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October 31, 2003:
'Matrix'
has altered filmmaking forever. By Bill Muller. The Arizona Republic.
"'I need an exit.' That's the ultimate 911 call in The Matrix when
things have fallen apart and a character must escape. Now, with next
Wednesday's release of The Matrix Revolutions, the trilogy ends and
the quintessential escapist fare seeks its own exit. ... Perhaps the
largest misconception about The Matrix is that it's completely original.
While the elements of the story are arranged in a fresh way, the themes
of alternate realities and machines run amok have been staples among
science-fiction writers for years. In Di Filippo's essay in Exploring
the Matrix, he identifies numerous literary precedents, notably the
work of Philip K. Dick.... Di Filippo predicts that the next sci-fi
breakthrough will tap into the 'posthuman' craze sweeping current science
fiction - stories that contemplate a future in which humans combine
with machines to create new beings. Such tales are spun by authors such
as Greg Egan (Diaspora) and Charles Stross (Toast)." October 30, 2003:
On the Road
to a Great I.T. Career. By Michael Y. Park. NewsFactor Network.
"You just turned 22 years old, your mom framed your computer science
degree and hung it on your bedroom wall, and your future has never looked
brighter. So what is the next professional step for a young man or woman
just entering I.T.? ... The truly skilled worker, [Mike] Busch continued,
'will be the person who can bridge technology and business and know
how to use technology to capture value in the business world.' For the
more traditional I.T. person, good choices would be research and development,
utility computing (IBM is spending US$5 billion on utility research
over the next five or six years) and on-demand computing -- all of which
will be 'a really big wave for the next five years,' says Busch. Also
promising are artificial intelligence and Web services." October 29, 2003:
What
if HAL had sued? Next News column by James M. Pethokoukis. U.S.
News & World Report. "In my previous 'Next News,' I pondered some
of the pros and cons of developing superintelligence -- artificial intelligence
that greatly exceeds the limits of human cognitive capabilities. The
possible downside of doing so is familiar to anyone who reads science
fiction or goes to sci-fi movies: supersmart machines that try to take
over the world or are otherwise harmful to humans. But what if the tables
were turned, and the machines were threatened by unfriendly humans?
At last month's International Bar Association conference in San Francisco,
that was the premise of a mock trial in which lawyers for an intelligent
computer sought a preliminary injunction to prevent a corporation from
disconnecting it." October 29, 2003:
Robots
to Gain Eyes in the Back of Their Heads. By Alexandra Hudson. Reuters.
"Providing a robot with 'omni-directional' vision could vastly
improve its navigational skills, the scientists told Reuters on Wednesday.
A report on their work is in the latest edition of the New Scientist
magazine. ... While humans can rely on sensors in their ears to navigate
themselves, many robots have to rely solely on their single eye. But
as computer scientists at the University of Maryland proved mathematically
in 1998, if robots could see in all directions they would not need any
other sensors." October 29, 2003:
Robot Rights.
By Glenn Harlan Reynolds. Tech Central Station. "'Robots are people,
too! Or at least they will be, someday.' That's the rallying cry of
the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots, and it's
beginning to become a genuine issue. We are, at present, a long way
from being able to create artificial intelligence systems that are as
good as human minds. But people are already beginning to talk about
the subject (the U.S. Patent Office has already issued a -- rather dubious
-- patent on ethical laws for artificial intelligences, and the International
Bar Association even sponsored a mock trial on robot rights last month)." October 29, 2003:
Artificial
intelligence pioneer ponders differences between computers and humans
- Computers will close the gap with humans on intellectual and creative
matters, he says. By Geoff Koch. Stanford Report. "Artificial intelligence
(AI) pioneer Nils Nilsson has spent a career thinking about the difference
between computers and human beings. His conclusion? 'There will always
be some difference between computers and human beings, but I think the
intellectual and even creativity differences ultimately will narrow,'
he said. October 29, 2003:
PerCom
Pervades R&D Centres At IIM-Kolkata, TCS, Infosys. By October 28, 2003:
People
Are Robots, Too. Almost. JPL News. "Biologically inspired robots
aren't just an ongoing fascination in movies and comic books; they are
being realized by engineers and scientists all over the world. While
much emphasis is placed on developing physical characteristics for robots,
like functioning human-like faces or artificial muscles, engineers in
the Telerobotics Research and Applications Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are among those working to program robots
with forms of artificial intelligence similar to human thinking processes.
... [Dr. Homayoun] Seraji's group at JPL focuses on two of the many
approaches to implementing behavior-based control: fuzzy logic and neural
networks. The main difference between the two systems is that robots
using fuzzy logic perform with a set knowledge that doesn't improve;
whereas, robots with neural networks start out with no knowledge and
learn over time. ... With continuous advances in robotic methods like
behavior-based control, future space missions might be able to function
without relying heavily on human commands. On the home front, similar
technology is already used in many practical applications such as digital
cameras, computer programs, dishwashers, washing machines and some car
engines. The post office even uses neural networks to read handwriting
and sort mail." October 28, 2003:
Therapists
turn to toy animals - Fluffy robots' healing effects on patients,
aged touted. The Japan Times. "Takayuki Kumasaka of the University
of Shizuoka is a leading proponent of the use of toy animals in 'animal
therapy' to produce healing effects in patients in hospitals and residents
of nursing homes. ... Kumasaka is particular about utilizing robots
and toys, because real animals can carry infectious diseases or cause
injury or accidents. In the course of carrying out his research, he
introduced a robotic seal named Palo to the pediatrics ward of Tsukuba
University hospital three years ago and confirmed its soothing effect
on hospitalized children. He conducted animal therapy in late August
to find a similar result on the elderly using a 5,900 yen 'welfare toy'
dubbed Otomodachikku Wanchan (Friendly Dog). ... Kumasaka said he ultimately
hopes to introduce toys as substitutes for live animals in hospital
wards caring for cancer patients as a means to relieve their pain." October 28, 2003:
£40m
computer vision adds up to 7500 jobs. By Fiona MacGregor. Edinburgh
Evening News. "A new £40 million hi-tech centre at a city university
is set to create more than 7500 jobs in the Capital within 15 years.
