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<< Headlines are listed according to date posted <-> Articles are organized by date published >> JUNE 2002:
June 30,
2002: Robot
umps could speed things up. Ask Mr. Baseball by Jim Price. The Spokesman-Review.
"If technology gave us a device that could call balls and strikes
accurately, how would it change the game?" June 30,
2002: The
talented Mr. Hawley - He's a professor at the MIT Media Lab, an award-winning
pianist, and a yo-yo champ. What else? By Sam Allis. Boston Globe (Page
N1). "Hawley lives by the credo 'If you don't have a problem, there
is no solution.' 'I'm in the illumination business,' he says. 'Exploring,
understanding, inventing, and teaching. The pattern in my career has been
using computer technologies to probe and understand really interesting
things - what makes music tick, how plants grow, how your body works,
how movies are made, what makes a great toy.' ... And then there is the
smart kitchen counter he calls Counter Intelligence. Hawley and his students
devised it to help people cook better. ... While traveling in Cambodia
during a sabbatical two years ago, he decided to do something about the
appalling shortage of rural schools. He started a program in which, from
a $14,000 donation, a new one is built, complete with Internet hookup
and secondhand computers donated by MIT and Apple Japan." June
30, 2002: Around
the city, sites for restored eyes. By Robert Campbell. Boston Globe.
"Probably the most exciting thing to look at right now is a construction
site. Along Vassar Street in Cambridge, MIT is erecting what will surely
be the most astonishing building in Greater Boston. Due to open in fall
2003, i's an enormous structure called the Stata Center. It will be a
laboratory for what MIT describes as 'the intelligence sciences,' a term
that includes not only computer science and artificial intelligence, but
also MIT's department of linguistics and philosophy, which should make
for an interesting marriage of disciplines." June 29,
2002: The
robots are coming - Within five years, the boundary between humans
and artificial creatures will begin to blur. By David Stonehouse. Vancouver
Sun. "Now, however, advances in artificial intelligence and the galloping
speed at which computer power is becoming simultaneously faster and cheaper
are helping to make it happen. The United Nations Economic Commission
for Europe is predicting something close to an invasion of domestic robots.
In statistics released last year, it forecasted that there will be as
many as 290,000 household 'bots purchased around the world by 2003 --
nearly 10 times the number found in homes in 1999." June
28, 2002:The return
of artificial intelligence. The McKinsey Quarterly / abridged version
available from CNET News. "[T]the AI development community has generated
techniques that are beginning to show promise for real business applications.
Like any information system, AI systems become interesting to business
only when they can perform necessary tasks more efficiently or more accurately
or exploit hitherto untapped opportunities. What makes AI much more likely
to succeed now is the fact that the underlying Web-enabled infrastructure
creates unprecedented scope for collecting massive amounts of information
and for using it to automate business functions. The following exhibits
introduce three types of AI, along with real business applications for
each. In every case, the company involved has derived real economic benefit."
June 27,
2002: NHS uses neural networks
to cut fraud. By Steve Ranger. vnunet. "Artificial brain to build
'fraud map' for investigations - The NHS is to use neural networking technology
in a bid to stop fraud by patients and staff." June
27, 2002: In
Remote Library Stacks, an All-Seeing, Scanning Robot. By Yudhijit
Bhattacharjee. The New York Times (no-fee reg. req'd). "In libraries
of the future, researchers at Johns Hopkins University say, that kind
of grunt work could be handled by robotic systems linked to the Internet.
As the first step toward building such a system, the researchers have
designed a robot that can move about inside a library and locate a book
requested by a user, take it off the shelf and carry it to a nearby scanning
station. In the system's envisaged final version, a second robot at the
scanning station would scan specific pages of the book that the user was
interested in. The user would then be able to leaf through the book over
the Internet from any location." June 26,
2002: PCs
augment reality. By Eric Smalley, Technology Research News. "A
team of researchers in Japan has brought augmented reality to a standard
PC by finding a way to track users' hands and fingertips that uses less
computer power. The researchers added an infrared camera to make it easier
for their system, dubbed EnhancedDesk, to distinguish fingers amid the
clutter of a desktop. ... They also gave the computer a little common
sense. Ordinarily, if you instruct a computer to watch for fingers it
will scan the entire arm looking for the telltale shape of a finger. The
researchers' software knows to look for fingers only at the end of an
arm, and to recognize that the semicircles at the ends of fingers are
fingertips, which lightens the workload for the computer." June 25,
2002: At
Los Alamos, Two Visions of Supercomputing. By George Johnson. The
New York Times (no-fee reg. req'd). "'Bigger and faster machines
simply aren't good enough anymore,' said Dr. Wu-Chun Feng, the leader
of the project. The time has come, he said, to question the doctrine of
'performance at any cost.' The issue is not just ecological. The more
power a computer consumes, the hotter it gets. Raise the operating temperature
18 degrees Fahrenheit, Dr. Feng said, and the reliability is cut in half.
Pushing the extremes of calculational speed, Q is expected to run in sprints
for just a few hours before it requires rebooting. A smaller version of
Green Destiny, called Metablade, has been operating in the warehouse since
last fall, requiring no special attention. 'There are two paths now for
supercomputing,' Dr. Feng said. 'While technically feasible, following
Moore's Law may be the wrong way to go with respect to reliability, efficiency
of power use and efficiency of space. We're not saying this is a replacement
for a machine like Q but that we need to look in this direction.'" June 25,
2002: 'The
Ball Comes In Front of the Goal and Bang!' Michael Reinsch interviews
Raul Rojas. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "Raul Rojas is head coach
of the European champion and three-time World Cup finalist FU Fighters
Berlin. His team plays soccer but it does so without feet, for it is a
team of robots on wheels. ... What have your players got that others
haven't? Our robots are so quick that a human being steering them
with a joystick couldn't beat them. That wasn't the case two years ago.
... What is more important, luck or understanding? At robo-soccer
understanding is more important. You don't have enough luck to decide
a game. For our robots the first problem is vision..." June 25,
2002: World
Cup 2002 Notes - Ratings, Ronaldo, Ahn and robots -- Mr. Roboto. USA
Today. "Cornell University's team of robotic soccer players claimed
its third RoboCup title in four years after defeating Free University
of Berlin 7-3. The 2002 Robot World Cup Initiative, commonly known as
RoboCup, drew 193 teams from 30 countries to this city in southern Japan
over the weekend." June 25,
2002: Digital
characters learn to move. BBC. "Based on prize-winning work carried
out largely at Oxford University in the UK, researchers at NaturalMotion
has developed a new way of animating virtual characters in games or films.
