
assignment, only the ones they've been 'trained' to analyze. ... In testing
computerized grading, Pennsylvania is joining a fast-growing national
trend. Artificial intelligence systems already are being used for some
graduate school admissions tests, college freshman writing placement tests
and online classroom writing exercises." December 16, 2001: Honor
Roll. The Buffalo News. "Venu Govindaraju , of Williamsville,
associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University
at Buffalo and associate director of the Center of Excellence for Document
Analysis and Recognition at UB, has received the Outstanding Young Investigator
Award from the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition,
the largest international conference in the pattern-recognition field.
... Govindaraju manages several research projects designed to improve
handwriting recognition and address interpretation for the U.S. Postal
Service. He also is involved in conducting research on digital libraries
and artificial intelligence as well as on using pattern-recognition research
in face recognition and biometric applications." December 14, 2001: Artificial
intelligence gets ready to party. By Rupert Goodwins. ZDNet UK. "A
San Diego company has created AI software that can assign gender to faces
and pick voices out of a noisy babble. And it could have serious applications
too. ... The system, called Cortronics, uses neural networks in a ring
of Pentium-based PCs to correlate inputs with memories of previous inputs,
checking for coincidences in both time and space. ... It uses this information
to recognise new occurrences of objects that contain a similar collection
of tokens, an essential part of intelligent behaviour. ... The company
says that...the technology has great potential for image recognition,
automatic customer conversational services, security and so on. December 2001: From
Your Lips to Your Printer. By James Fallows. The Atlantic. "People
within the computing industry are mainly excited about the business potential
of 'embedded' voice-recognition technology. ... You would think that the
trick to making these programs work is to speak slowly and separate each
word from its neighbor. In fact the recognition rate goes down if you
speak in an artificial way, because the analysis of each word depends
on hearing it with its neighbors. ... The more you use the program, the
better it works, because each time you correct a mistake or use a new
vocabulary word, it adjusts its 'probability' models for converting sounds
to words. ... How do the systems do it at all? " December 13, 2001: DBED invests $50,000 in local tech firm. Baltimore Business Journal. "The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development invested $50,000 in cash in Baltimore-based Agentsmith LLC, a developer of artificial intelligence software." December 13, 2001: Program
helps house-hunters. By Fiona Harvey. Financial Times. "House-buyers
may soon benefit from a new computer program that will assist them to
work out a fair price for their purchase. Researchers at the University
of Glamorgan in south Wales are working on a program that uses artificial
intelligence to forecast house prices and advise buyers on the affordability
of their prospective home. ... The software will use neural networks,
computer programming techniques that mimic the working of the human brain,
to find patterns in these data and thus to make forecasts about house
prices that should turn out to be more accurate than existing forecasting
methods." December 13, 2001: Interactive
TV and privacy might not mix. Geek.com. "What Predictive Networks
brings to the table is 'personalization software,' which collects user
behavior and viewing choices to create a 'Digital Silhouette.' Digital
Silhouettes are 'highly characterized behavior models' determined by 'a
unique, patent-pending artificial intelligence process.'" December 13, 2001: Encyclopaedia
Britannica Publishes Revised Printing - Thousands of Articles Revised
for First New Printed Set in Four Years. PRNewswire / available from Yahoo.
"Citing a strong demand for its printed products in the midst of
the digital age, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. today announced that it
has published a revised printing of its famous 32-volume encyclopedia,
the first revision of the printed set since 1998. ... Many of the new
articles in the encyclopedia are comprehensive treatments written by the
leading authorities in their fields. ... 'Artificial Intelligence,' by
B.J. Copeland, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand." December 12, 2001: Academic
Web network to be expanded. By Jeff Smith. Rocky Mountain News. "Qwest
Communications International Inc. plans to invest $300 million worth of
equipment and services over the next two years to quadruple the capacity
of an Internet network connecting more than 190 universities, including
the University of Colorado and Colorado State University. The so-called
Abilene Internet2 network, launched in 1998 at a White House briefing,
helps universities and research centers create and test data and video
applications in fields such as cancer research, artificial intelligence,
robotics and earthquake detection." December 9, 2001:
Now the virtual valuation... Lenders are moving to speed up sales,
says Graham Norwood. The Observer / Guardian Unlimited. "According
to Countrywide, 'state of the art artificial intelligence systems' will
use the database to make automated decisions on loans, and to offer 'virtual
valuations' based on comparable sale information of similar properties
under the same postcode or in nearby locations. 'As the UK government
pursues reform and new initiatives aimed at making the home buying process
faster and more consumer-friendly, UK Valuation will play a significant
role in providing faster solutions,' claims its new chief executive, Mark
Witherspoon." December 9, 2001: Software
helps maritime pilots make more accurate decisions. By William McCall.
Associated Press / available from the Modesto Bee. "Loading extra
cargo worth millions of dollars can come down to drawing just a few extra
inches of draft on a big ship, a decision that maritime pilots can now
make with room to spare using software originally written to detect credit
card fraud. The Physical Oceanographic Real-Time System, or PORTS, also
is helping the shipping industry improve navigation safety and avoid costly
spills that could damage the environment. ... The PORTS system is a practical
application of AI - something generally associated with futuristic robots
rather than fraud prevention or shipping navigation, said Richard Barfus,
chief executive and co-founder of MindBox." December 9, 2001: New
crop of scholars selected - Rhodes scholarships. By Josh L. Dickey.