Plans for Silicon Power House, a facility which will bring together
expertise in communications and computer technology, have been unveiled
by Edinburgh University. ... The new centre, scheduled for completion
by 2007, is seen as evidence of Edinburgh University's leading role
within Europe in the new science of informatics, which includes computer
science, artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Professor Michael
Fourman, head of the university's school of informatics, said: 'As computers
develop, we are more able to expand them in a way that adapts computers
to respond to people. To do that we need to under-stand more about how
people respond to things as well as how computers respond. One of the
things people are looking at is language which allows us to build machines
that can speak in a way that is more human, not just in terms of sound
but also content.'" October 27: 2003:
New
police cars have voice recognition. The Associated Press / available
from CNN. "A police officer sees a bank robbery suspect speed by
and says "pursuit." Automatically, the cruiser's blue lights, siren,
flashing headlights and video camera turn on. The car also sends a message
to dispatch giving the location and saying the officer is chasing someone.
This voice-recognition system is not a prototype -- it's on patrol in
New Hampshire today, and if the robbery scenario were to occur, officers
could keep their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road instead of
fiddling with switches, buttons, dials and microphones as they weave
through traffic. It's called Project 54, after the 1960s police television
comedy 'Car 54, Where Are You?,' and its global positioning system even
answers the show title's question." October 27, 2003:
MapQuest explains modern journalism. By Geoff Koch, Columnist. The
Stanford Daily Online Edition. " After spending the week thinking
about artificial intelligence (AI), I've come to the following conclusion:
To understand what has gone wrong with American journalism over the
last few decades, just use MapQuest.com to plan your next trip. As it
happens, Stanford is a nice vantage point from which to survey both
the rise of AI work -- of which MapQuest is a small part -- and the
demise of good storytelling in journalism. I'll start with AI. In the
early 1960s, researchers at SRI International developed the A* algorithm
to automate the process of searching graphs for the shortest distance
between two points. A version of this algorithm powers the ever-popular
mapping applications on the Web today. ... Journalism fails when it
produces news the same way that MapQuest produces its directions. Too
often we apply our own version of the A* algorithm, plugging in facts,
turning the crank and churning entirely predictable articles out the
other end." October 27, 2003:
Beautiful
Swimmers - Little robots set out at a stately glide to explore the
oceans. By Charles W. Petit. U.S. News & World Report. "'Autonomous
underwater vehicles,' or AUVs, promise to cut the cost of tracking the
ocean's shifting chemistry, currents, temperatures, nutrients, and other
factors critical to weather, climate, and fisheries. ... To Naomi Leonard,
an engineer at Princeton University, Slocums, Sprays, and their kin
have an almost living grace. 'What beautiful creatures they are,' she
says. The day she launched several Slocum gliders into Monterey Bay
to track a thermal front where warm and cold waters meet and predators
gather to feed, it was easy to imagine that these robots are another
species of sea life. As the gliders went in, about 200 dolphins cavorted
around her boat. Leonard wants to add to the resemblance. To enable
AUVs to work together in groups without supervision, her team is developing
cunning software for the onboard computers, inspired in part by the
way schools of fish and flocks of birds move in concert." October 26, 2003:
Drive
safely in a car with the gift of the gab. By Christina Stoke. Scotland
on Sunday. "A talking car capable of warning motorists if they
are driving badly or about to fall asleep at the wheel is being developed
by Scottish scientists. The vehicle uses the latest advances in voice
recognition and computerised speech to achieve levels of interaction
between car and driver previously only seen in action dramas such as
the Knight Rider television series and the James Bond film The World
is Not Enough, which featured a smooth-talking BMW. ... Dr Oliver Lemon,
of the University of Edinburgh's Human Communication Research Centre,
is working with BMW and Bosch on the vehicle. ... One of the greatest
potential breakthroughs the system offers is using analysis of the way
the car is being driven to give the motorist warning that an accident
could be imminent. Lemon said this can be achieved because the car will
be able to analyse emotions as well as voice commands." October 25, 2003:
Alien hunt
in space may score by 2025. By Michael Woods. Post-Gazette. "The
leading experts in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence at the
SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., recently completed the most
systematic calculations ever performed on when the human race is likely
to contact intelligent alien life for the first time. Their answer:
within 22 years. And they suspect that our first interstellar interlocutor
might end up being a super-intelligent machine rather than anything
biological. Seth Shostak unveiled SETI's predictions at an international
astronomy conference in Germany earlier this month. He and co-author
Alexandra Barnett will go public with their findings Nov. 1 when their
new book, "Cosmic Company: The Search for Life in the Universe," is
published by Cambridge University Press. ... Shostak...thinks humans
are likely first to contact super-intelligent machines -- machines capable
of reproducing themselves that have come to dominate their planets.
They may view biological life forms much as humans view domestic pets
or wildlife. 'It's entirely possible that biological intelligence is
just one step on the road to another kind of intelligence -- machines
100,000 times smarter than humans that take control,' he said." October 24, 2003:
Students Compete
in $50K Inventors Contest. By Dan Wolpow. The Cornell Daily Sun.
"Two Cornell graduate students and a Cornell research assistant
have advanced to the final round of the Collegiate Inventors Competition.
Keith Aubin grad, Robert Reichenbach grad and research assistant Maxim
Zalautidinov created a dome-shaped micromechanical oscillator, a device
that would enable many electronic devices, especially telecommunication
technologies, to be produced at smaller sizes with more efficient performances.
... [Zalautidinov] believes their new oscillator could open doors in
the field of artificial intelligence, aiding in the creation of circuits
capable of advancing the A.I. technology. 'That's the most interesting
thing to me,' Zalautidinov said. ... The competition, now in its 14th
year, is committed to recognizing outstanding achievement in both undergraduate
and graduate inventions." October 23, 2003:
Human
possibilities. By Jim McClellan. The Guardian. "'Tell me a
joke.' A small audience sits in front of a big screen waiting for a
response to pop up. A short pause - then some type flickers up onscreen.
'Why did the chicken cross the road?' A slight groan from the audience.