They have created computer characters that use artificial intelligence
to learn how to produce their own body motion. 'The potential for this
is truly interactive characters in computer games,' said NaturalMotion
Chief Executive Torsten Reil. 'So if it was walking over a swaying bridge,
the character would react to the swaying.'" June 25,
2002: Cyber
secretaries. By Cheryl Jones. Australian IT. "Australian artificial
intelligence experts are creating super cyber-secretaries that will file
your email and fortify you against spam mail assaults. A team of scientists
and engineers at CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences in Sydney
is designing intelligent content management software to help people weather
constant email bombardment. ... The team has designed software called
Flexible Organiser of Content and Knowledge (Flock) to help sort incoming
emails into folders. The system combines multi-agent technology, natural
language technology and models of human/computer interaction, team leader
Dr Mikhail Prokopenko says. It is more intelligent than existing email
filtering software, the team says." June 24,
2002: OU
Taking Part in Tournament. The
Columbus Dispatch. "Instructors and engineering and science students
from Ohio University are in Fukuoka, Japan, matching wits with other students
and educators from around the world in the annual RoboCup soccer tournament.
The OU, dubbed the Robobcats, is the only team from Ohio." June 24,
2002: : Robot
center ready to fight for U.S. funds - Creation of center aims to
attract Defense work. By Christopher Davis and Maria Guzzo. Pittsburgh
Business Times. "Last week, the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance announced
the creation of the National Center for Defense Robotics, an initiative
aimed at helping the region tap into some of the $34 billion likely to
be spent on a new U.S. Department of Defense program, called Future Combat
Systems, that will include the development of unmanned vehicles and weapons
enhanced with artificial intelligence. ... 'The military aspect of robotics
is it now,' said Jim Osborn, executive director of the Medical Robotics
and Information Technology for Medicine and Surgery program -- MERITs
-- a joint initiative between Carnegie Mellon University and The Western
Pennsylvania Hospital. 'They are going to be one of the best customers
for the next several decades.' ... Regional robotics initiatives are nothing
new to Pittsburgh. CMU's Robotics Institute, founded in 1979 by Raj Reddy,
was the first. The institute was started with $5 million from Westinghouse
Electric Corp. for automated transit research and development." June 24,
2002: AI
to Assist Alzheimer's Patients. By Mark Baard. Wired News. "Scientists
in the emerging field of assisted cognition are designing AI systems to
care for Alzheimer's patient without any direct human assistance. Assisted
cognition systems meld artificial-intelligence software, GPS technology,
sensor networks and infrared ID badges into a ubiquitous computing environment.
With assisted cognition, those with early-stage Alzheimer's will use intelligent
personal digital assistants and 'smart homes' to help them do everything
from making a cup of tea to catching their morning bus." June 24,
2002: Sony,
Toyota swap workers, eye tie-up. The Asahi Shimbun. Two of the nation's
top firms have swapped mid-career engineers to provide insight into each
other's corporate culture and product development methods. Consumer electronics
giant Sony Corp. and automaker Toyota Motor Corp. say they hope the exchange
program will one day lead to joint product developments. ... The two companies
have carried out joint ventures in the past. Last year they exhibited
a prototype artificial-intelligence car at the Tokyo Motor Show. They
are planning other joint ventures in the automotive field. One involves
using the same technology that created Sony's Aibo 'pet' robot. June 23,
2002: What
a clever Dick. By Robin McKie. The Observer. "Steven Spielberg
is the latest director to film a book by the dystopian soothsayer Philip
K. Dick. He won't be the last. ... By any standards, Philip K. Dick was
an unusual writer. ... Yet there is more to Dick than output, as his fans
(Dickheads, as we are known) will tell you, for his writing is dominated
by once unfashionable issues that now fill our lives. 'We live in a society
in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments,
by big corporations,' he once wrote. 'We are bombarded with pseudo-realities
manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic
mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives. I distrust their power.'
... How do we know our memories and experiences are real, or have not
been altered or implanted? How can we be certain of our humanity or identity?
In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the barrier between man and robot
is unsettlingly blurred ... Minority Report pays much more attention to
Dick's disturbing philosophical obsessions while still managing to be
dazzlingly entertaining. If criminals are arrested before they can commit
their crimes, what happens to free will? we are asked." June 23,
2002: ...and
you have hot jobs in the west. The Times of India. "Here's a
global view of hot jobs from 'Smartmoney' magazine. Bioinformatician ...
Data miner ... AI programmer: Artificial intelligence has spread into
many fields. Smart homes. Airport surveillance. Voice-recognition software.
ATMs." June 22, 2002 [issue date]: Instability Rules - The ten most amazing ideas of modern science. A book review by Roy Herbert. New Scientist. There's no shortage of books that have visited the ports that Charles Flowers visits. It's a daunting itinerary: his 10 ideas stretch from the big bang and the expanding Universe, through the ponderous movement of continents to Freud and the unconscious, via the human genome and artificial intelligence. It sounds like an exhausting course to follow in Flowers's wake and it might seem too much to attempt. That would be a mistake."
>>> Overview,
Turing Test June 21, 2002:
Is there
a robot in your future? By Siva Kasinathan ["a student this past
year in the Manhattan Middle School system"]. The Manhattan Mercury
[Kansas]. "The media depicts robots as capable of humanoid characteristics,
but today's race of robots possess only one humanoid characteristic, the
flexibility of the human arm. In fact, 90 percent of today's robots are
employed in industry and over half of these robots are employed in the
automotive industry. They are very effective in industry because they
produce products with speed and quality. Robots also play a major role
in modern warfare. ... Robot technology is helping humanity branch off
into the future. It is the steppingstone for artificial intelligence,
nanorobotics and cybernetics. Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a very
new frontier that will allow robots to think. AI will permit robots to
perform tasks such as exploring planets without human directions and keep
themselves out of trouble. ... Most schools in Manhattan have joined the
KSU Robot League." June 21, 2002: New
cancer test praised by lecturer. WVU speaker lauds medical discovery
By Jan Boyles. The Dominion Post. "Just one drop of blood might make
the difference in early detection of cancer. ... Researchers conduct the
test by placing a single drop of the blood's serum on a metal bar. The
bar is then inserted into a vacuum chamber and scanned by a laser beam.
An artificial intelligence computer system then produces a chart of the
body's proteins resembling a bar code. This chart is compared to those
of cancer patients and noncancer patients. ... Results from the machine
are amazing predictors, ranging from 93 percent to 100 percent accuracy." >>> Resources for Educators, Resources for Students, Robots -> back to headlines June 21, 2002: Emotional
Machines -- Do we want them? By Ed Dawson. ZDNet Australia. "An
Australian company called Mindsystems have devised an Artificial Intelligence
system for simulating human emotion. It can apparently be used to quite
convincingly replicate a person's feelings in a variety of situations.
Called EMIR (Emotional Model for Intelligent Response), it is based on
real-time data collected by researchers in the psychological sciences.
Imagine a 'friendly fridge' that could have its own personality, or a
child's toy that would do more than imitate feelings. Mindsystems predict
their system could be used for virtually every system which has a human-machine
interface. They go as far as imagining a stock market simulation which
could predict the emotional reactions of thousands of investors to certain
information." June 21,
2002: Internet 'brain' speeds
up searches. Sony plans to use it for PlayStation technical support.
