Year 2003 News Archive: February

<< Headlines are listed according to date posted <-> Articles are organized by date published >>

February 25, 2003: Two Computer Scientists Recognized for Their Work. Duke News & Communications. "Two Duke professors were among only 16 Sloan Research Fellowship winners in computer science awarded this year in the United States and Canada. ... [Ronald] Parr's work on decision-making processes can be applied to problems ranging from 'deciding the speed at which one drives one's car, the way a company manages its distribution channels, or the best way to treat a medical condition.' The first step in solving these problems by computer is converting the relevant problems into a format that computers can manage. That step, Parr said, was taken decades ago. ... 'My research is trying to reduce the number of calculations needed for the computer to obtain a good answer, bringing us closer to the point where computers will help us work through such difficult decisions on a regular basis.'... Parr said he is intrigued by the recent interest within the artificial intelligence and robotics communities in robotic search-and-rescue missions. In such missions, robots would enter a burning or damaged building, assess the situation and return to provide rescue workers with the information they need to save lives. 'Along these lines, we're developing new mapping techniques that will allow robots to explore an area and return with a very detailed and accurate floor plan,' Parr said. 'Eventually, I expect that robots will help the injured find exits and even provide rudimentary first aid.'"
>>> Representation, Reasoning, Robots, Hazards & Disasters
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February 24, 2003: Pilotless aircraft carrier jet makes first test flight. Associated Press / available from Ananova. "The Pegasus, also known as the X-47A, flew for 12 minutes before successfully landing on a runway at the Naval Air Warfare Centre in California's Owens Valley. The arrowhead-shaped plane completed the flight autonomously, following a series of pre-programmed way points."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Military
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February 24, 2003: Promise of intelligent networks. By Mark Ward. BBC. "US researchers are working on ways to make wireless computer networks organise them. Computer scientists at Intel are developing mesh networking technologies that can automatically work out the best route for data as demand changes or devices join and leave the system. The researchers believe such automatic networking systems will be needed as the numbers of devices that can communicate wirelessly proliferate. ... Mr [Mike] Witteman and his colleagues are working on ways to instil wireless devices with the intelligence to work out all the different routes that data can take from one point to another in any network they form."
>>> Networks, Telecommunications, Applications
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February 24, 2003: Tech for Elders Must Have Purpose. By Mark Baard. Wired News. "Seniors will accept newfangled gadgets, as long as they come in familiar packages. The key, researchers say, is to make assistive technologies easy to use and familiar. The devices must also increase seniors' independence. ... Aging baby boomers might happily adapt to a wireless phone-based system that helps them navigate public transportation systems using artificial intelligence, for example. Mobility for All, part of the cognitive levers project, known as Clever, at the University of Colorado, will put cognitively impaired people on the right local bus by combining GPS and wireless technology with Java-enabled smart phones that have high-resolution displays. ... Researchers admit that technology can't fix all seniors' problems. People age differently, and an assistive technology must get smarter as a person's functioning declines. 'We've got to make systems that are highly customizable,' said Martha Pollack, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan. ... Pollack is programming the AI brain behind Nursebot, a robot that provides both cognitive and motor support to seniors. Nursing-home residents can lean on Nursebot as the machine walks them down long corridors, responds to their questions and reminds them about appointments."
>>> Assistive Technologies, Interfaces, Cognitive Science, Applications, Robotic Pets, Robots
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February 24, 2003: The Robot Ate My Homework. By Fran Stewart. TIME. "Kids who are hospitalized for long periods by trauma or chronic illness risk falling behind in school. Now robots are here to help. PEBBLES (Providing Education by Bringing Learning Environments to Students) have rolled into five U.S. pediatric centers...."