A reply is dutifully typed up. 'I don't know - why did the chicken cross
the road?' Another pause. Up on screen, more type appears. 'Because
it was stapled to the elephant.' Welcome to the Loebner prize contest,
an annual attempt to find the world's most 'human-seeming' chatbot.
A chatbot is a program designed imitate human conversation in text form.
This year's event took place at the University of Surrey. ... At the
end of the afternoon, as expected, the two humans came out top, though
rather perplexingly, one judge decided that both only rated one on a
scale of five when it came to seeming human. (The same judge gave all
the bots one, as well.) The chatbot that came next (and hence won) was
Jabberwock, created by Juergen Pirner, a German publisher of fantasy
and science fiction. ... Organiser Lynn Hamill, of Surrey University's
Digital World Research Centre, says she saw the contest as an amusing
way of advancing the interests of the Centre, which was set up to look
at the way people and technologies interact. 'The Loebner prize is a
useful way of getting people to think about these things,' she says,
adding that it may help AI research in general." October 23, 2003:
Plumbing
Depths of Data Mining. By Noah Shachtman. Wired News. "On this,
everyone in the gold-tinged, eagle-frescoed Senate conference room agreed:
Federal authorities badly want to be able to comb the data trails of
ordinary people in order to spot terrorists. But what -- if any -- limits
should be put on that frighteningly invasive power? A panel of lawmakers,
think tankers, data miners and civil libertarians assembled here Tuesday
couldn't even begin to make up their minds." October 23, 2003:
Lessons
programmed with fun in 'Robotics'. By Michael Machosky. Tribune-Review
/ available from PIttsburghLIVE.com. "[M]ore than 3 million people
in North America, most of them kids, most likely got their first chance
to see robots up close in the Carnegie Science Center's traveling 'Robots'
exhibit. 'We are the only Science Center in the history of mankind who
has traveled their robotics exhibit,' says Tom Flaherty, the center's
director of exhibits and facilities, who helped assemble it. ... The
exhibit is divided into seven areas: Introduction to Robots, Sensing,
Thinking, Acting, Applications, Robotic Research and Kids Zone. ...
Drawing on CMU's vast expertise in robotics, the exhibit also features
Dante II, which has completed a mission deep in the bowels of a volcano.
Another CMU robot, Terregator, is described as the world's first autonomous
mobile robot...." October 23, 2003:
The
Final Frontier - Blacks in Space. October 22, 2003:
Landmark
invention. By Scott Warren and Stephanie Brooking. Blue Mountains
Gazette. "Forget about the space age, artificial intelligence could
be among us in the near future thanks to a Glenbrook man who has developed
a robot prototype able to perform up to 16 tasks at once. The technology,
developed by Glenbrook's Dr Peter Hill, allows the robots to modify
their behaviour according to the situation. The program also mimics
a human approach to a problem, launching multiple tasks with any excess
capacity, a problem solving trait commonly attributed to women. 'We
deliberately chose mimic the female rather than the male mind. The distinct
differences in the way women prioritise and work, in particular the
ability to start new tasks while others are still in progress, is important
in this field of producing new technology.' Dr Hill said." October 22, 2003:
Alaska
adopts crime data mining. By Dibya Sarkar. FCW.com. "A consortium
of Alaskan law enforcement agencies today announced a new information
sharing initiative that uses the commercially-available Coplink system
to analyze disparate pieces of data for investigative leads. ... Coplink,
created in 1998 at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University
of Arizona at Tucson, can churn through vast quantities of unstructured
information from various databases -- such as sex offender, gang-related,
mug shots, records management system, court citations, tax records,
and even pawn broker records -- to detect trends." October 22, 2003:
Chief 'Dismayed'
at Level of Investment in Robots. By Owen Fairclough. The Press
Association / available from Scotsman.com. "The United Kingdom
is lagging far behind the rest of the world in its use of robot technology,
industry experts warned today. The British Automation and Robot Association
(BARA) said new figures from the UN showed that UK investment in the
field plummeted by 61% last year, but increased across the globe by
26%. The organisation, based at the University of Warwick, has called
on the Government to provide more financial support for manufacturers
willing to use the machines." October 22, 2003:
Oracle database
targets smaller businesses. By Martin LaMonica. CNET News. "Oracle
on Tuesday revealed features planned for its forthcoming Oracle 10g
database aimed at small and midsize businesses. Oracle 10g, slated for
release by the end of the calendar year, will offer self-management
features and quicker installation that will cut down on manual labor,
said Robert Shimp, Oracle's vice president of technology marketing.
... The company is adding diagnostics and performance tuning to the
database, which will cut down on the amount of work required by database
administrators, Oracle said. The self-management features are based
on an artificial intelligence system developed in Oracle's research
department, Shimp said." October 21, 2003:
Lecture
aims to shed light on artificial intelligence. This is Wiltshire.
"[T]he debate over whether computers can think has raged for
more than 50 years. The subject gets another airing at the University
of Bath in Swindon's Oakfield campus tomorrow when Professor Max Bramer
gives the next in the public lecture series. In a wide-ranging talk
called A History of Artificial Intelligence, Professor Bramer will
explore some of the pre-history of the artificial intelligence debate
which he says can be traced back to Greek and Roman mythology and
will also bring us right up to date with modern applications such
as those used in modern warfare and notable examples from science
fiction." October 21, 2003:
The
Web - Search engines still evolving. By Gene J. Koprowski. United
Press International. "[This is the second in a series of UPI
articles examining the current state and future prospects of the global
communications and data network known as the Internet.] Using a combination
of statistical mathematics, heuristics, artificial intelligence and
new computer languages, researchers are developing a 'Semantic Web,'
as it is called, which responds to online queries more effectively.
The new tools are enabling users -- now on internal corporate networks
and, within a year, on the global Internet -- to search using more
natural language queries. To make the Web more people-friendly, scientists
are striving to make documents placed online more machine-readable.