By Nick Farrell. VNU Net. " Boffins at Cambridge University claim
to have developed an internet 'brain' that helps people get information
from internet-based databases. Dubbed Metafaq, the system can answer emailed
questions and also guide surfers through websites. Dr Davin Yap, who developed
the system, said it uses artificial intelligence to answer questions as
well as a human. 'It allows people to search intelligently and predicts
the questions they will ask,' he said. ... More than 85 per cent of PlayStation
questions could be answered directly by Metafaq." June 21,
2002: Minority
Report. By Roger Ebert. Chicago Sun-Times. "The movie turns out
to be eerily prescient, using the term 'pre-crime' to describe stopping
crimes before they happen; how could Spielberg have known the government
would be using the same term this summer? ... The year is 2054. Futuristic
skyscrapers coexist with the famous Washington monuments and houses from
the 19th century. Anderton presides over an operation controlling three
'Pre-Cogs,' precognitive humans who drift in a flotation tank, their brain
waves tapped by computers. They're able to pick up thoughts of premeditated
murders and warn the cops, who swoop down and arrest the would-be perpetrators
before the killings can take place." June 20,
2002: Net
'brain' has all the answers. BBC. "The system, dubbed Metafaq,
can answer e-mailed questions and also guide surfers through websites.
It may have artificial intelligence but it can answer questions as well
as any human, claims inventor Doctor Davin Yap. 'It allows people to search
intelligently and predicts the questions they will ask,' he said. ...
One reader at Cambridge University is already using the system to answer
student's questions. So would the system prove helpful to the most notorious
of question dodgers - politicians? 'We are already piloting it for some
government sites,' said Dr Yap, who developed the system with his colleague,
David MacKay." June 20,
2002: Agency
Is Under Scrutiny for Overlooked Messages. By James Risen and David
Johnston. The New York Times (no-fee reg. req'd). "The critical problem
facing the security agency is that it can collect far more data than is
humanly possible to analyze and process in a timely manner. ... The real
challenge is what to do with that raw information once it has been collected.
With a budget that is several times larger than that of the C.I.A., the
security agency is trying to use the latest in artificial intelligence
and advanced software to identify which intercepted communications can
be ignored and which require urgent attention. But even then, huge volumes
of communications need to be translated from difficult languages like
Arabic before they can be processed and sent to policy makers for review." June 20,
2002: The
Great Escape - Alan Cheuse reviews a new book from science fiction
author Ian Watson. Listen to the review from NPR's All
Things Considered. "A number of the stories in 'The Great Escape'
deal directly with the subject of artificial intelligence, which makes
sense given that they written during the time that Ian Watson was working
up the subject for Stanley Kubrick's film. 'Caucus Winter,' the story
of a US right-wing coup featuring a battle of supercomputers, takes on
the theme rather forthrightly." June 20,
2002: Networks
key to waging robot wars. By Winn L. Rosch. The Plain Dealer. "[Allen]
Moshfegh leads a team of researchers includes biochemists, computer specialists,
electrical and chemical engineers, and neurobiologists working on what
he calls the Autonomous Intelligent Network and Systems (AINS) initiative.
His goal is to design a workable interconnection system that will continue
to operate even in battlefield situations and during disasters. ... The
big challenge is not in the robots but in the network that connects them.
Today's equipment isn't smart enough to handle all the data fast enough.
Routers, essential pieces of network gear that direct data through a network,
now work like simple traffic lights in preventing data collisions. That's
not enough to meet battlefield needs. 'One of our goals is to come up
with routers that look into data packets and send relevant information
in a time-critical way,' said Moshfegh." June
20, 2002: MIT
project shows future interface technologies. By Sam Costello. InfoWorld.
"Imagine a future in which you could tell your computer to move a
folder inside another, and just by pointing with your finger, it would
happen. Or being able to command your computer to print your vacation
pictures on the nearest color printer, and not have to supply any more
configuration information. While you're imagining these scenarios, researchers
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are working on a project
that could make these, and other new ways to interface with computers,
a reality. Called the Project Oxygen Alliance.... The alliance is working
on a number of projects, including those listed above, and demonstrated
a handful at its second annual meeting, held last week in Cambridge." June 20,
2002: Robot
fails to find a place in the sun. By Martin Wainwright. Guardian.
"After four months of entertaining humans, Gaak the predator robot
yesterday did what all the best robots do in science fiction: he copied
his masters' most basic instinct and made a dash for freedom. ... Left
unattended for 15 minutes, the 2ft metal machine crept along a barrier
until it found a gap, squeezed through, navigated across a car park and
reached the Magna science centre's exit by the M1 motorway in Rotherham,
South Yorkshire." June 20,
2002: 'Thinking'
robot in escape bid. / Robot
on the run. By Dave Higgens. The Age / also
available from Independent News. "Scientists running a pioneering
experiment with 'living robots' which think for themselves today said
they were amazed to find one escaping from the centre where it 'lives'.
... [Noel] Sharkey said: 'Since the experiment went live in March they
have all learned a significant amount and are becoming more intelligent
by the day but the fact that it had ability to navigate itself out of
the building and along the concrete floor to the gates has surprised us
all.'" June 20,
2002: Battle
of the Dow Theorists - But Dow Theory bear Russell has the best record.
By Peter Brimelow, CBS MarketWatch. "Why even bother with the Dow
Theory if there can be such serious disagreements? Because there really
is something to the theory. 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. The system worked -- beating buying and holding by an extraordinary
annualized 4.4 percentage points from 1930-1997. Unfortunately, the professors
have not applied their neural network to today's market." June 19,
2002: Spy
plane in a backpack on show at arms fair.
Reuters / available from The New Zealand Herald. "To counter the
threat of break-ins at prisons, military bases or industrial sites, French
firm Securifrance was showing off a man-sized robot that can rival a human
security guard. The robot, which has a squat lower body mounted on wheels,
a long, thin neck and a 'head', can detect intruders and fires through
its cameras, thermometers and radar-like sensors. The robot can talk and
will ask any unexpected visitors to identify themselves. If they are unable
to give a satisfactory answer, it will immediately raise the alarm."
June 19,
2002: American
Side of Asimo. By Jim Goldman. Tech Live. "Its magnesium body
may be Japanese, but for the first time ever Honda is set to disclose
that its humanoid robot's brain is decidedly American, TechTV has learned.
... While the robot cannot yet clean house or make coffee -- tasks engineers
hope the robot will soon be capable of -- initial applications could include
guiding patrons through a museum or handling hazardous materials. 'The
goal now is to make the robot more intelligent so that it can actually
understand its environment or whatever it's trying to understand of the
behavior of people,' [Jerry] Fiddler said." June 19,
2002: Robots
Face Off on Soccer Pitch. By Yuri Kageyama. The Associated Press /
available from The Moscow Times (page 8). "As the World Cup has arrived
in Japan with all its feverish frenzy, RoboCup 2002 is expected to draw
193 robot teams from 30 countries to a stadium in Fukuoka city. A rare
pop-cultural outlet for science, RoboCup brings together the dreams of
researchers from around the world to spread the word about robotics --
a technology that's crucial for less sporty uses such as disaster rescue,
space exploration and nuclear plant cleanup. ... Among the other ideas
being bounced around are robots that can adjust their own programming
to learn and grow. Kazuo Yoshida, professor of system design engineering
at Keio University, believes the future lies in building robots that understand
good and evil, even possess a sense of purpose. ... Peter Nordin, associate
professor in complex systems at Chalmers University of Technology in Gotenborg,
Sweden, says humanoids like those he is bringing to RoboCup will become
household companions in a decade, probably at prices cheaper than a car.