>>> Robots, Applications, Education
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February 23, 2003: Eyes on $1-Million Prize for Robot Ground-Vehicle Race. By Cara Mia DiMassa. Los Angeles Times (no fee reg. req'd). "The Pentagon agency [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency / DARPA], which helped create the Internet, the stealth bomber and 'smart bombs,' is sponsoring the contest in part to meet a government mandate that at least one in three Army battle systems soon be unmanned. ... 'It's a huge challenge,' said Miller, who was hoping to integrate the 'bot' project (short for robot) into his graduate studies. 'This is like in the 1960s, going from bottle rockets to going to the moon. I think it's possible. The course can be driven by a human driver. The tricky part is getting a computer to drive.' Because federal rules call for contestants to build a vehicle that can maneuver the 250-mile course without remote control, without radio and with little previous knowledge of the layout or nature of the course, Reinhold Behringer was a hot commodity at the 'teaming forum,' a meet-and-greet held at the end of the day. Behringer, 39, originally from Germany but now living in Thousand Oaks, is a computer vision expert. That means he's skilled at creating the kinds of sophisticated programs necessary for a computer to guide itself through a course that will include water crossings, underpasses and miles of harsh desert terrain."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Vision, Competitions (@ Resources for Students); also see related article below
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February 22, 2003: Subs newest aid in counting fish population. By Michelle Knott. New Scientist News Sevice / available from The Star. "A robot submarine that can be taught to recognize any fish species could soon be helping conservationists find out if fish populations really are as close to collapse as some suspect. ... Daniel Doolittle and his colleagues at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point, Va., have developed an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that takes sonar pictures of passing fish shoals and uses an artificial intelligence system to recognize the fish species in question and count them. ... [H]e and his colleagues designed neural-network software that can be programmed to recognize any number of different species by their shape and the way they move. The neural network learns which combinations of inputs, such as shape details, lead to a particular output, such as a positive species identification. ...The U.S. navy is interested in the smart subs, which could be put to work patrolling harbours or shipping lanes on the lookout for mines or other weapons."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Neural Networks, Hazards & Disasters, Machine Learning, Robots, Applications, Natural Resource Management
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February 21, 2003: Robotics technology hasn't come of age -- yet. By Manny Frishberg. Puget Sound Business Journal. "Far from science fiction, robots have already played an important part in American business for decades -- mostly in the form of the giant industrial machines that weld and paint car bodies, wire together silicon chips or wrap and stack packaged goods. There are now autonomous robots that can mow the lawn, vacuum the carpets and, in the case of the LL1 -- developed and manufactured by Seattle's Advanced Robotic Vehicles Inc. -- do windows. In fact, it does such a good job it now keeps the 79-foot glass pyramid in front of the Louvre Museum in Paris sparkling. ... Dieter Fox, a computer science professor at the University of Washington who has been working on developing autonomous robots for several years, says these smart lawnmowers and vacuum cleaners at the moment seem 'more for people who like these kinds of gadgets. It's going to take more time for these robots to become a bit more intelligent in terms of how they behave,' he predicted, before they catch on in the mass market. The first versions of 'intelligent robots' to make a dent in the marketplace, he notes, are the toy realm, including Sony Aibo robotic pets, and Lego's Mindstorm series of programmable robotics kits. ... The Puget Sound region, with the presence of both Boeing and Microsoft, is a natural place for robotics to take hold. One byproduct of that confluence has been the 21-year-old Seattle Robotics Society, one of the oldest continuing organizations for robot hobby enthusiasts in the country."
>>> Robots, Applications, Business & Manufacturing, Toys, Smart Houses, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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February 21, 2003: Machine Intelligence Fails Fascination Test. Opinion by Gaby Wood. Newsday. "Earlier this month in Manhattan, Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov played what he called the first fair chess match between a man and a machine. ... Deep Blue was not the first contraption to attempt to replicate the calculations of the human mind. A long time earlier, in 1769, an 'automaton chess player' was built for the empress of Austria by a Hungarian civil servant named Wolfgang von Kempelen. It was made up of a wooden figure dressed in Turkish costume and seated behind a large chest, on top of which was a chessboard. ... Von Kempelen's machine demolished a number of eminent opponents - Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin, Catherine the Great - and several thinkers, including Edgar Allan Poe, sought to unveil its secret. ... The nearer artificial intelligence experts come to simulating a human being, the more clearly they perceive the particular difficulties of the task; there is still so much we don't know about ourselves."