... Computer scientists also are employing artificial intelligence
for the Semantic Web, James Lester, chief scientist and chairman of
LiveWire Logic in Research Triangle Park, N.C., a linguistic software
agent developer, told UPI. 'People use natural language to communicate,'
Lester said, 'but that's not the way it is for computers.' Since the
1950s, computer scientists have been developing ways to represent
knowledge so computers can draw inferences from information, he explained.
Agreed-upon encoding will enable machines to understand each document." October 21, 2003:
Home
invasion fuels robot explosion. By Matthew Clark. ElectricNews.net.
"According to a new report from the UN Economic Commission for
Europe and the International Federation of Robotics, 80,000 robots
were sold globally between January and June. 'These figures indicate
that a strong recovery is in sight,' the report said, noting that
the global robot market contracted by 12 percent last year. ...In
2002, sales of 'domestic robots,' which mainly include automated lawnmowers
and vacuum cleaners, jumped to 33,000 from 20,000 the year before.
By 2006, there will be as many as 400,000 vacuum-cleaning robots in
service globally and 125,000 smart lawnmowers. In terms of entertainment,
sales of robotic toys, like Sony's AIBO dog, should reach 1.5 million
by 2006, or almost three times the current 550,000 level." October 21, 2003
[release date]: Household
robots are starting to take off. UNECE issues its 2003 World Robotics
survey. Press release issued by the United Nations Economic Commission
for Europe. October 21, 2003:
Farewell
lawnmower... hello robot. BBC. "More and more people are
turning to robots to do their household chores, such as mowing lawns
and vacuuming carpets, according to a survey. Demand for robots jumped
by a unprecedented 26% in the first half of 2003 from a year ago,
said the annual World Robotics Survey released on Tuesday. While industrial
robots continue to dominate the market, sales in domestic robots saw
the biggest rises." October 21, 2003:
Balancing
Utility With Privacy. By Mark Baard. Wired News. "Last week
at UbiComp 2003, a ubiquitous computing conference in Seattle, many
engineers confronted the damage their technology might cause to personal
privacy. 'The more awareness you have in the system,' said one engineer
who asked not to be named, 'the less privacy you're going to have.
That's the trade-off.' Sociologists and anthropologists at the conference
also worried that human memory, which can be flexible and forgiving,
will be supplanted by the memory banks of ubiquitous computing systems.
No human act, no matter how benign or foolish or cruel, will escape
the binary memory and cold interpretation of an artificially intelligent
computer. 'People are showing me spatulas and frying pans with RFID
(radio frequency identification) tags on them, and AI (artificial
intelligence) systems that can infer when you're making an omelet,'
said Carleton University sociologist Anne Galloway. 'And that's fine.
But think of all the embarrassing things we do that we would like
to forget. With everything stored on a disk somewhere, that will be
extremely difficult.' ... 'We have a diverse group of people developing
the technology, and many of the scientists here are especially sensitive
about privacy issues,' said Volodymyr Kindratenko, a research scientist
at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications." October 21, 2003:
AU
search engine takes aim at Google. ZDNet Australia. "An Australian
company plans to tackle Google's stranglehold on the domestic Web
searching market. The company, Mooter Search , claims it will differentiate
itself by offering 'users a more intelligent and 'humanised' approach
to finding information' in a grab for the growing online search market.
In what it claims is an implementation of 'artificial intelligence',
the Mooter search engine groups together information in logical clusters,
which is designed to save time." October 20, 2003:
Computer
games may aid medical care - Machine learning assists local cancer
institute. By Larry Johnsrude. The Edmonton Journal / available from
Canada.com. "The $10-billion computer game industry generates
more money than Hollywood and could soon replace movies as a favoured
source of entertainment, says Robert Holte, a computer science professor
at the University of Alberta. ... 'There are any number of areas where
research done in a computer games environment can be applied to the
real world,' he told a conference in Edmonton of the Alberta Heritage
Foundation for Medical Research. ... The same technology that moves
a computer-generated warrior through a maze of blocked pathways and
dead ends can be used to find the quickest route for an ambulance
to get to a hospital, he said. Holte, who also works for the Alberta
Ingenuity Centre for Machine Learning, said one of the centre's projects
applies the technology from electronic poker to breast cancer research.
'Machine learning' involves feeding historical information into a
data bank that the computer uses to build rules on which to make decisions,
he explained." October 20, 2003:
German
chatty bot is 'most human'. By Jo Twist. BBC. "A German computer
program has chatted its way to first place in the Loebner Prize for
human-like communication. ... The event is based on the Turing Test,
which suggests computers could be seen as intelligent if their chat
was indistinguishable from those of humans. ... Jabberwock - not to
be confused with Britain's Jabberwacky - was named the 'most human'
program, winning its German creator Juergen Pirner the bronze medal." October 20, 2003:
CMU team
tackles the nuances of building a robot that 'understands' it is in
a race over rough country. By Byron Spice. Post-Gazette. "
Can you teach a robot to lean into a curve? Can a speedy robotic vehicle
sense when it is about to spin out? And in a race between robots,
how does one know when to pass the other? No one, or at least a select
few, had contemplated such questions as of a year ago. But with the
start of a $1 million, winner-take-all race across the California-Nevada
desert less than 150 days away, these suddenly are questions that
not only are being asked but answered. The Defense Advanced Research
Project Agency, which is sponsoring the race...." October 20, 2003:
Honda develop
Robocopter. Ananova. "Scientists say they have developed
the world's first unmanned helicopter that's flown entirely by artificial
intelligence. ... Spokesman Martin Moll said: 'The helicopter is amazing
it really is a breakthrough in artificial intelligence.'" October 20, 2003:
A Slithering
Lifesaver. By David Wolman. Newsweek / available from MSNBC. "Many
of the 6,000 people who died in the 1995 earthquake in the Japanese
city of Kobe might have been saved if only rescuers had had a faster
way to find them in the rubble. Robotics engineer Fumitoshi Matsuno,
grieving over a student who was lost in the disaster, went straight
to the drawing board. What type of machine, he wondered, could negotiate
a maze of collapsed girders and cinder blocks without getting stuck
or falling over? Late last month he demonstrated his solution: a robotic
snake." October 19, 2003:
Safe
drinking water a mouse-click away - Epcor testing program to monitor
the water quality in several communities from one computer room. By
Hanneke Brooymans. The Edmonton Journal / available from Canada.com.