Research shows people tend to be threatened by robots and prefer short
ones, Nordin said." June 19,
2002: Dewayne
Hendricks - Champion Of the Airwaves. By Jonathan Krim. The Washington
Post (Page H04). "What Tonga offered Hendricks was not just a business
(a Dandin subsidiary also is the Sony electronics distributor on the islands)
but also a chance to show what could be done where there are no bureaucratic
hurdles and the airwaves are not carved up among companies and government
agencies, as they are in the United States. A broad swath of spectrum
is allocated to U.S. government agencies, the military, phone companies,
television networks and others. And though much of it is not used, the
license holders jealously guard it. As a result, new technologies such
as ultra-wideband and radio devices with artificial intelligence are slow
to be deployed." June 18,
2002: Paul
Werbos- A Renaissance Man With an Audience. By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
The Washington Post (Page H04). "He also happens to be past president,
and current guru, for the International Neural Network Society, a group
of scientists and computer thinkers who specialize in artificial-intelligence
software that code writers hope will one day mimic the human mind. Neural
networks can discern data patterns that humble humans might never see.
And so the still-young technology is becoming increasingly important in
the financial world to detect fraud, and in homeland defense initiatives
that involve poring through oceans of consumer and intelligence data for
signs of terrorist activity." June 18,
2002: What's
the Buzz at the Innovation Factory? By Brian Hindo. BusinessWeek Online.
"Walter Bender, executive director of MIT's Media Lab, discusses
how the demands on research change during tough economic times As a kid,
Walter Bender hawked souvenirs outside Boston's Fenway Park. Although
his office today is only a few miles from the ballpark, the executive
director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
may as well be on another planet. He now oversees 300 research projects
into such advances as wearable computers and artificial intelligence.
Lately, the research hub has been feeling economic pressure. Last year,
Bender laid off some staff and cut salaries to make his $45 million budget.
He recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online's Brian Hindo about the challenges
the Media Lab faces in a tough economic environment. ... 'Believe it or
not, we had a record revenue year last year, in part because of more emphasis
on government funding. On the other hand, we also spent more than ever,
because we were in a growth cycle.' ... 'The growth in industrial funding
flattened last year because the economy tanked and September 11 happened.
We more than compensated for that with an increase in [funding from] government
programs. We have taken some hit in terms of industrial sponsorship. There's
a tiered model of sponsorship at the lab, and a lot of companies pulled
back, dropped down a tier instead of disappearing'. ... 'When we develop
something that doesn't work, we learn from that, too. We encourage students
to take risks and break things. It's not our job to be incremental.'" June 17,
2002: French
intelligent transport system operator targets Malaysia. By Jane Ritikos.
The Star Online. "This is the SITER or central urban traffic management
system, an intelligent transportation system (ITS) adopted by the conseil
general (local authority) of the Hauts-de-Seine department in France which
covers 175 km2 in area and 550km in roads. It is the first of its kind
extended to an entire department. The system incorporates four functions:
traffic control, video surveillance, information for use of variable message
signs (VMS) and information management by an expert system with redistribution
to external system such as radio, and on board navigation system. ...
'As a bonus, the system also facilitates residentÕs travel within the
department by offering a journey strategy, manage movements between the
localities, improve safety and reduce noise and atmospheric pollution,'
said [Yves] Jouvenel who added that police also cooperate in managing
the system." June 17,
2002: French
publisher Wanadoo takes the wraps off its tennis simulation. GameSpot.
"As in the actual sport, there are five main types of shots: lob,
topspin, normal, and slice, as well as sidespin. Of course the ball physics
change according to the court surfaces. More than 500 animations were
motion-captured during the development process, and a professional tennis
coach gave input on the artificial intelligence of the computer players." June
17, 2002: Soccer
Robots Compete for 6th Annual RoboCup. By Bijal P. Trivedi. National
Geographic. "Robots of all shapes and sizes kick off in an international
soccer tournament this week with nearly 200 teams from 30 nations battling
it out in a domed stadium in Fukuoka, Japan -- not the World Cup but the
6th annual RoboCup. ... The games and a post-tournament symposium were
organized to spur interest and research in robotics and artificial intelligence.
RoboCup 2002, from June 19th to 25th, is expected to attract 100,000 spectators
and over 1,000 scientists and engineers. Germany, Japan, Italy, and the
United States are fielding the most teams. 'Soccer is an ideal game to
use as a venue for testing ideas in artificial intelligence and robotics
because it is a very dynamic game since you have to make a decision now,'
explained David Chelberg, project director for the Ohio State University
(OSU) Robocats, competing in the small-robot league." June
17, 2002: Making
gaming even more real. By Meg Herbert. Boston Globe [page C3]. "Video
game technology today is a full-scale 3-D experience so sophisticated
that it almost looks real - a far cry from where the industry stood only
10 years ago. But the biggest changes might still be on the horizon, when
the emerging technology of artificial intelligence is fully integrated
into gaming. 'AI is coming down to how you replicate in a realistic manner
what a living organism will do,' said Michael Stojda, managing director
for Softimage, a division of Tewksbury-based Avid Technology Inc. ...
In the past, games had a set number of programmed actions, making them
predictable and eventually boring. Now, game events are randomized and
are not always based on an action taken by a player, generating multiple
sequences of events instead of one. Still, these new games focus more
on aesthetics combined with clever programming techniques rather than
artificial intelligence. That's all about to change. ... 'Every game has
an AI programmer that spends a lot of time trying to make the game feel
more human, because that's how we relate to the world,' [Carey] Chico
said, citing the interest and growth of artificial intelligence in the
gaming world. ... Combat training simulators are also being developed
for the military, and close attention is being paid to the intelligence
of the characters." June
17, 2002: Website
to reduce medical errors. BBC. "The parents of a English girl
who nearly died after doctors failed to diagnose the flesh eating bug
have helped to develop technology to prevent similar errors. ... They
raised money and got professional help to develop an internet system that
would help avoid the same mistakes being made again. The system, called
ISABEL, is free to all doctors. It uses pattern recognition software to
search for information in paediatric textbooks. Doctors simply tap in
symptoms and get back a list of possible problems, and details of the
best treatment. The system also offers links to the British National Formulary
and an annotated picture library." June 17,
2002: Technology
Gives Sight to Machines, Inexpensively By John Markoff. The New York
Times (no-fee reg. req'd) /
also available from the Taipei Times (Machines gradually get 'eyes'
that let them work better. 6/18/02). "It has been 36 years since
an experimental robotic arm poured punch on itself during a cocktail party
at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. ... Giving machines
the ability to 'see' is an endeavor that has evolved considerably since
then -- most famously, perhaps, in the case of the Sojourner exploratory
craft that guided itself over the surface of Mars in 1997. And now, across
town from the scene of the failed punch bowl experiment, a former Stanford
graduate student's company, Tyzx is working on computer-vision technology
that is meant to be sufficiently sophisticated, but inexpensive enough,
to find its way into everyday applications. ... Tyzx's approach to machine
vision is implied in the four letters of the company's name. In computing
a digital image, T represents time, X and Y represent height and width,
while Z represents depth. In the Tyzx system, depth perception is created
by comparing two images and calculating the precise shift in a particular
pixel -- or picture element -- in each image. " June 16,
2002: Self-navigating
robot design wins grand prize. By Seth Goldstein. Courier Times. "Laura
Wong's interest in robots started with 'Robot Wars,' a mechanical sporting
event on television that shows radio-controlled machines in a contest
of destruction and survival. It grew into a grand prize at the recent
Mercer County Science and Engineering Fair, a fourth place at last month's
Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Louisville, Ky., and
an appearance on the 'Today' show. All the fuss was over Laura's robot,
which can generate a map of its whereabouts and was submitted under the
title 'Where Am I - Minimizing Positional Error While Navigating and Mapping
While Using a Cooperative Robotic System.' 'I always wondered how they
were built and programmed,' the Yardley resident and sophomore at Villa
Victoria Academy in Ewing, N.J., said about robots last week." June 16,
2002: Software to
keep your money safe. By Troy Wolverton. CNET. "Wells Fargo will
announce Monday that it plans to launch new software to combat money laundering.