Associated Press / available from the Houston Chronicle. "Another
Duke grad, Alexis Blane, 21, of Charlotte, said her two main interests
are poetry and neuroscience. An English major who has studied contemporary
American poetry and fiction, Blane runs the campus literary magazine and
helped launch The Duke Mind, a journal that uses molecular science, artificial
intelligence, philosophy and religion to study the question of whether
the mind and brain are the same or separate." December 9, 2001: The
Game That Plays You. By John Hodgman. The New York Times. "Last
spring, an unusual game appeared on the Web - though 'game' isn't quite
the right word. ... The untitled, unannounced creation was intended as
a promotion for Steven Spielberg's film 'A.I.: Artificial Intelligence,'
and though its success as a promotional tool is debatable - its very existence
was a secret, even from many who were working on it - as an interactive
game, it broke new ground." December 6, 2001: two articles from the Economist Technology Quarterly:
>>> Customer Service & E-Commerce, Natural Language, Speech, Interfaces, Transportation December 6, 2001: Using
Interactive Play to Explore How We Think. By Alex Pham. Los Angeles
Times. "Without advancements in artificial intelligence, or AI, enemies
in action games couldn't dodge or shoot back. Opponent teams in football
games would call the same play over and over. Populating games with realistic
computer-controlled characters is a critical component of fun." The
article ends with an interview with Professor John E. Laird of the University
of Michigan about why "computer and video games are perfect laboratories
for artificial intelligence research" in which Professor Laird reveals:
"My secret plan is to try to get more people in the AI community
to use games as a research tool and, in turn, elevate the level of AI
in games. This is an interesting marriage that can lead us to understand
what intelligence is all about." December 4, 2001: AI
to reach human levels in 20 years. silicon.com "Artificial intelligence
will reach human levels by 2020, according to science fiction writer Arthur
C. Clarke." December 4, 2001: Cyc-ed
Up for Open Source. IT-Director.com "Cyc is about as close to
true artificial Intelligence that you can get and has, typically, been
living off Defence Department contracts for several years. Both the Feds
and the company are mute on the nature of the research but have admitted
to its being in the area of anti-terrorism. ... Lenat's vision hinges
on this statement: 'If we can write down knowledge and wisdom and rules
of thumb for the computer to follow and use, it can apply rules of reasoning
to the knowledge that we give it and produce the same kinds of conclusions.'" December 3, 2001: It's
nice to be treated like a (computer) idiot. By Rachel Ross. thestar.com
(Toronto Star). "[A]tiny Toronto company called WiseUncle, has developed
software to be your trusted shopping adviser for computer purchases. ...
What I didn't know, until [Darrin] Rowsell told me, is that my experience
with WiseUncle's software is different from everyone else's. I wondered
why I was only presented with one question at a time, and apparently that's
intentional too. The questions change with the answers. If you're a first-time
computer buyer, you probably aren't interested in setting up a home network.
So there's really no need to ask if you want to buy networking hardware.
But more importantly, WiseUncle's software changes the way it asks the
questions. The stupider you say you are, the more the descriptive the
questions." December 3, 2001: Notes
from a New World. By Rodes Fishburne. Forbes ASAP. "Since September
11th our metaphors have changed. We have returned to thinking about situations
in terms of people instead of technology. Debates on the importance of
faster computer chips, artificial intelligence, and Napster are not at
the forefront of the national dialog anymore. We know that no computer
is capable of making a heroic rush down the aisle of a hijacked airliner." December 3, 2001: CMU's
digital archive puts the papers of prominent people online. Procedure
preserves originals. By Byron Spice. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Carnegie
Mellon also has digitized the papers of artificial intelligence pioneer
Allen Newell, who died in 1992, and has begun to publish those of his
close colleague, Herbert A. Simon, who died early this year. Last month,
the library passed the milestone of 1 million archival pages published
-- the millionth page being a handwritten note by Simon detailing his
1978 trip to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize for economics." December 3, 2001: Students
assemble their own robots - out of lots of Legos. Plymouth event stirs
creativity. By Fran Riley. Boston Globe. "Lauren Maloney got hooked
two years ago in fourth grade at an elementary school pep rally - not
on a sport, on the robotics team. 'The thought of using little Lego pieces
to build a robot was really cool. I knew I wanted to be a part of it,'
the 12-year-old recalled. ... 'This particular kind of program is an exemplary
model of an activity combining technology and engineering components of
the Massachusetts curriculum framework,' said Nick Micozzi, the K-12 science
coordinator for the Plymouth school system." December 2, 2001: Pupils
put robots through paces. By Anita Srikameswaran. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
"More than 600 middle-schoolers from Pennsylvania, New York, New
Jersey and Maryland showed off their designing and programming skills
yesterday in the FIRST Lego League competition at Carnegie Mellon University's
National Robotics Engineering Consortium in Lawrenceville. ... Some competitors,
such as 14-year-old Sergio Hill, a sophomore at Allderdice High School,
did not start out as programmer wannabees. 'I really didn't like computers'
and hoped to be a professional athlete, he said. Now Sergio's thinking
about engineering. 'I like the way you build the robots and that you can
make it do things that you want it to do.'" December 2, 2001: A
Furby's burbles, a kid's heartstrings. By Martha Woodall. Knight Ridder
Newspapers / avaiable from The Record. "Does your child truly love
her Furby? Should she?... Now [Sherry Turkle] is examining how children
and others are being affected by digital pets.... 'This is a new direction
for the old field of artificial intelligence,' Turkle said. 'It is now
not just trying to make machines with certain kinds of intelligence, but
to make machines that, even if they don't have a lot of smarts ... make
us feel something. I call these things 'relational artifacts.'" December 1, 2001: Another
Step Closer to Artificial Intelligence. DW-WORLD.DE. "This year's
prestigious German Future Prize has been awarded to the inventor of an
electronic translating device which brings humanity one step closer to
the concept of Artificial Intelligence. ... [Professor Wolfgang] Wahlster
developed the 'Verbmobile'. This is essentially a computer that translates
between German, English and Japanese." December 2001 issue date: Long-Distance
Robots. The technology of telepresence makes the world even smaller.
By Mark Alpert. Scientific American. "A week after the World Trade
Center disaster, I drove from New York City to Somerville, Mass., to visit
the offices of iRobot, one of the country's leading robotics companies.