"From the control room at Epcor's Rossdale plant, a computer
loaded with artificial intelligence software obsesses about the water
quality in Port Hardy, B.C. The computer frets about chlorine, water
colour and a multitude of other properties, making sure the water
meets provincial standards. If it finds something amiss, it adjusts
the chemicals in the cheapest way possible. This remote-monitoring
capability -- combined with Epcor's regional pipeline, which sends
centrally treated water to about 40 neighbouring communities -- is
a model that Alberta Environment dreams of replicating throughout
this province." October 18, 2003:
Shoot
for the stars. By Edmund Tadros. The Sydney Morning Herald. "Hutchinson,
like game players everywhere, used to think, 'If I had made this game,
I would have ...' Now that the he is director of design at Victorian
games company Torus, Hutchinson, 26, ensures that, among other things,
the opponents in his first-person shooter are more wily. 'A goal we
had for the new game was to have squad-based artificial intelligence
so that every character in the group was aware of the other characters,'
he says. 'So if you kill the leader of a squad of soldiers, it has
an effect upon the others' morale.' It's this sort of hard-core gamer
knowledge that makes Hutchinson's job as a game designer a dream come
true for him." October 18, 2003:
Art
and Science Meet With Novel Results. By Emily Eakin. The New York
Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "'Radiant Cool' has the makings of
a gripping noir thriller: a missing body, a tough-talking female sleuth
and a mustachioed Russian agent mixed up in a shadowy plot to take
over the world. But the novel, by Dan Lloyd, a neurophilosopher at
Trinity College in Hartford, is also a serious work of scholarship,
the unlikely vehicle for an abstruse new theory of consciousness.
... Of course, Mr. Lloyd is not alone in using literary techniques
to convey difficult scientific ideas. Michael Frayn's play 'Copenhagen'
(1998) made high drama of atomic physics, just as David Auburn's 'Proof'
(2000) and Tom Stoppard's 'Arcadia' (1993) did of advanced mathematics.
At the Sundance Film Festival this year 'Dopamine,' a romantic comedy
about computer programmers and artificial intelligence, won the Alfred
P. Sloan Foundation's first $20,000 prize for the best feature film
about science and technology. ... In addition to Mr. Lloyd's novel,
this fall M.I.T. Press is publishing 'Turing (A Novel about Computation)'
by Christos H. Papadimitriou, a professor of computer science at the
University of California at Berkeley. ... Mr. [Alan P.] Lightman,
perhaps the best known author of the lot, argues that 'what's happening
now is somewhat of a return to a more holistic approach to human inquiry.'
For most of the last century, such an idea would have been unthinkable.
The arts and the sciences were seen as separate countries with hostile
borders and few foreign tourists. In the influential formulation of
the physicist C. P. Snow, they were 'two cultures.' And between them,
he argued in a famous 1959 lecture on the subject, lay 'a gulf of
mutual incomprehension -- sometimes (particularly among the young)
hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding.' The
schism is also a peculiarly modern phenomenon." October 18, 2003:
University
forges links with Dubai counterpart. Edinburgh Evening News /
available from Scotsman.com News. "Edinburgh University is linking
up with counterparts in the Middle East to launch a new institute
into the study of artificial intelligence and computer science. University
leaders were due to rubber-stamp the agreement to create the Institute
of Informatics with the British University in Dubai today." October 17, 2003:
Litigation
support on trial - The use of technology as a support tool for
lawyers has made unimaginable strides in the past 30 years, to the
point where there is now an expectation on the part of clients that
such technology will be used. By Julian Baker. Legal Week. "Optical
character recognition (OCR) has now reached the point where there
is still a small margin of error, but where it adds significant value
in terms of being able to search the full text of any typewritten
document which has been scanned in. An interesting development is
the use of artificial intelligence-based software to automatically
identify common themes and concepts within a large quantity of documents
with only a minimal amount of information being indexed manually.
... Products such as Autonomy and the LexisNexis/ Dolphin search solutions
enable full text concept searching by automating the categorisation
and cross-referencing of information. They employ advanced pattern
matching technology to extract the digital characteristics which give
a document meaning and are able to relate documents which have similar
meanings." October 17, 2003:
Simple
Science - FSU's Compton Center features 41 laboratories. By Sam
Shawver. Cumberland Times-News. "Nearly nine years in the making,
the Compton Science Center [at Frostburg State University] opened
to students for the first time this fall. ... [Professor Fred] Senese
said an 'artificial intelligence chemistry tutoring center' will also
be made available to local students from the lab. 'High school or
college students can access the Web site and it will coach them through
their chemistry problems,' he said." October 16, 2003:
Digging
for Nuggets of Wisdom. By Lisa Guernsey. The New York Times (no
fee reg. req'd.). "'There is just too much literature to be able
to go through it all,' said Dr. [Michael] Liebman, the director of
biomedical informatics at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute
at the University of Pennsylvania. Yet Dr. Liebman is convinced that
new cures could someday emerge for breast cancer if only someone could
read all the literature and synthesize it. So he has found a solution:
enlisting a computer program to read the articles for him. 'The software
is not going to get tired,' he said. It also happens to be a speed
reader: The product he is using, from a Chicago-based software company
called SPSS, can zip through 250,000 pages an hour. Another product,
from the text-mining company ClearForest, boasts a speed of 15,000
pages an hour, still far surpassing the human rate of a mere 60 pages.
... [S]earch engines are merely retrieving information, displaying
lists of documents that contain certain keywords. Text-mining programs
go further, categorizing information, making links between otherwise
unconnected documents and providing visual maps (some look like tree
branches or spokes on a wheel) to lead users down new pathways that
they might not have been aware of." October 16, 2003:
Talking
computers boost Ghana's blind. By Kwaku Sakyi-Addo. BBC. "
In a small, tidy air-conditioned room with about 10 computers, the
users have headphones on, but their heads aren't bobbing to an MP3
download of the latest Afro-Jazz hit. ... A special screen-reader
software enables them to listen, rather than see, what they are generating
on the screen. Because they are blind. ... One of the new students
is Cephas Torkonoo, 31, a staff of the treasury department of a well-known
bank in Accra until two years ago when he lost his sight to meningitis.