The software, from enterprise software company Searchspace, uses artificial
intelligence to weed out any activity deemed suspicious. Wells Fargo plans
to have the software up and running by the end of the year. The financial
institution's current systems are based on fairly static rules. The company
wanted a new system that would be more adaptable to real-world transactions
as well as one that would learn and improve as it went along, said Bob
Chlebowski, the company's executive vice president of distribution strategies."
June 15, 2002: 'One
day robots will win the World Cup.' By Bryan Shih. Financial Times.
"They do not sport ponytails and they cannot writhe on the pitch
feigning injury. In fact the humanoid robots in next week's RoboCup2002
- the mechanical counterpart to the World Cup - are lucky not to topple
over after kicking a soccer ball. But in 50 years, such robots will surpass
the world's best human soccer team, according to Hiroaki Kitano, president
of the RoboCup Federation. 'By 2050, our goal is to beat the world champion
human soccer team,' said Mr Kitano, a specialist in artificial intelligence
and one of the founders of the annual RoboCup competition. ... Mr Kitano
said he and the other Japanese RoboCup originators chose soccer as a way
to advance robotics systems that he says are crucial to the future of
the industry, including artificial intelligence and team-based co-operation." June 14, 2002:
May I Have This Avatar? By Katie Dean. Wired News. "Dancing with
an avatar is a little like dancing with a cartoon after its shimmied its
way off the screen, into a living room and on top of the furniture. You
know the feeling. A group of artists knows it, too, after recently experimenting
with the concept in the Ava Project, a multimedia dance performance that
pairs a human dancer with a virtual one. The performance explores the
relationship between humanity and technology and the effect they have
on each other. ... Avatar performances are not new: an avatar is an animated
representation of a person, commonly used in virtual reality games or
chat rooms. National Medal of Technology winner Ray Kurzweil created an
avatar of himself, a 25-year-old rock star named Ramona. Kurzweil sang
at the February 2001 TED conference in real time." June 14, 2002: Beyond
child's play - Robots learn to speak. By Robert S. Boyd. The Miami
Herald / also
available from National Geographic News (Robots Get Language Lessons
to Promote Speech - 6/18/02). "Computer scientists are giving language
lessons to mechanical robots, enabling them to speak and to respond appropriately
to what they hear. ... 'It is now becoming possible to have open-ended
dialogues with physically embodied robots,' said Luc Steels, an artificial
intelligence expert at the SONY Computer Science Laboratory in Paris.
But they are still introverts, with limited ability to communicate with
humans or their fellow robots. Teaching them is extremely difficult and
progress has been slow. 'It's really very hard,' said Tim Oates, a robotics
expert at the University of Maryland-Baltimore. 'Imagine you are in a
foreign country and don't know the language. You can't even tell where
a word begins and ends, much less the meaning of the word.'" June 13, 2002: Robots
build bridges for science. By Katherine Sellgren. BBC. "The government
has announced an initiative to boost science education in schools, but
many local initiatives are already up and running. In the London Borough
of Lewisham, pupils at six schools are getting the chance to build robots,
styled on the BBC Technogames series, to get them more interested in science
and technology. ... Over the next six weeks, the youngsters, aged 11 to
14, will be experimenting with motors, batteries and other power supplies.
They will learn about controlling the robots through radio or computer
and giving them intelligence through sensors. ... 'I think it's a really
good idea - even if you lose, it doesn't bother you because you've taken
part and that's the advantage. I learnt about how to use the kits which
was a new experience for me. It tends to be boys that make the gadgets
and stuff, but I feel I'm a real part of this. There's not many activities
that involve girls and boys...." June 13, 2002: Arts
Festivals Buzz With Digital Deviltry. By Matthew Mirapaul. The New
York Times (no-fee reg. req'd). "Visitors are invited to enter Ms.
Phillips's installation, 'Re-Sound /Sound Screen,' free of charge in a
gallery at the Walter Reade Theater. The work, part of this year's Lincoln
Center Festival, is one of many digitally driven works that can be experienced
this summer at arts festivals around the world. As computer technology
takes hold in the arts, multimedia works and high-tech performances are
spreading across festival schedules like a scoop of spumoni on a sizzling
sidewalk. ... Expo.02 exhibits in the city of Neuchatel focus more tightly
on technology, including 'Ada,' a room programmed with its own artificial
intelligence so that it can identify individual visitors and communicate
with them through sound and light." June 13, 2002: Online
guide comes to the aid of technophobes. Ananova. "An internet
'brain' invented by two Cambridge University researchers could soon be
giving gadget owners an excuse to throw away their manuals. ... The artificial
intelligence troubleshooter, called Metafaq, was created by doctors Davin
Yap and David MacKay from Cambridge University. Drawing on its knowledge
base, Metafaq is able to answer emailed questions in plain and simple
English instantly. If a particular question cannot be answered, it is
forwarded to a human support staff member. The answer is then added to
Metafaq's memory, and offered automatically next time the same question
crops up." June 13, 2002: Impostor.
Reviewed by Sandra Hall. Sydney Morning Herald. "In the old days,
they had prophets. These days, we have sci-fi writers - constructive pessimists
who peer into the future looking for worst-case scenarios in the hope
that someone sensible will make sure these catastrophes don't come about.
On of the most prescient of early-warning merchants was Philip K. Dick,
who died 20 years ago, having explored the concept of cyberspace and pondered
the ethical ramifications of creating artificial intelligence. ... [W]e
have Impostor, from a story he wrote in 1953, when he first started conjuring
with hypotheticals such as: What if robots could be made to look like
us? And what if they could be implanted with false memories so they think
they are us? Am I human? Or am I just programmed to believe I am human.