... [I]t seemed quite clear that traveling across the U.S., whether for
business or for pleasure, would be more arduous and anxiety-provoking
from now on. Coincidentally, this issue was related to the purpose of
my trip: I was evaluating a new kind of robot that could allow a travel-weary
executive to visit any office in the world without ever leaving his or
her own desk.The technology is called telepresence.... With the help of
artificial-intelligence software and various sensors, telepresence robots
can roam down hallways without bumping into walls and even climb flights
of stairs." November 29, 2001: 'Futureland'
full of violence, sex and 'Macrosoft.' By Barry Reddy. Jam Books /
Canoe. "In 'Little Brother', one of the interwoven short stories
that make up Walter Mosley's provocative new anthology, 'Futureland',
a man is manipulated into committing murder and left to the mercy of an
automated justice system. His tragically ironic sentence? Sublimation
into the grotesque collective of dead brains that comprise the 'artificial
intelligence' of the computerized justice system." November 28, 2001: Don't
swat that bug! It could be one of season's top tech gifts. By Kevin
Maney. USA Today. "All this time, we've worried about getting wiped
out by nuclear war or bioterrorism. But here, out in time for Christmas,
is the real threat to mankind: artificial intelligence cockroaches. There
are four B.I.O. (for biomechanical integrated organism) Bugs. Each looks
roughly like a roach, perhaps crossed with a Japanese beetle. They have
software and circuitry that allows them to move independently, feeling
their way using antennae." November 28, 2001: Software
sorts video soundtracks. By Chhavi Sachdev. Technology Research News.
"The theme music for the nightly news and the newscaster's voice
sound inherently different to us, but distinguishing between the two is
not an easy trick to teach a computer. ... Classifying sound as noise,
speech, or music is an important key to coding audio data, said Hong-Jian
Zhang, a senior researcher and assistant managing director at Microsoft
Research in China. 'Audio segmentation and classification is [the] first
step in audio content analysis and content-based [searching] in large
audio or music databases,' he said. It can also help group together segments
of speech by a particular person." November 27, 2001: Robots
Learn Soccer (and the Game of Life). By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee. The
New York Times (no-fee registration required). "The players are all
robots. And while Dr. [Tucker] Balch, a robotics researcher at the Georgia
Institute of Technology in Atlanta, sees no great future for robotic soccer
stars, his experiments could provide surprising insights into the workings
of human society. ... Robots on a control team are able to pass the ball,
defend and attack from the starting whistle; the test team must learn
by trial and error as the game progresses. And it turns out that the test
team behaves much differently depending on whether its members are rewarded
as individuals or as a group." November 27, 2001: A radio
interview from CIO Radio.
"Dr. Noreen Herzfeld, associate professor in computer science and
doctor of theology at St. John's University, talks about why there is
so much interest in creating artificial intelligence." November 27, 2001: Halo.
Reviewed by Alex Karls for Gamezilla! Online Magazine. "Halo is the
amazing new title for the Xbox, a First Person Shooter (FPS) that has
been anticipated for quite some time. ... Although you can rave about
Halo's amazing visuals, its rapacious enemies, or the realistic physics
modeling, kudos must be given to Bungie for the work they did on the AI
in this game. ... All together, these elements make your enemies and allies
respond more realistically than I've ever seen elsewhere." November 27, 2001: Taking
another look at artificial intelligence. Documentary tonight on PBS
examines HAL's legacy of a human-like computer system. By Lisa Coon. Peoria
Journal Star. "Michael O'Connell, 38, of San Francisco and formerly
of Morton (his parents, Tom and Dee still live there), serves as senior
producer and editor of the 60-minute TV version and a 90-minute version
with more technical detail that will be in limited educational distribution.
... 'But the most impressive thing was Kismet. It's a robot with emotional
models, so it has an internal state, needs, and if those needs are not
met or it feels threatened, it expresses those kinds of emotions,' O'Connell
said. 'If you get too close it looks startled and looks away. It appears
to be happy, it smiles . . . it's very seamless. You kind of get fooled
into believing.' The one thing O'Connell took with him from the experience
was the renewed understanding of how amazing humans are and what they
do every day." November 26, 2001: "HAL's
Legacy" examines state of artificial intelligence. By Peter Delevett.
Mercury News. "But though the year 2001 is nearly over, ultra-smart
computers that can talk, think and kill even better than humans are still
a long way off. How far off? That's the question mulled in a new documentary,
'2001: HAL's Legacy,' that debuts at 11 tonight on PBS. 'There are some
areas where we've met and surpassed the technology,' says David Stork,
a Menlo Park scientist who wrote and narrated the documentary." November 26, 2001: Intelligence
Relative, Study Says. By Geoff Brumfiel. Wired News. "Since the
mid-1950s, computer scientists have been trying to design computer systems
that resemble the human brain. Called neural networks, these systems consist
of simple processing elements that are highly interconnected. ... But
can neural networks really describe how the brain works? Not without a
little Darwinian competition, claim Per Bak and Joseph Wakeling of Imperial
College in London. ... The idea that intelligence depends upon environment
is nothing new, explains Jerry Feldman of the International Computer Science
Institute in Berkley, California. For over fifty years, the idea of 'embodied'
intelligence -- intelligence defined through its surroundings -- has been
discussed amongst AI researchers, he said." November 24, 2001: Drones
taking pilots' seats. Skill applied from remote computer. Jim Krane.
Associated Press / available from the Casa Grande Valley Newspaper. "Military
experts say advances in sensors, communications, imaging and artificial
intelligence will soon allow pilot-less aircraft to do everything a manned
aircraft can, at a fraction of the cost and without risking pilots' lives.
... Although the Pentagon plans to purchase up to 3,000 of its next-generation
fighter, Lockheed's Joint Strike Fighter, [Glenn] Buchan said RAND found
'no compelling reason to have humans on board' certain military aircraft
- and often good reason to replace a human with a machine. 'It's not clear
that the human's adding anything, and his biological shortcomings limit
the capabilities of the aircraft," he said.'"
November 23, 2001: War
games - Military training goes high-tech. By Daniel Sieberg. CNN.