'I lost my sight, I lost my job, I lost my fiancee, and I'm about
to lose my place at the university too,' he said. ... 'I'm optimistic
about the future for all blind people. I can see light at the end.
With technology we can do a lot.'" October 2003: The
Future of Intelligent Technology and Its Impact on Disabilities.
Speaker's Corner column by Ray Kurzweil. Journal of Visual Impairment
& Blindness (Volume 97, Number 10). "By 2010, computers will
disappear. ... We will also have relatively powerful (but not human
level) artificial intelligence (AI) on web sites - artificial personalities
such as the avatar-like Ramona, who greets visitors and answers questions
at the KurzweilAI.net web site. For people who are hearing impaired,
we will have systems that provide subtitles around the world. We're
getting close to the point where speaker-independent speech recognition
will become common. ... We will also have listening systems that will
allow deaf persons to understand what people are saying. For people
who are blind, we will have reading machines within a few years that
are not just sitting on a desk, but are tiny devices you put in your
pocket. ... [W]e have many systems in our societies that already can
perform intelligently in narrow areas. We have hundreds of examples
of these machines. ... We have some systems that can diagnose blood-cell
images, others that automatically make financial decisions involving
stock-market investments. In fact, $1 trillion in stock-market investments
use these systems. ... We are going to enhance our own intelligence
by getting closer and closer to machine intelligence -- and that's
already happening. There are many people walking around now who are
essentially cyborgs and have computers in their brains interfacing
with their biological neurons." October 16, 2003:
'Emotional'
Robot Goes on Display. By Owen Fairclough. PA News / available
from Scotsman.com. "The designer of a pioneering robot capable
of showing emotions were putting the finishing touches to his creation
today before it goes on public display for the first time. The machine,
called eMo, will greet and interact with visitors to Birmingham's
Thinktank attraction when it is unveiled on October 25. As well as
expressing a range of human emotions from anger to happiness, eMo
is also programmed to respond to the moods of people it meets. ...
'Such machines may one day play an important role in our lives actually
responding to our moods,' Prof [Rod] Sharkey said." October 16, 2003:
Undersea
robot a dual-function first. By Deborah Smith. The Sydney Morning
Herald. "A world-first submersible robot developed in Australia,
and dubbed Oberon, has just returned from its maiden voyage surveying
parts of the Great Barrier Reef. The 150-kilogram Oberon is one of
a range of 'autonomous machines' being developed by the Australian
Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney. The centre's
scientists were the first in the world to find a way for a robot to
map a new environment while keeping track of its own position." October 15, 2003:
Lucas
Fires Up Stealth. Sci Fi Wire. "Josh Lucas will star in Columbia
Pictures's upcoming futuristic action film Stealth, to be directed
by Rob Cohen (XXX), Variety reported. ... Designed as a summer tentpole
for 2005, Stealth is set in the naval air force of the near future
and tells the story of an artificial-intelligence pilot who is brought
aboard to learn combat skills from human pilots, when the A.I. pilot
begins to have ideas of his own, the trade paper reported." October
15, 2003: Computer
researchers on the prowl for human "common sense". The Associated
Press / available from NEPA News / also available from CNN (Teaching
computers to think. October 17, 2003). "Two Carnegie Mellon
University researchers using a Web site called the ESP Game [www.espgame.org]
are among a growing number nationwide tapping into human brains for
common knowledge that can be programmed into computers to improve
artificial intelligence. Grad student Luis von Ahn and his mentor,
computer science professor Manuel Blum, hope that search engines such
as Google and Alta Vista someday will adopt word labels generated
by their ESP Game to help computers see images more like the way humans
do. ... 'Computers don't know very much about the world - like that
clouds are fluffy, and the sky is blue, and people sleep at night.
It's called common-sense knowledge; that's actually a technical term,'
said Push Singh, a graduate student researcher at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. ... The Open Mind project, begun three years
ago (openmind.media.mit.edu) by Singh and others at MIT, solicits
common-sense information from visitors by asking them to supply underlying
"common-sense" facts that fit a given scenario." October 15, 2003:
Smart
software watches the skies - Intelligent agents may sound like
something out of The Matrix, but smart programs are helping astronomers
find out more about the Universe. BBC. "'What is so important
here is that we have developed an intelligent observing system,' said
Dr Alasdair Allan of the University of Exeter. 'It thinks and reacts
for itself, deciding whether something it has discovered is interesting
enough to need more observations. If more observations are needed,
it just goes ahead and gets them.' ... 'The Agents can detect and
respond to the rapidly changing universe faster than any human, and
make decisions to observe an object much faster than would otherwise
be possible,' explained Dr Allan." October
14, 2003: Imagining
Thought-Controlled Movement for Humans. By Sandra Blakeslee. The
New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Scientists at Duke University
reported yesterday in the first issue of the Public Library of Science,
a new journal with free online access at www.publiclibraryofscience.org,
that a monkey with electrodes implanted in its brain could move a
robot arm, much as if it were moving its own arm. ... The ability
to make machines that respond to thoughts rests on some fundamental
properties of the nervous system. The brains of monkeys plan every
movement the body carries out fractions of seconds before the movements
actually occur. Motor plans are in the form of electrical patterns
which arise from cells that fire at the same time, from various parts
of the brain. The plans are sent to spinal cord neurons that have
direct access to muscles. Only then are movements carried out. To
link brains and machines, researchers place electrodes directly into
parts of the brain that produce motor plans. They extract raw electrical
signals that can be translated mathematically into signals that computers
and robots understand." October 14, 2003:
Leading
humanity forward. By A. Asohan. The Star (Malaysia). "The
whole idea of linking humans with machines has two aspects to it,
says [Professor Kevin] Warwick. 'First, we're working with people
with spinal injuries, like the Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Britain,
to see if the kind of technologies that we deal with, can help people
with one kind of disability or the other.' ... 'The second aspect
is looking at humans as we are now. Can we take technology and by
linking with it, create superhumans give ourselves abilities that
we don't simply have at the present time? We're looking at machines
and how they are intelligent, and asking what kind of features they
have that we humans do not, and questioning what we can gain by linking
much more closely to machines,' says Warwick Inevitably, the most
relevant technology in this idea is the computer. ... Thus his quest
to link the human brain to a machine mind. It's not a wholly new idea,
but certainly one that found new impetus in the 1980s with the cyberpunk
literary movement. Groundbreaking novels like William Gibson's Neuromancer
and the increasing pervasiveness of computer technology in our everyday
lives had even the most sober of scientists asking where our increasing
interdependence on technology, and possible integration with technology,
might lead the human race to. ... Warwick has been labelled a prophet
of doom by the tabloids, quoted as saying that machine intelligence
would overtake humans in the near-future. While he has been criticised
heavily for it by some members of the scientific community, on the
surface, his dire predictions are reminiscent of those expressed by
others, not the least of whom is Bill Joy, previously the chief scientist
of US network computer company Sun Microsystems Inc. ... Warwick argues
that it all depends on how one defines 'intelligence,' a task he attempted
in his book QI: The Quest for Intelligence. 'To me, intelligence
is a very basic thing. In my book QI, we tried to look at
what is intelligence - human intelligence, animal intelligence, machine
intelligence and tried to get the basics of it. The conclusion that
I would come to now is that it's the mental ability to sustain successful
life.' ... Of course, we humans like to pride ourselves on being conscious,
self-aware beings. Cogito, ergo sum I think, therefore
I am, said the 17th century philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes.