These were his favourites - played out in Impostor and in Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep?, the story which Ridley Scott would eventually
spin into Blade Runner." June 13,
2002: Britannica
Goes Concise. Press Release available from PR Newswire via Yahoo.
"The new Britannica Concise Encyclopedia packs basic information
from the 32-volume Encyclopaedia Britannica into two thousand pages that
deliver facts quickly. ... The encyclopedia also covers many of the people
and issues making news today: George W. Bush, J.K. Rowling, Osama bin
Laden, Tiger Woods, cloning, terrorism, globalization, artificial intelligence
and the women's movement." June 13/19,
2002: Robots
Who Cry. By Annalee Newitz. Metro (Silicon Valley) /
also available from AlterNet (6/10/02). "Ultimately, however,
what I like best about [Cynthia] Breazeal's vision of sociable robots
is her suggestion that there is little difference between machines that
appear to be sociable vs. ones that 'really' are. What does it mean to
be 'really' emotional, anyway? I can't always tell what my dinner date
is feeling, so how can I possibly judge what it means to inhabit the psychology
of a robot? If we can create a machine whose reactions seem entirely human,
do we need to waste our philosophical time wondering whether circuits
can ever feel the way neurons do? It's all electrical impulses in the
end, baby." June 12/19, 2002: Software
guides museum-goers. Technology Research News. "Researchers from
Europe have built a system designed to tap the powers of hypertext, information
databases, and natural language generation to allow people to go as deeply
or as quickly as they wish through the written material in museum-type
settings without repeating or missing much. ... Someone visiting via the
Web would start from a page of icons showing a gallery of objects, and
when the visitor clicked on a particular icon, a new page would be generated,
with a larger image, a title, a description and a list of links to related
objects. 'At this point they can return to the main page and choose another
object, where they can follow one of the suggested links, or they can
ask for more information about the current object. Either way a new page
is generated for the chosen object [and] the description of the page will
take into account what other descriptions have been generated so far,
tailoring both content and form,' [Jon Oberlander] said." June
12, 2002: PRA
forming defense robotics center. By Christopher Davis. Pittsburgh
Business Times. "Seeking to accelerate the region's efforts to tap
into billions of dollars in federal defense spending for the Future Combat
Systems program, the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance said Wednesday it will
form a new National Center for Defense Robotics. The center's role will
be to help the region establish itself as a center for the research, development
and production of mobile robotics and related artificial intelligence
technologies." June 12,
2002: The
team that helps industry get smart. By Eric Leaver. UK Newsquest Regional
Press -This is Lancashire. "Blackburn is the unlikely setting for
one of the UK's leading research institutes, specialising in helping businesses
to think and work smarter. The Applied Knowledge Research Institute (AKRI)
aims to bridge the gap between the heady world of academia and the needs
of manufacturing industry. Based appropriately at the Blackburn Technology
Management Centre, the institute specialises in knowledge management and
intelligent systems. And according to research director John Gordon, small
and medium firms in East Lancashire could learn much from their work.
... In the area of artificial intelligence, the Institute has access to
the latest research and can link companies to experts in any given field."
June 11, 2002: Scientists
"Muscle" Sci-Fi Into Reality. ScienceDaily Magazine / based
upon a release from NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "To stimulate
interest in electroactive polymers, [Yoseph] Bar-Cohen posed an ongoing
challenge three years ago to scientists and engineers worldwide. He wanted
to see if anyone could develop a robotic arm driven by artificial muscles
that could arm wrestle against a human and win. 'This challenge requires
tackling the problem on all its fronts - from fundamental science and
engineering to robotic control and artificial intelligence,' he said.
Although that challenge has not yet been met, scientists have made progress
in finding ways to control a robotic arm. In addition, Bar-Cohen hopes
to see technology that will combine artificial muscles with prosthetics
and allow disabled people to perform physical tasks independently." June 11,
2002: Did
This Man Just Rewrite Science? By Dennis Overbye. The New York Times
(no-fee reg. req'd). "There are 256 rules you can concoct to play
this simple game. Most will create a boring or repetitive pattern. But
at least one rule will cause the page to explode into complex, ever-shifting
patterns. You will have created a so-called universal computer, equal
in its computational sophistication to Apple's jazziest laptop. Given
the right starting pattern, and the right rule, according to Dr. Stephen
Wolfram, a former teenage particle physicist and software entrepreneur
who has been doing this at home for the last 10 years, those lines and
shapes cascading downward can be made to pick out the prime numbers, compute
pi, calculate your income tax, or model the evolution of a star-- anything
a real computer can do. ... The idea that complex things can arise from
simple ones is as old as Euclid, who built a whole geometry out of a few
axioms and logic, but the giant on whose shoulders Dr. Wolfram is most
securely standing is the English mathematician Alan Turing. In 1936, Mr.
Turing and Dr. Alonzo Church, a Princeton mathematician, showed that in
principle any mathematical or logical problem that could be solved by
a person could be solved by a so-called Turing machine. As envisioned
by Mr. Turing, it was like the head of a modern tape recorder that would
move back and forth along an endless tape reading symbols inscribed on
it and writing new ones. Moreover, a so-called universal Turing machine
could emulate any other conceivable computer." June 11, 2002: Robots
doing the milking. NZOOM - New Zealand News. "Scientist Murray
Woolford says the dairy farm runs itself automatically. Cows are enticed
to the milker with a feed of barley, then the robot reads a tag on their
leg and automatically attaches the cups in the right place. The robot
even does the cleaning up, washing the cups and then sending the cow on
their way with a blast of iodine-teat spray." There's even a link
to a video of "robots doing the milking." June 10, 2002: New
Way Upcoming To Test Climate Change Predictions. UniSci. "A team
led by UK Royal Holloway geologist Dr. Michal Kucera will map sea-surface
temperature of the Mediterranean over past millennia. The data will provide
a new target to test the computer models on which our predictions of climate
change are based. ... By looking at abundances of species of planktonic
foraminifera recovered from marine sediments, Dr. Kucera is developing
a new tool to reconstruct sea-surfaces temperatures in the past. This
technique is based on an artificial intelligence algorithm learning the
relationship between temperature and abundances of planktonic foraminifer
species in the modern ocean." June 10, 2002: Berkeley
minds find computers can't think - yet. By Lee Gomes. Associated Press
/ published in The Wall Street Journal (Boomtown: Section B; Page 1, Column
1) / available from New Jersey Online. "Will super-smart machines
ever be built? If they are, will they be conscious? At places like M.I.T.,
academic careers and entire departments were built by answering -yes-
to those sorts of questions, starting in the 1950s and 1960s. At Berkeley,
though, came thundering dissents, notably from Hubert Dreyfus and John
Searle, both from the university's philosophy department. ... It's in
the field of 'cognitive science,' devoted to the study of the mind, where
the Berkeley school's triumph is most apparent. The discipline became
popular roughly a generation ago, when AI was ascendant and when the computer
was viewed as an apt metaphor for the brain. The Sloan Foundation decided
to back cognitive sciences, and made big grants to two schools. One was
M.I.T., a bastion of AI research. The other was Berkeley, where the skeptics
held out. It's getting harder to find anyone in cognitive sciences who
still believes that computers are useful models for the brain. Instead,
most people in the field spend their time actually studying brains: scanning
'em, slicing 'em, dicing 'em. It's essentially the Dreyfus-Searle research
agenda: To understand the mind, forget about computers and look at the
gray stuff inside our heads." June 10, 2002: High
Tech Evolves - More businesses are studying biology to solve complex management
and computing problems. By Eric Roston. TIME Magazine (Vol. 159 No.