>>> Chess, History, Robots, Games & Puzzles
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February 21, 2003: In Emergencies, Bots to the Rescue. By Michelle Delio. Wired News. "[T]his week a couple dozen robotics researchers left their labs and donned hard hats and steel-toed boots to participate in a one-day workshop intended to show them what a real search-and-rescue experience is like. Computer scientist Robin Murphy, director of the university's Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue, led the workshop. 'It's so important to get computer scientists into the field so they can get a real-world perspective on human-machine interaction,' Murphy said before the workshop. ... Researchers continue to program these robots with greater intelligence. In an emergency situation, the machines can't rely solely on commands from humans because wireless communication can be difficult to maintain in remote terrain or deep inside a collapsed building. Until they can be programmed to act on their own, the bots must at least be smart enough to continue moving forward through an emergency site until communication signals resume. If communication is not restored, they should know when and how to return to home base."
>>> Hazards & Disasters, Robots, Applications, Autonomous Vehicles
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February 21, 2003: Intelligent machine. By Quah Seng Sun. The Star Online. "In the world of computing, few figures loom as large as Alan Turing, a British mathematician. He not only cracked the Nazi codes during World War II, but also laid the groundwork for the creation of the modern computer. Today, he is considered the father of the computing sciences. One of his most enduring contributions is a simple test for artificial intelligence that he proposed in 1950. ... The Man versus Machine match in New York between Gary Kasparov and Deep Junior shows how far the development of the chess computer programs has progressed. Take, for example, the fifth game in this match, the unexpected 10?Bxh2+ played by Deep Junior. Here was a sacrifice of material with no apparent decisive advantage other than the gain of the initiative over its opponent, something that a human would do or consider doing, but something totally unexpected from a computer program. In a way, I would consider the 10?Bxh2+ move to be a defining moment when a computer program comes closest to passing the Turing Test for chess."
>>> Chess, Turing Test, Games & Puzzles
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February 21, 2003: No Drivers Wanted in Race for $1 Million. By Bob Drogin and Aaron Zitner. Los Angeles Times (no fee reg. req'd) / also avaiable from The Baltimore Sun (Race for $1 million -- no drivers wanted). "Think 'Mad Max' meets Jules Verne. Or 'BattleBots' hits 'Cannonball Run.' Think winning $1 million for racing a robocar. That will be the Pentagon's unlikely pitch to more than 200 potential participants Saturday in Los Angeles at the announcement of a public competition to build and race unmanned ground vehicles from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in March 2004. The rules are simple. 'No humans or other biological entities' allowed onboard. No radio or remote controls. ... The race, called the Grand Challenge, is the brainchild of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, the $2-billion whiz-bang shop at the Pentagon that helped create the Internet, Stealth aircraft, 'smart' bombs and the pilotless Predator plane. ... The robo-race is in a tradition of grand challenges designed to inspire the public and push the frontiers of science. ... Contests also have a history in the world of robotics."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, History, Competitions (@ Resources for Students); also see related article above
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February 21, 2003: Rein in Pentagon snooping - Congress' actions help, but more safeguards are needed. Editorial. Sarasota Herald-Tribune. "Civil liberty watchdogs on the left and right are celebrating news that Congress has imposed more restrictions on a controversial surveillance program being developed at the Pentagon. But their sense of relief may be premature. A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers on Capitol Hill agreed recently to bar the Department of Defense from using a proposed computer data-mining program -- called Total Information Awareness -- on American citizens. That's certainly a welcome step. So is a related move that will require the Pentagon to give Congress a detailed report about the program's cost, privacy safeguards and oversight before research can continue. The program, if developed to its fullest potential, would have enabled federal authorities to snoop through credit-card receipts, phone bills and other records of any citizen for clues about potential terrorism attacks. Pentagon officials put a vastly different spin on their intentions, contending that they're simply trying to build an 'artificial intelligence' program that would enable law-enforcement officials to match up a series of events, such as an individual buying large amounts of chemicals and renting a truck, that could be part of a terrorist plot."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Law Enforcement, Data Mining, Applications, Machine Learning
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February 20, 2003: 21st Century - Future Is Now. Column by John M. Moran. The Hartford Courant. "Science-fiction stories about traveling into the future are great fun. We get to imagine being suddenly transported to a world far more technologically advanced than our own. The future doesn't arrive suddenly in real life, of course. Instead, it creeps up on us day by day. But if you pause to think about it, the far-off future we long anticipated suddenly seems to have become reality. ... There's still much work to be done, of course. Artificial intelligence and voice recognition remain embryonic technologies, so it will be years before we can converse with a computer the way astronauts did in the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey.' (Perhaps that's just as well, considering the movie's plot.) Robotics, too, remains far from our futuristic vision. No 'Rosie the Robot' yet cooks our food or cleans our homes - though robotic vacuum cleaners will tidy it up a bit. Technologist, futurist and inventor Danny Hillis once noted that we never thought much about the future beyond the year 2001. For decades, that landmark was the future, even as it drew nearer."