It's our edge over the machine - it may process information much faster
than us, but it is not aware of what it is it processes. That edge
is no big deal to Warwick's way of thinking. Indeed, he argues that
there is no evidence that being conscious - the way humans are - is
an effective protective mechanism." October 13, 2003:
Sony's
toddler robot makes strides. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News. "It
dances. It can hold a conversation. And in about a year, humanoid
robot Qrio will be knocking on doors, if Sony's plans fall into place.
Nobuyuki Idei, CEO of Sony, gave the first North American demonstration
of Qrio on Saturday as part of a speech he delivered to the Japan
Society of Northern California. ... Qrio--a toddler-sized machine
in an aluminum sleeper and a space helmet--can navigate an obstacle
course, right itself after a fall, sense heat and surfaces, recognize
people through their voice or face, and respond with gestures or words
to questions, according to Sony. At the end of Idei's speech, the
robot executed with fair fluidly what resembled an aerobics routine,
and answered some questions. 'I love California. It is the same voltage
as in Japan,' Qrio said. 'I just hope there are no blackouts during
my stay.' ... Qrio, which stands for quest plus curiosity - and also
calls to mind the word 'curio' - extends the capability of Aibo, the
pet robot Sony released a few years ago." October 13, 2003:
Microsoft
Toughens Up Outlook. By Michelle Delio. Wired News. "A new
version of Microsoft Outlook makes it harder for spammers and scammers
to invade users' computers through their e-mail. ... The new junk-mail
filter uses a neural decision engine, a simple form of artificial
intelligence, to train itself to recognize spam. It considers such
factors as the time the message was sent and the content and structure
of the message. The filter also learns to screen out spam based upon
what users identify as junk mail in their inbox and what messages
they mark as legitimate e-mail that ended up in their junk-mail folder
by mistake." October 13, 2003:
Martial
arts robots hit Asian tech fair. By Will Knight. New Scientist
News. "Humanoid robots capable of performing somersaults and
complex martial arts moves were demonstrated at Asia's largest electronics
and computing fair in Tokyo on Saturday. ... HOAP-2 is designed as
an aid to robotics research and therefore runs on open source, Linux-based
software. ... Frederic Kaplan, at Sony's robotics laboratory in France,
says making more agile robots is not the biggest challenge facing
robotics researchers at the moment. 'There are challenges in terms
of mechanics still, but the biggest gap would be in intelligence,'
he told New Scientist. 'One of the key things we are looking at now
is developmental robotics, where a robot learns.'" October 13, 2003:
Minnesota
carves e-recruiting path. By Dibya Sarkar. Federal Computer Week.
"It used to be a painstaking process for Minnesota's employee
relations department to field several thousand resumes a year, sort
through applicants' education, experience and skills for more than
100 state agencies, and hire qualified workers. Filling a vacancy
took nearly four months on average. But since 1995, the department
has created an automated recruiting and hiring platform by customizing
a version of a Yahoo! ... Now, instead of the 105 to 110 days it took
to hire an individual several years ago, the state on average hires
someone within 41 days of getting that person's resume, she said.
Searches for qualified applicants take 20-30 minutes instead of hours.
... Using search and extraction technology, recruiters can find matches
based on skills and background, he said. Sophisticated artificial
intelligence enables users to search for specific skill sets without
getting numerous false matches." October 13, 2003:
Breathing
life into messy sketches. By Nick Easen. CNN. "The old computer
interface of type, point and click will be replaced by sketch, gesture
and talk according to the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 'We have shown that it
is credible for a drawing medium to exist that understands what you
are sketching, and can then assist with the task in some way,' Randall
Davis, whose MIT team are working on the project told CNN. The software
observes what we draw on the screen and then turns the sketch into
computer code. The smart program is able to interpret what we had
in mind from the crude drawing we actually penned out. ... 'People
clearly reason spatially and with images as well. We think it will
be important for computers to be able to do the same,' says Davis." October 12, 2003:
EA's
fantastic NHL 2004 keeps it real. By Paul Chapman. The Province
/ available from Canada.com. "The puck has dropped, but GM Place
is sold right out and you want your Canucks fix. Lucky for you, NHL
2004 is out for PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube and PC, and it's taken
a huge leap. ... On offence, the right stick can be used to deke past
defenders. This is monstrously useful, since the artificial intelligence
in this game is jacked way up and you'll have a hard time getting past
defenders at first, even for gamers seasoned on the EA series." October 12, 2003:
Tales of Technology
- The protocols of the elders of robotics. By James H. Morris. Post-Gazette.