23). "Software engineers will tell you that the longer they labor
to solve complex problems by manually writing code, the more they respect
the reasoning powers of the human brain. For years, artificial-intelligence
researchers have gained some of their most useful insights from experts
in brain function. And today the biological sciences are making similar
contributions to all sorts of technologies useful to business, from software
that 'grows,' 'heals' and 'reproduces' to tiny carbon tubes that will
allow computer transistors to shrink to atomic dimensions even as they
grow more powerful. Last month TIME convened a five-member Board of Technologists
to discuss how evolutionary biology -- think of it as Earth's R. and D.
department -- is influencing the way we build computers, write software
and organize companies." June 10, 2002: Protect
your property with biometrics. The Jakarta Post. "One of the
more sophisticated methods that is increasingly being used for security
purposes -- whether to block entrance to a restricted area, to protect
data on your computer, or to prevent other people from using your ATM
cards and withdrawing cash from our accounts, etc. -- is to use biometric
devices. ... How does it work? First, there should be a database of individuals
against which a scanned image of someone's face, fingerprint, etc. is
compared. Then, a hardware device will be required to do the scanning.
The process should be very fast, and therefore sometimes microprocessors
are required. Ideally, the surveillance system in a football stadium,
for example, must be able to scan and recognize the face of a veteran
hooligan or pickpocket in a split second before he disappears among the
crowd." June 9, 2002: Science
Fiction and Fantasy - Interstellar laughs, near-future noir, a new
Dr. Who and the Space Navy. By Paul Di Filippo. The Washington Post (page
BW13). "Ian Watson's ninth short-story collection, The Great Escape
... reveals an author with a decidedly Anglo-European flair and signature
style. ... Unsurprisingly for someone who worked hand-in-glove with Stanley
Kubrick on the story of the film 'A.I.,' several of Watson's stories --
'Three-Legged Dog,' 'Caucus Winter' and 'Nanuculus' -- focus on the exaltations
and traps of artificial intelligence. But Watson is also a dab hand at
pure fantasy, whether its's the cozy 'The Last Beast Out of the Box' (which
tells of the mentoring between an elderly female artist and a prodigious
youngster) or the Miltonically majestic title piece (which takes place
in Hell as the inferno undergoes a revolution)." June 9, 2002: Computer
boffins pop AI's $60m question. By Brian Bergstein Associated Press
/ available from Independent Online (South Africa) / also
available from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times (Project's goal: A
common-sense computer) / and
from CNN / and
The Philadelphia Inquirer. "Day after day since 1984, teams of programmers,
linguists, theologians, mathematicians and philosophers have plugged away
at a $60-million (about R600-million) project they hope will transform
human existence: teaching a computer common sense. ... Though some critics
question the potential of this painstaking effort, the inventors believe
Cyc will form the brains of computers with supercharged reasoning abilities
- which could help us work more efficiently, make us understand each other
better and even help us predict the previously unforeseeable. Cyc (pronounced
'psych') has already helped Lycos generate more relevant results on its
Internet search engine. The military, which has invested $25-million in
Cyc, is testing it as an intelligence tool in the war against terrorism.
Companies use Cyc to unify disparate databases and are examining a new
application that warns when computer networks have vulnerabilities hackers
can exploit. ... Some artificial intelligence experts question whether
Cyc can be as revolutionary as [Doug] Lenat predicts. They claim it is
far more efficient to make computers search for and identify patterns
than to have them follow predetermined sets of rules." June 9, 2002: Swiss
Expo: Four Towns and a Barge. By Corinne LaBalme. The New York Times
(no-fee reg. req'd). "Through Oct. 20, the Swiss National Exposition
brings the country into the 21st century spotlight. The last Swiss Expo
was held in Lausanne in 1964, but the current fete breaks the single-site
tradition by spreading out to four lakeside towns -- Neuchatell, Biel,
Murten and Yverdon-les-Bains.... Neuchatel celebrates science and high-tech
poetry with exhibits on artificial intelligence, robotics and life in
2022." June 8, 2002: Thinking
computers must hallucinate, too. By David Gelernter. The Straits Times
/ also
available from The Taipei Times (6/15/02). "Creating a computer
that 'thinks' is one goal of artificial-intelligence research. ... The
single most important fact about thought follows from an obvious observation:
these four styles are connected. We can label them 'analysi'', 'common
sense', 'free association' and 'dreaming'. But the key point is that they
are four points on a single, continuous spectrum, with analysis at one
end and dreaming at the other. Psychologists and computer scientists like
to talk about analysis and common sense as if they were salt and steel,
or apples and oranges. We would do better to think of them as red and
yellow, separated not by some sharp boundary, but by a continuous range
of red-oranges and orange-yellows." June 7, 2002: Goodmortgage.com
anticipates growth, plans new line. By J.C. Zoghby. Charlotte Business
Journal. "Buoyed by a strong refinance market and the mobility of
Americans, Charlotte-based Goodmortgage.com survived the dot-com crash
and is growing quickly, says founder Keith Luedeman. The online mortgage
lender recently unveiled Loan Advisor, a software that uses artificial
intelligence to help consumers decide which loan best fits their needs.
Luedeman says it has quickly become one of the most popular pages on the
company's Web site." June 6, 2002: DOD
Looks Closer at Promising Technologies. By Dawn S. Onley Government
Computer News /
also available from The Washington Post. "Nearly eight months
after it released a request to industry for help developing technologies
to combat terrorism, the Defense Department will now take the next step.
... The chosen ideas for which the group sought white papers included:
a system that, using an integrated database and data mining tools, could
identify patterns and trends of terrorist groups and predict their behavior...." June 6, 2002: Can
the Net Even Be Made Safe for Kids? By Anne Ju, Medill News Service
/ available from PCWorld. "After court strikes site-blocking law,
debate rises over whether software or laws can do the job. ...The technology
simply doesn't exist, says the Censorware Project's [Jim] Tyre. 'If you
want to create sufficiently accurate filtering software, you need a leap
in artificial intelligence technology,' in which each blocked Web page
would be monitored every day to assure that no sites were blocked mistakenly,
he says. But Gordon Ross, head of filtering software maker Net Nanny International,
says today's technological shortfalls in filtering shouldn't cloud the
fact that future technical solutions will likely solve the impasse defined
by last week's ruling." June 6, 2002: Text - Senate
Judiciary Committee Hearing (Part I). The New York Times (no-fee reg.