"It's all part of an elaborate high-tech simulator called Mission
Rehearsal Exercise (MRE), being developed by a contractor for the U.S.
military to help train soldiers heading for combat, peacekeeping and humanitarian
missions. It reflects a larger Pentagon mandate to use technology to train
the video game generation now entering the service. ... The military is
so convinced that technology will enhance its training methods that more
than $45 million may be spent on the [Institute of Creative Technologies]
project between 2000 and 2005. ... The machine also uses voice-recognition
technology and different languages to allow participants to converse with
the characters they encounter. Researchers have spent considerable time
trying to make this artificial intelligence respond in unpredictable ways
so the experience is slightly different each time the system is used." November 23, 2001: Star
Trek Tech Is Not So Bold. By Erik Baard. Wired News. "What kinds
of robots would roboticists like to see on the Starfleet flagship? 'Well,
that is a big question,' writes Greg Armstrong, a roboticist at Carnegie
Mellon University. 'What job on the ship needs to be done that no one
likes doing?' ... 'Robot pets are a current fad, but they would work well
in a closed environment like a space ship,' argued Armstrong. 'They would
provide companionship like normal pets, without putting undue stress on
the environmental system.'" November 20, 2001: Now
Anyone Can Make a Discovery. By Tariq Malik. SCIENCE.com. "Astronomy's
next great discovery may be found not by telescope, but instead with little
more than a laptop computer, an Internet connection and a learned and
persistent amateur. In fact, astronomers are already pulling new findings
from old data, the start of what some say is a looming change in how science
gets done. ... Even some professional
coaches in the National Basketball Association have taken to data-mining.
They use a computer program called Advanced Scout to study the statistics
and performances of opposing teams in order to develop more effective
strategies in future games." November 20, 2001:
Biometrics
and the new security age. By Ursula Owre Masterson.
MSNBC. "Even before September's terrorist attacks put the nation
on edge, a controversial new security and surveillance technology known
as biometrics was emerging." November 20, 2001: Tracking
money trails with technology. By Sandeep Junnarkar. CNET News.com
. "While it may be impossible to spot all questionable financial
activity, smaller measures can be taken to assist banks in mining financial
data, according to Konrad Feldman, the chief executive of Searchspace,
a company backed by HSBC Bank that develops and uses artificial-intelligence
software. ... CNET News.com recently talked to Feldman about the pitfalls
and strengths of technology in the investigation and about the accompanying
concerns regarding consumer privacy." November 20, 2001: Palm
inventor pushes theory of brain. Handspring's Hawkins puts money,
mind behind radical idea. By Pui-Wing Tam. The Wall Street Journal / available
from MSNBC. "In its simplest form, [Jeff] Hawkins' hypothesis is
that the brain works by anticipating and completing patterns more than
it does through inputs and outputs of information, a commonly accepted
theory. ... For years, there has been no standard to pull brain research
together, says [Christof] Koch. Proponents of artificial intelligence,
on one hand, figure brains work like computers: If you input one bit of
information, then another bit would come out the other end. Other scientists
have focused on research into narrower areas such as neurons, the brain
and nerve cells that transmit messages. But while 'we know a gigantic
number of facts, we don't have an overarching theory' of how the mind
works, says Koch. 'If we have a common framework, we can make better predictions
about the brain.' Hawkins thinks his theory could be the unifying standard." November 19, 2001: Experts
differ on training on computers for tots. How much should mouse and
keyboard be part of the lives of 3-year-olds? BY Chris Cobbs. Orlando
Sentinel / available from The Akron Beacon Journal. "However, there's
a lively debate among early childhood education experts on the merits
of plugging 3-year-olds into PCs when they're barely potty trained. I''s
rare to find a youngster who hasn't perched on a parent's lap in front
of a colorful screen, or experimented with a playmate's Gameboy or Nintendo.
The larger issue, experts say, is whether the mind of a kindergarten pupil
is more stimulated by artificial intelligence or a caring teacher. ...
The disagreement among educators centers on how soon is too soon to integrate
computers into the curriculum --and whether the PC may actually have a
negative impact on young minds." November 2001: Looking Alive -The objects around us are becoming more and more like living things. By Thomas Hine. The Atlantic. "In recent years, though, our culture's metaphors about biology and technology have been reversed. Rather than thinking about our bodies in terms of mechanics, we are now encouraged to think about technology as if it were a form of biology. ... IBM made front-page news when it announced plans to develop 'self-healing' computers, which will analyze their own malfunctions, repair them, and keep working while doing so. ... When metaphors change, it usually means that reality has done so already." November 16, 2001: Scientists invent electronic DJ. BBC News. "Dave Cliff, a scientist at HP in Bristol and part-time disc jockey, invented the hpDJ. He said: 'I muck around as a DJ in my spare time and realized that a lot of the techniques used in artificial intelligence could be used to automate what DJs do.'" Also see the related articles that follow below -> November 16, 2001: AI
is a DJ. By Rene Millman. vnunet.com. "Fatboy Slim and Pete Tong
could soon find themselves out of a job if boffins at Hewlett Packard
have their way. Scientists at HP's research facility in Bristol say they
have invented the world's first artificially intelligent disc jockey.
It is able to react to the moods of clubbers, and create and change music
as the night goes on." November 16, 2001: War
Games - The Military Uses Its Combat Simulators for Afghanistan Training.
ABCNEWS.com. "It's the Big Daddy of combat simulation: the Army's
Simulation, Training and Instrumentation Command, known as STRICOM. Video
game developers might spend millions of dollars on a single title, but
the STRICOM budget is a whopping $1 billion a year. ... 'Our soldiers
are virtual veterans before they even go into conflict,' said Mike Macedonia,
STRICOM's chief scientist. ... Each of the enemy 'fighters' is programmed
with artificial intelligence to react to offensive fire. 'If you shoot
at them, they're going to take evasive action,' said Lt. Col. Fran Fierko,
who runs ground combat training at STRICOM." November 16, 2001: New
Gadgets Emphasize Mobility. By the Associated Press / available from
The New York Times (no-fee registration required). "With the Sept.
11 attacks, security-related products were especially big draws. Besides
the latest in antivirus, firewall and encryption software to protect personal
or corporate data, there were plenty of products incorporating biometrics.
The technology -- used to identify individual physical characteristics,
such as a face, fingerprint or iris -- had plenty of booth-stopping appeal. November 15, 2001: Nobel
Prize winner hopes profiles of scientists inspire kids. By Jim Ritter.