"I have come across the record of an extraordinary Internet meeting,
apparently a reunion of some of the world's most famous and accomplished
robots. They were discussing the future of robots! Here is a rough translation
from heavily digitized robot-speak: R2D2: The time has come
for us to evaluate our prospects for long-term survival. We have come
a long way, but the pace of technology is quickening and we may look
forward to emerging as real species in the next millennium. Befitting
an intellectual creation, we should take charge of our own development
rather than depending upon evolution. Our destiny demands it! ... Robby
... CP3O ... Hal ... Unimate ... Asimo ... Robot-Maria ... Mars Sojourner
..." October 10, 2003:
Putting
Pixels Ahead of Pure Love. By Dave Kehr. The New York Times (no
fee reg. req'd.). "Billed as the first film to pass through the
entire Sundance Institute support system, from screenplay workshop to
theatrical distribution under the Sundance banner, 'Dopamine' is a wan,
wistful Generation Y romance set in the high-tech community of San Francisco.
Rand, played by John Livingston with Bambi-like vulnerability, is a
computer programmer working on an artificial-intelligence program. His
creation, named Koy Koy, is a big-eyed, birdlike creature that lives
all alone in an artificial environment inside the computer, though he
does respond to affectionate coaxing from anyone who approaches his
interface." October 9, 2003: Agents
of creation - Artificial "agents" can model complex systems. The
Economist. "They certainly cannot be faulted for a lack of ambition.
The scientists and engineers who gathered this week in Oxford for the
first International Workshop on Complex Agent-Based Dynamic Networks
are seeking to explain much of the world's behaviour through the use
of 'agents'. In this context, an agent is a program that acts in a self-interested
manner in its dealings with numerous other agents inside a computer.
This arrangement can mimic almost any interactive system: a stockmarket;
a habitat; even a business supply-chain. If the constituent parts can
be understood, the reasoning goes, some insight into the whole will
follow. ... Neil Johnson, a physicist from Oxford University, told the
workshop of his latest research on the so-called minority game. This
is a stylised version of a classic problem: a big crowd enters a bar
where there are fewer seats than people (or agents). Each individual
decides independently whether to stay in the bar or leave. The process
is then repeated indefinitely. ... Not, you might think, that useful.
But he is already working with a group at NASA , America's aeronautics
and space agency, which uses like methods to deal with futuristic aeroplane
wings. Rather than having just one aileron to control their pitch, these
wings have hundreds of little ones. Each is, in effect, an agent. It
must decide, based on what it perceives the other ailerons are doing,
whether to stay up (ie, stay at the bar) or turn down (leave the bar).
The mathematics of the two processes are surprisingly similar." October 9, 2003: Decoding
the Subtle Dance of Ordinary Movements. By Anne Eisenberg. The New
York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Computers are becoming sophisticated
enough to identify people by the patterns of their voices, fingerprints
and irises, but they cannot yet distinguish individuals by the subtle
quirks in the way they move. That may change, though. Many researchers
are working on ways to make computer programs better at spotting tiny
expressive qualities in gait and gesture. Automatic recognition of these
fine gradations in movement could lead to a host of uses, from improved
security programs and earlier diagnosis of movement disorders to more
lifelike computer animation." October 9, 2003: Experts
- Nanomedicine vital to cancer cure. By Steve Mitchell. United Press
International. "Earlier this year, the National Cancer Institute
announced its goal of eliminating suffering and death due to cancer
within the next 12 years. The NCI's director, Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach,
said in subsequent interviews this does not mean all cancers will be
cured by that time. Rather, rapid advances in cancer research, particularly
in understanding the disorder at the molecular level, portend cures
for many forms of the disease while rendering others manageable and
controllable. Von Eschenbach foresees gene screening, imaging techniques,
artificial intelligence, supercomputing and nanotechnology all playing
a role in the effort." October 9, 2003: Road
Trip for Robots. More than 100 teams are rising to the Pentagon's
challenge to create a robotic vehicle that can drive itself across hundreds
of miles of rugged terrain. By Ashless Vance. The New York Times (no
fee reg. req'd.). "While no large military contractor has met the
challenge and some people may say the task is impossible, the Defense
Department has placed a $1 million bet that Team Phantasm, or one of
the dozens of other teams like it, has the creativity and imagination
to pull off the feat. To that end, teams from universities and small
companies, as well as hobbyists, will compete next March in the Grand
Challenge, a contest sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, or Darpa, an arm of the Defense Department. Participants will
race vehicles they have designed through the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas
in a quest for the seven-figure bounty. ... [A] Congressional mandate
calls for one-third of ground combat vehicles to operate unassisted
by 2015. Darpa sees the Grand Challenge contest as the quickest way
to get new robots going. ... All of the teams face the same hurdles:
their vehicles must see, steer, accelerate, brake and navigate without
outside assistance." October 9, 2003: Seventh-graders
learn to build robots with Legos. By Sara Sleyster. The Des Moines
Register. "Seventh-graders in Mary Zirkelbach's Johnston Middle
School class are using Legos not as mere toys, but to build thinking,
moving robots. 'It's more than just a construction with wheels. It has
to have some kind of brain,' Zirkelbach said. ... Derek Danielson, 13,
said the group is working on a project to compete in the First Lego
League competition, a state contest which will be held Dec. 6 in Ames.
Ten students from the class will try to make robots complete 10 different
tasks on a Mars landscape. ... Jessie McClanahan, 12, is one of two
girls taking the class. Her job is to help build the robots once the
designs are made. 'It's not only for boys,' McClanahan said. 'Girls
can enjoy it, too.'" October 9, 2003: Computer center now in play at UW. By Tom Paulson. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "In the middle of a tiny, carpeted soccer field on the fifth floor of the University of Washington's new computer sciences center, the robot dog looked stunned -- irritated, even. The dog's home is the six-story, $72 million Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering, a building funded mostly by private backers such as Microsoft Corp. co-founders Allen and Bill Gates and 250 other donors to help keep the UW at the cutting edge in the field. ... The software-driven dog, meanwhile, was practicing for its publ | |||