req'd). "Following is part one of the Senate Judiciary Committee
hearing on counterterrorism on June 6, 2002, as recorded by Federal News
Service Inc." EXCERPT: "MR. MUELLER: I believe it would have
been helpful. And one of the things that I have stated on many occasions
is that what I would hope to have in the future is the technology and
the computer system that would better enable us to do exactly that type
of search. It is very cumbersome, very difficult, for a variety of reasons,
given our technology, to do that kind of search now. My hope in the future
is to have the kind of Soundex searching capability that would give an
agent the capability of pulling out any EC relating to aviation. And beyond
that, my hope is that we would have a capability of some form of artificial
intelligence so we wouldn't have to make the query; the technology itself
would alert us to those commonalities. SEN. LEAHY: Well that, of course,
is something that a number of us on this committee have been urging the
FBI to do for years, I mean long before you came there. And I really think
it's very much -- as I've said at other hearings -- very much of an Achilles'
heel that you can't do the kind of things that all of us are used to doing
on our computers if we're looking for the best buy on an airplane ticket
or something we want to purchase." June 5, 2002: FBI's
most wanted: new IT priorities. Commentary by Dan Farber. ZDNet. "The
private sector figured out a long time ago that technology leveraged smartly
provides a competitive edge. And the government, with its various, sometimes
competing domestic and international agencies, has not been able to leverage
the massive technology investment funded by tax dollars. On NBC's 'Meet
the Press' a few days ago, FBI Director Mueller said that 'it would be
nice if we had the computers in the FBI that were tied into the CIA that
you could go in and [search on] 'flight schools,' and any report relating
to flight schools that had been generated anyplace in the FBI field offices
would spit out." He went on to proclaim the need for artificial intelligence
that could offer more predictive technology. Perhaps he could give the
NSA or CIA a call. Clearly, FBI management needs to make IT a priority
within the agency and with the Congressional committees that approve funding."
[readers' comments follow the article.] June 4, 2002:
Getting a Kick Out of Bots. By Lakshmi Sandhana. Wired News. [ 7 fascinating
photos accompany the article.] "Coinciding with the World Cup, being
held in Japan and Korea, Robocup 2002 is the largest-ever international
football competition for robots, attracting over 200 teams from about
30 different countries. Divided into five leagues, ranging from small-sized
robots to humanoid and four-legged ones, the event is designed to accelerate
the union between robotics and artificial intelligence. Totally autonomous,
these free-spirited bots decide strategies and play games up to 20 minutes
long, with human involvement limited to refereeing from the side." June 3, 2002: Handwriting
apps emerge from Intel China. BusinessWeek. "The company's software
and solutions group in Shanghai is working on software that lets PCs more
readily understand shapes and visual patterns, which should ease the burden
managing images, handwritten notes and other real world data. ... The
push to develop visually intelligent software -- which is taking place
across the industry -- comes largely because the real world isn't always
Qwerty-keyboard friendly. The vast number of characters in Asian languages,
combined with the multiplicity of dialects, has made computer input here
one of the salient problems. ... Company researchers in Shanghai and Russia
have created two software tool kits that detect scene changes or anomalies
in compressed video. ... In the consumer market, applications based on
the tool kit will allow users to more easily find relevant moments in
video streams and e-mail them without first decompressing the data. In
the commercial market, pattern recognition could make it easier to find
break-ins or other out-the-of-ordinary occurrences." June 2, 2002: 'The
Turk': The Automaton That Conquered Napoleon (at Chess). By Dick Teresi.
The New York Times Book Review (no-fee reg. req'd). " Kempelen unveiled
the automaton in 1770 before Maria Theresa. As he would do at every performance,
Kemplen revealed the Turk's inner workings. He opened the leftmost door
to show 'an elaborate mechanism of densely packed wheels, cogs, levers
and clockwork machinery, prominent among which was a large horizontal
cylinder with a complex configuration of protruding studs on its surface.'
(Previously [Tom] Standage had told us about automatons that could write,
draw, or play music by way of cams, spindles and spring-loaded levers.)
... Standage mixes in bits about early artificial intelligence, the Industrial
Revolution, the power loom, the telephone and inventors of automatons
as if the Turk were a part of all that. There is a long digression on
Charles Babbage and his Difference Engine, the first mechanical computer...." June 2002: Sex
Differences in the Brain. By Doreen Kimura. Scientific American -
Special Issue: The
Hidden Mind. "Any behavioral differences between individuals
or groups must somehow be mediated by the brain. Sex differences have
been reported in brain structure and organization, and studies have been
done on the role of sex hormones in influencing human behavior. But questions
remain regarding how hormones act on human brain systems to produce the
sex differences we described, such as in play behavior or in cognitive
patterns." June 1, 2002: Science
fiction made real - Calgary gathering showcases future technology.
By Feroza Master. Calgary Herald. "Nearly 30 different groups of
inventors, universities and firms from across the country took part in
the three-day conference that wrapped up Friday, sponsored by Precarn
and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, managed by Precarn.
Both are networks of high-technology companies and universities. Intelligent
systems -- machines like Jose that can observe, collect data, analyse
it and make decisions -- are the thing of the future, said Precarn's president
and CEO, Anthony Eyton. ... Robots aren't the only machines that are classified
as intelligent systems. In oilsands mining, an infrared camera can take
a picture that identifies different substances and can indicate how much
bitumen -- raw oil -- is in the rock, to an accuracy level of plus or
minus five per cent. This Intelligent Sensing Systems for Oil and Mining
Industries developed by the Alberta Research Council is faster than the
old way of collecting and analysing samples in a lab. And researchers
at Simon Fraser University and the University of Toronto are working on
ways for doctors to learn laproscopic surgery -- making small incisions
in the body to operate using a mini-camera and a cutting tool -- through
computer simulation instead of operating on animal organs and live pigs." June 1, 2002: Designed
for life. Duncan Graham-Rowe interviews Rodney Brooks. New Scientist.
Here's a sample of the questions posed: Some critics might accuse you
of getting religious when you talk about this mystical 'stuff' out there;
Will these robots still be driven by conventional computing; Can we have
these machines without creating a new slave trade; and, AI and robotics
have a long history of military funding. Are you worried about what happens
to your research? June 1, 2002: Computer
Tutor. By Elaine Jacobs. Indiana Gazette. "But during the past
school year, some local students had the chance to try something new online
- a writing-assessment program that electronically scores their work and
offers guidance on how they can improve. The program, called MY Access,
'learned' how to analyze writing from humans... The computer system can
analyze the writing because, for each prompt, data from 200 to 300 essays
analyzed by teachers were input into the system, [Kevin] Callahan said.
Using that data, the system developed its own algorithm for scoring, what
Vantage calls its artifical-intelligence scoring method. Scores come back
seconds after the student submits an essay." June 2002: Whatever
You Say. With speech-recognition software, your voice is the computer's
command. By W. Wayt Gibbs. Scientific American. "Indeed, IBM announced
in March that it is increasing the number of researchers working on speech
technologies. Its ambitious, decade-long goal is to build systems that
can reliably transcribe (and act on) normal conversations taking place
in noisy rooms among people whose voices the computer has never been exposed
to before. 'We now have more than 100 researchers working on speech technologies,'
says David Nahamoo, who manages that group at IBM Research, 'and a similar
number working on natural-language understanding.'" |
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