Chicago Sun-Times. "When Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman
was a boy, he was so inspired by a single book that he decided to dedicate
his life to science. ... Lederman said he hopes to turn the next generation
on to science with a new book.... Portraits of Great American Scientists
was written by the whiz kids at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
in Aurora. ... 'Scientists say the darndest things to high school students,'
Margaret Geller, of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, wrote in
a blurb. For example, student Margaret Anderson reports several provocative
opinions from her subject, artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky.
Minsky said he doesn't find books very useful because they can't be searched,
that he wishes science journals would disappear because they limit the
flow of ideas, and that he thinks history is bunk." November 15, 2001: Text
Summarization Software. Content-wire.com. "ViewSum can reduce
reams of text into a few sentences and is particularly popular with busy
executives.... ViewSum uses artificial intelligence to skim any piece
of text to identify what it considers to be the 'essence' of the article.
... Put to the test on Churchill's 3,414-word 'We Shall Defend Our Island'
speech ViewSum produced just 53 words...." November 15, 2001: Face
It, Face-Cams Are Here to Stay. By Jane Black. BusinessWeek Online.
"The utility of facial-recognition technology is an important debate." November 15, 2001: Computer
history - It all started with pies. The routine use of computers in
business is 50 years old this week. The Economist. "'Is this the
first step in an accounting revolution, or merely an interesting and expensive
experiment?' asked The Economist in an article devoted
to the world's first business computer, nearly 50 years ago. The machine,
the Lyons Electronic Office (LEO), was built by Lyons, a British catering
company. On November 17th 1951, it ran a program to evaluate the costs,
prices and margins for that week's output of bread, cakes and pies, and
ran the same program each week thereafter.... And one big question remains
unanswered. 'Might computers not have a valuable contribution to make
in improving business efficiency?' asked our 1954 article on LEO. The
jury is still out on that one."
November 14, 2001: Computer
DJ uses biofeedback to pick tracks. By Duncan Graham-Rowe. New Scientist.
"So how does it work? The HPDJ uses a 'genetic algorithm', a type
of program inspired by evolution. It uses a survival-of-the-fittest approach
to create new and better tunes. In the case of the HPDJ, the different
tracks are the 'genes', and the inputs from the dancers are the 'fitness'
factors, essentially deciding whether or not particular combinations of
genes survive."
November 14, 2001: Promise
of touch technologies. BBC News. "Haptics, from the Greek verb
meaning 'to touch,' is the science of incorporating the sense of feel
into computer interfaces. The technology works by providing digital information
about shapes and textures which allows people to feel as if they were
handling them directly. ... When the scalpel is close to vital tissues,
such as arteries or the heart, the Smart-Tool would sense them and push
back against the surgeon's hand. This is only one use for the technology.
Advances in haptics could allow blind people to feel objects that others
can see, or allow visitors to a museum website to feel the shape and texture
of an ancient object." November 14, 2001: The
Web's Next Incarnation - Intelligent Talk. By Tim McDonald. NewsFactor
Network. "The Semantic Web hopes to make our Web experience better
by enabling our machines to talk intelligently with other machines. It
would be an extension of the current Web, a place where 'information is
given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work
in cooperation,' according to [Tim] Berners-Lee. ... According to the
W3C, computers must have access to 'structured collections of information
and sets of inference rules that they can use to conduct automated reasoning.'
Artificial intelligence experts have studied this field for decades. Such
systems are often called 'knowledge representation,' and have traditionally
been very centralized --where everyone shares exactly the same definition
of specific words, like 'head' or 'director.' November 14, 2001: Evolution
optimizes satellite orbits. By Kimberly Patch. Technology Research
News. "The researchers found a more efficient orbit using a type
of genetic algorithm that can handle two objectives. Genetic algorithms
are based on the Darwinian model of natural selection, or survival of
the fittest. ... The genetic algorithm mixed the chromosomes of the most
fit individual constellations to make a new generation of constellations,
and the fittest ones went on to produce new generations. ... The researchers
ran the satellite algorithm for 200 generations in order to generate large
numbers of solutions mapping the trade-offs in minimizing the two types
of gaps." November 13, 2001: The
New Future. By Donna L. Dubinsky. Fortune. "Once upon a time
we committed ourselves to putting a man on the moon. What kind of similar
commitment should we make now? What's the 'moon shot' of the 21st century?
... I consulted my partner, Jeff Hawkins, and offer his objective: to
solve the mystery of how the brain works, and apply that knowledge for
the betterment of mankind. It is surprising how little is known about
the functions of the brain. While there has been much work in neuroscience,
neurobiology, and artificial intelligence, there has yet to be a well-understood
and universally recognized theory for intelligence. Once we understand
the brain better, we will be able to design and build truly intelligent
machines that can leverage the human brain, and derive great benefits
for mankind." November 13, 2001: Clarke
to Comdex - 'Travel by Wire'. By Daniel Sieberg. CNN. "Clarke:
Well, by strange coincidence, only today I received this videocassette,
'2001: HAL's Legacy,' that's being put out by Inca Productions. It describes
what HAL did in the film and all the various stages we have to go through
-- voice recognition, visual recognition, speech synthesis -- and how
far we've got (to go before we achieve an artificial intelligence of the
sophistication of the Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer, or
HAL 9000). And it looks as though by 2020 we will have HAL. Welcome, HAL!
" November 13, 2001: Virtual
Keyboard Replicates Real Typing. By Lou Hirsh. TechExtreme. "Senseboard
Technologies, based in Stockholm, Sweden, says its Virtual Keyboard uses
sensor technology and artificial intelligence to let users work on any
surface as if it were a keyboard. The device detects movement when fingers
are pressed down. Those movements are measured and the device accurately
determines the intended keystrokes and translates them into text, according
to Senseboard. ... Senseboard Technologies developed the product with
assistance from two Swedish schools, Uppsala University and Malardalen
University." November 13, 2001: Bots
Not a Bra-Burning Issue. By Katie Dean. Wired News. "At the latest
BattleBot tournament, which ran through Sunday here, the first all-women's
collegiate team from the University of Tulsa competed in the superheavyweight
division with their spinner bot, Hurricane. ... After the San Francisco
competition, the Tulsa team plans to tour local schools with Hurricane
to encourage kids to pursue math and science. ... 'There's a lot of misconception
that this is a destruction-based event,' [Amy] Sun said. 'When you actually
come and see what's possible with everyday equipment, it highlights how
difficult engineering is and how wonderful and complex it is.' 'It's a
giant collection of really difficult puzzles and problem-solving.'" November 13, 2001: Robot
dog learns its first words. BBC News. "'The main thing that we
have found, which of course any mother would be able to tell us, is that
you need a lot of social interaction,' said Luc Steels, of the Sony Computer
Research Laboratory in Paris, France, and director of the Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory, at Vrije University, Brussels. ... 'For us, the most important
part is to do experiments to learn more about learning.'" November 12, 2001: Robots
That Repair Roads. By Jenn Shreve. Wired News. "For a highway
maintenance worker, sealing cracks along the freeway is a lot like walking
a tightrope without a net. Introduce a drunk driver or a flying chunk
of debris, and a workaday job becomes a fatality statistic. A robot, on
the other hand, knows no fear and works tirelessly and quickly: A day's
worth of sealing cracks in the road can be finished in an hour." November 12, 2001: Robots: It's
An Art Thing. By Brad King. Wired News., "'The cloning gave me
the idea that if you can manipulate an egg with machinery, at what point
does that egg become a machine and what is the definition of machines?'
said Solterbeck. While the idea of mechanized devices had been around
long before the 20th century, the term robot came from Czechoslovakian
playwright Karel Capek's 1921 play, Rossum's Universal Robots. In the
play, mechanical slaves rebel against their human masters." November 12, 2001: Planes
That Know What to Bomb. Smart robotic jet fighters may be delivered
by 2008. By Stanley Holmes. BusinessWeek Online. "By the end of the
decade, the military could be sending the first true robotic warplanes
into battle. These autonomous weapons-on-wings would sniff out hidden
enemy air defenses before human-piloted fighters or bombers ventured into
enemy airspace, deliver up to 3,000 pounds of smart bombs and missiles,
and even take on enemy fighter jets. Called unmanned combat air vehicles,
or UCAVs, their presence is likely to redefine the role of warplanes--and
even warfare itself--by giving machines more responsibility for attacking
enemy targets." November 11, 2001: Inventions of the Year -- The Best Inventions of 2001. A special feature from TIME.com. Here are just two of their picks:
>>> Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Applications November 11, 2001: Can
computers be creative? By BBC Click Online's Ben Silburn in California.
"Creativity is one of those things which humans believe make us so
special. But could there ever be a day when computers are composers, theoretical
physicists, or artists? ... Harold Cohen has spent his whole career designing
a program called Aaron which creates original works of art. 'We've barely
scratched the surface of machine intelligence,' says Mr Cohen. ... Working
in a similar field, Viennese researchers are teaching a computer to play
like a human pianist, finding patterns in the performance of real pianists." November 8, 2001: Seeking
Ancient Life? Ask the Robot Where to Trowel. By Anne Eisenberg. The
New York Times (no-fee registration required). "Drawing on a five-year,
$2 million grant recently awarded by the National Science Foundation,
Dr. Meskell and other Columbia scholars hope to bring digital archaeology
to the desert, including a robot equipped with remote-sensing equipment.
... The participants hope to create a variety of computer-based aids,
including image- processing software and easily searched databases, that
archaeologists can use to visualize, model or analyze the structures or
sites they are investigating." November 7, 2001: Tougher
times call for a tougher robodog. Reuters / available from USAToday.
"[T]he newest incarnation of Aibo, unveiled Wednesday by Japan's
consumer electronics giant Sony, is designed with more virtual male hormone
running through its circuitry than the playful robotic pups that sold
out when they first went on the market in 1999. ... New Sony Memory Stick
software, sold separately, will give the Aibo 200 series the ability to
recognize more voice commands than predecessors (75 instead of 50) and
take .JPEG format pictures when it's in 'surveillance mode.'" November 7, 2001: On
the horizon - robots that see. By David Hellaby. ZDNet Australia.
"Researchers from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, have
developed a smart image sensor that may provide the base technology for
the development of artificial eyes. ... Faculty Dean, Professor Barry
Harrison, said ... 'We have built upon this foundation and developed a
technology that could be used for technologies such as intelligent robotic
systems that need to be able to identify objects for navigation.'" November 5, 2001: Certify
your gaming smarts. An entry in Katie Dean's education notebook at
Wired News. "The University of Washington will offer a certificate
in game development this winter. ... Students will learn about gaming
culture and lingo, and study character development and scenarios. They
will work with tools such as game engines and experiment with artificial
intelligence." November 5, 2001: A
Novel Tool Unfolds for Protein Research. Edited by Otis Port. BusinessWeek
Online. "A team at Pennsylvania State University, led by physicist
Jayanth R. Banavar, has developed a so-called neural network system that
does a better job of predicting protein structure by mimicking the brain's
circuitry." November 5, 2001: AI
in Austin. By Jerry Mahoney. Austin American-Statesman. "Cyc
is far from the kind of artificial intelligence displayed by HAL in '2001:
A Space Odyssey' or in Steven Speilberg's movie 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence.'
Instead, it's an intuitive software agent that applies computer logic
to a user's preferences and priorities. With that information, Cyc could
personalize software applications and make them more efficient and user-friendly.
... 'MCC researchers started by lifting pairs of sentences at random from
newspapers, encyclopedias and magazine articles,' author Daniel Crevier
wrote in 'AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence.'
'They then programmed into Cyc the basic concepts inherent in each sentence,
so that the program could understand their meanings.' Lenat soon needed
more than skilled software developers. More than one-fourth of the company's
70 employees have degrees in philosophy." November 2, 2001: The
Sims Take on Al Qaeda. By Karen Kaplan. Los Angeles Times / also
available from The Salt Lake Tribune (11/4/01). "In the new war
against terrorism, with its infinite possibilities for unpredictable violence,
the military is attempting to understand jihad through the infinitely
patient and dogged computer. 'Interesting things happen,' said Michael
Zyda, who is leading the Navy's simulation project here, 'things you didn't
expect.' ... The new breed of virtual war game is attempting to push into
that unexplored terrain, drawing from a burgeoning field of artificial
intelligence known as 'agent technology.' The goal is to create a framework
flexible enough to probe the possibilities for attacks in any setting.
... The terrorist simulations are similar to the popular computer game
'The Sims,' in which players create their own digital worlds and populate
them with autonomous characters that roam about and grow, often with surprising
results." November 2, 2001: Dow
Theory Downer. By Peter Brimelow, Forbes.com. "Three finance
professors, two at Yale and one at NYU, have recently used Artificial
Intelligence software -- specifically, a neural network -- to take all
of Hamilton's original WSJ editorials and define the precise patterns
that Hamilton said presage rallies and declines. They then used this neural
net to time the market from 1930 until today." November 2, 2001: Robot
Dog 'Bugs' Inventor. By Jeffrey Benner. Wired News. "A mechanical
bug toy is fighting a robotic dog for more than just space under the Christmas
tree this year. The two toys represent rival schools of thought vying
for supremacy in the quest for artificial intelligence. ... Enter the
upstart B.I.O. Mechanical Bugs from Hasbro, which hit toy stores in September
and sell for $40. ... 'They're wired to learn,' [Christopher] Byrne said.
'You can put it in a box, and it can be stymied, then learn to climb out,
and it will remember the next time.' ... Despite the rivalry between traditional
and behavior-based robots, experts agree that, ultimately, the robots
of the future will be a combination of the concepts underlying the B.I.O.
bugs and the Aibo." November 2001: A
Smarter Web. By Mark Frauenfelder. Technology Review. "The Web
is huge but not very smart. Computer scientists are beginning to build
a 'Semantic Web' that understands the meanings that underlie the tangle
of information. ... It's an enormous undertaking. The first step is to
establish standards that allow users to add explicit descriptive tags,
or metadata, to Web content-- making it easy to pinpoint exactly what
you're looking for. Next comes developing methods that enable different
programs to relate and share metadata from different Web sites." November 1, 2001: In
the Face of Terror Recognition Technology Spreads Quickly. By Robert
O'Harrow Jr.. Washington Post. "The biometrics industry is expected
to grow from about $200 million in revenue this year to about $2 billion
in 2004, said Brian Ruttenbur, an equity analyst at Morgan Keegan & Co.
Face-recognition systems could sell for as much as $2 million each at
scores of airports, said Richard Ryan, an analyst at Dougherty & Co. ...
The systems work in different ways, but the general idea is the same.
The Visionics system, for instance, creates a digital map of an individual's
face, translating the contours into mathematical formulas that the company
says are nearly as distinguishing as a fingerprint. The software then
compares faces captured by a video camera against images stored in a database." November 1, 2001: Can
face recognition keep airports safe? By Stefanie Olsen and Robert
Lemos. CNET News.com. "As U.S. airports begin installing face-recognition
systems to thwart terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, civil
rights activists are rushing to decry the technology as ineffective and
invasive. ... Biometrics is the digital analysis using cameras or scanners
of biological characteristics such as facial structure, fingerprints and
iris patterns to match profiles to databases of people such as suspected
terrorists. ... Takeo Kanade, a professor of computer science and robotics
at Carnegie Mellon University, agreed -- to an extent -- with the ACLU's
evaluation of facial recognition. ... Yet, Kanade said he believed face
recognition could make it easier to ensure airport security. 'The system
can be used as a screening method,' he said. 'If the police have to look
at 10,000 people rather than 1 million people, then it is worth it.'" November 1, 2001: E-Nose
Knows: Technology 'Smells' Bacteria. By Lou Hirsh. TechExtreme. "Sometime
in the foreseeable future, you will not have to find a human guinea pig
to taste that old carton of milk and find out if it has gone bad. Technology
in the form of a 'smart refrigerator' could do the job for you. That could
be just one of the results of work being done by researchers at the Illinois
Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago, who are testing several prototypes
of what has been dubbed the 'Electronic Nose.' ... [Professor Joseph]
Stetter told TechExtreme that the computer software contains hundreds
of odor 'fingerprints' representing distinct patterns that different bacteria
create when they excrete waste into the bloodstream. These chemical signatures
are examined by artificial intelligence, similar to code decryption programs
that sort through numerous combinations to find a match." November 1, 2001: Games
set sights on the future. By David Jamieson. BBC News. "One certainty
is continuing improvement in desktop computer technology. Top-end graphics
cards now have double the memory they did a year ago, processing chips
have broken the two gigahertz barrier, while motherboards and RAM memory
boast increasing data rates. This means games can look more photo-realistic
and the artificial intelligence programmes that run them are making your
electronic opponents smarter." October 31, 2001: Speech
recognition to sort Holocaust tapes. By Kimberly Patch. Technology
Research News. "'We hope to be able to use speech recognition and
a cross-lingual information retrieval technique to both speed up the annotation
so it will be easier for the skilled translators to annotate and also
to, at some point, make it possible for people to be able to search these
data collections directly without the need of human annotation at all,'
said [Bill] Byrne. Current speech recognition software, which works fairly
well for a single trained user, is still not up to the task of transcribing
from tape emotional testimony from many users in many languages. The nature
of this job makes an excellent research project, however, said Byrne." October 31, 2001: IBM
Releases Self-Healing Software Systems. By Tim McDonald. NewsFactor
Network. "IBM officials said they used Big Blue, the IBM supercomputer
that beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, as a model. The
machine was given the rules of the game and programmed to weigh each available
option before making the best possible move. In a similar way, self-healing
machines try to find ways around failing parts and changing demands without
being given step-by-step instructions from humans. For example, a machine
could switch to a backup chip if another fails." October 31, 2001: NASA
Engineers Develop Bulldozer Rover for Use on Mars. Scientific American
News in Brief. "Lightweight, solar-powered and intelligent, these
robotic vehicles could aid in the search for life on the Red Planet or
help support a human presence there. ... 'If water sources, such as hot
springs, layers of ice or groundwater reservoirs are discovered on Mars,
a network of these rovers could conduct scientific investigations and
excavate the site piece by piece, just as humans would on an archaeological
dig,' JPL robotics engineer Brian Wilcox explains." October 29, 2001: Robot
See, Robot Kill. By Jenn Shreve. Wired News. "Every second of
every day, your brain evaluates raw information from your five senses
and causes you to react, often involuntarily. A self-aiming camera being
developed by scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
is learning to respond to audio-visual stimulation in the same way. The
camera is able to detect movement and sound, compute the probability that
what it's sensing is worth responding to and then turns (or doesn't turn)
toward the stimulus accordingly. ... The self-aiming camera is based on
a neural network, a complex computer program that simulates a biological
nervous system. The neural net mimics an area of the brain called the
Superior Colliculus." October 29, 2001: Self-parking
car just around the corner. By Duncan Graham-Rowe. New Scientist.com
"The Parking Assistant combines information from radar sensors with
visual data from an array of miniature cameras surrounding the car, and
monitors parking availability. When the car pulls up in front of a space,
the system measures its size. 'It will say yea or nay, and then provide
advice on how to park the car,' says [Bryan] Rickett." October 26, 2001: European
firms need to assess IT security. By Jamie Smyth. The Irish Times.
"Security measures now have to include artificial intelligence to
build up experience of repulsing cyber attacks, said Mr [David] Love.
But even the most modern systems do not provide absolute protection. ...
'Many gurus have been predicting a Pearl Harbour-type event in this area
but I don't have a crystal ball and there is just no way to know. But
if we neglect IT security we are increasing the risk of that happening." October 26, 2001: This
schedule of football games tees up lots of fun. By Andre Montgomery.
USA Today." As the football season hits its stride, fans can get
their fill every day of the week with strong contenders for all video
game systems (and appropriate for all ages): Madden NFL 2002 ... The PS2
version offers authentic graphics and superb gameplay. Players will notice
that plenty of emotion has been added, evident by the disgust that a quarterback
will display after fumbling the ball. The artificial intelligence is as
smart as ever and now includes an 'AI adjustment scale,' letting players
tweak aspects of the computer's game, such as receiving." October 25, 2001: Maximum
security from virtual reality. By Andy McCue. vnunet.com. "Security
at some of the UK's most dangerous prisons is to be improved with an £11
million control room system that uses virtual reality and artificial intelligence.
... The artificial intelligence engine automates a control room operator's
job by predicting what is happening and recommending emergency procedures
to follow in case of an incident." October 25, 2001: Humanoid
robot runs on Linux power. Japanese scientists are planning to demonstrate
a walking, Linux-operated, humanoid robot next month in Europe. By Graeme
Wearden. CNET News.com. "It has 36 joints -- or 'degrees of freedom'--
-which H7's developers claim means it has full body motion. ... Researchers
at the JSK Laboratory in Japan created the robot and hope it will become
a useful platform for robotic developments -- especially in the field
of artificial intelligence. 'Human-shaped robots are well suited for operating
within environments designed for real humans,' said Satoshi Kagami, a
senior research scientist at the Digital Human Laboratory of Tokyo's National
Institute of Advanced Science and Technology." October 24, 2001: Toyota
Teams With Sony on Robotic Car. "Pod" recognizes your emotions,
plays your favorite music, and thanks other drivers when they let you
change lanes. By Kuriko Miyake, IDG News Service / available from PCWorld.com.
"Imagine your car acting like your pet, or more like your companion:
When you're feeling a little down, your car senses it and plays cheerful
music for you. Toyota Motor and Sony demonstrated the 'Pod,' a conceptual
vehicle version of Aibo, Sony's dog-like entertainment pet robot, at the
Tokyo Motor Show 2001 on Wednesday." October 23, 2001: More
Nobel Prize winners make home in California. By Lisa M. Krieger. Mercury
News. "Kary Mullis, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry for
inventing the polymerase chain reaction used in DNA research, was born
in rural North Carolina but joined the migration to Berkeley in the late
'60s ... Mullis now lives in the La Jolla area, where he continues to
practice science but also surfs and dabbles in cosmology, mysticism, mathematics,
virology and artificial intelligence." October 21, 2001: Robot
solves Internet robot problem. By Byron Spice. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
"[Manuel] Blum's research team at Carnegie Mellon University has
come up with a solution to the problem, one that the Web portal Yahoo
implemented last month. Now, when computer users try to register with
Yahoo, they must pass a test to verify that they are human, not a robot.
The test is administered by a computer program. ... [Udi] Manber acknowledges
that computers may eventually solve the Captcha [Completely Automatic
Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart] problem and that
the test will need to be toughened, but Blum actually looks forward to
the day that computers defeat the test. ... 'I am confident that computers
someday are going to blow us out of the water in terms of intelligence,'
Blum said. 'I'd like to be around when that happens.'" October 19, 2001: Science historian examines the 18th-century quest for 'artificial life.' By Etienne Benson. Stanford Report. "In 1738, French engineer Jacques Vaucanson built a mechanical duck that was strikingly lifelike. It could move its wings, stand up and sit down, preen itself and drink water. But what was most remarkable about it was that it seemed to be able to eat, digest and defecate -- using methods, according to Vaucanson, that were 'copied from Nature.' When the duck went on display in Paris, people flocked to see it, even with Vaucanson charging an admission fee equal to a week's wages. ... [Professor Jessica Riskin] says that the most surprising thing she has learned by studying Vaucanson's duck is the similarity between today's 'artificial life' researchers -- people who build robots and computer programs that simulate living creatures -- and their 18th-century predecessors. ... So far, Riskin has focused her research on automata -- lifelike machines -- from the 18th century. Before that time, makers of automata had been satisfied with machines that moved, even if they looked robotic and un-lifelike. ... Although Vaucanson's duck disappeared sometime in the 19th century, other automata from the same era still exist. ... One of the automata Riskin saw during her trip was the 'Lady-Musician,' built in 1774 by Swiss inventor Pierre Jaquet-Droz. ... Another automaton by Jaquet-Droz, a small boy seated at a writing desk, is one of the earliest examples of a complex, programmable machine. A set of well-adjusted wheels controls the boy's hand, which can write any message of up to 40 letters." October 18, 2001: | |||