>>> AI Overview, SciFi, Robots, Speech, Natural Language, Applications
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February 20, 2003: Radio tags, nanotubes and a video Cyclops. By Fiona Harvey. Financial Times. "The bear market may have savaged the technology sector financially, but an optimistic belief in a science fiction future still buoys the sector's visionaries. The present may be marked by profit warnings and lay-offs, but in the world of technology what always counts is the next big thing. ... Already, several software products allow people to speak to their computers, and personal digital assistant users are familiar with handwriting recognition. But so far these products have proved difficult to use. Over the next five years, they are expected to improve markedly - but to what extent these input methods will prove a fillip to the flagging computer hardware and software markets is debatable. ... The 'holodeck' in Star Trek, where people can call up any holographic environment they choose, may seem like pure science fiction but scientists in institutions from Microsoft's UK Research laboratories to universities in the US and Japan are working on ways to turn it into fact. At present, there are drawbacks to video conferencing systems. As Andrew Blake of Microsoft Research explains: 'One of the problems we've been solving is that current video conferencing systems don't allow people to make eye contact with each other, because they can't mimic stereoscopic vision. We're using artificial intelligence to recreate what is in effect a virtual eye situated in the middle of the user's forehead, like a Cyclops - and that will ensure eye contact can be maintained.' That technology could be commercialised within three years."
>>> Applications, Vision, Interfaces, AI Overview, Machine Learning, Natural Language
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February 20, 2003: Letters to the Editor - Computer games. The Economist. Excerpt from Matthew Gertner's letter: "Sir - You are right that chess-playing ability says little about the potential of computers to mimic human intelligence ('Not so smart ', February 1st). However, you miss a broader point about recent progress in artificial intelligence. A more illuminating example can be found in backgammon. While chess programs have played at a world-class level for two decades, backgammon software based on the same brute-force approach has never achieved more than a weak intermediate level of play. The breakthrough came in 1995 with TD Gammon, a program based on a neural network that functions in a way very similar to the human brain...."
>>> Chess, Backgammon (@ More Games & Puzzles), Neural Networks, Games & Puzzles, Machine Learning
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February 20, 2003: IT way to teach English launched. By T. Thant. New Straits Times. "A pilot project to teach English using information technology modules designed by a local consultant has been launched at five primary schools here. ... The modules were developed by Petaling Jaya-based ENOV8 Infostructure Sdn Bhd. Its director, Rusdi Sofian, said the four-in-one modules emphasised communication, reading, listening and writing. ... The modules include 'artificial intelligence' and text-to-speech technology, as well as the use of animation, text and voices based on local characters."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education
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February 20, 2003: Robot game sparks student interest. By Karen Klinka. The Oklahoman. "Research describing how Botball robotics can interest school students in science was recently presented at a national meeting by a University of Oklahoma professor. But Oklahoma's annual regional Botball Robot Tournament Saturday in Oklahoma City will allow people to see that process in action, said David P. Miller, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at OU's College of Engineering. ... 'We're actually still in the process of putting together firm numbers to show this,' Miller said. 'But there's substantial anecdotal evidence that a lot of students never thought of science, technology or engineering as a possible career path until they went into one of these robotics contests around the country.' The experience of robotics competition helps many students realize that they understand these subjects and that there are jobs in those fields, he said."
>>> Robots, Resources for Educators, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Resources
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February 19, 2003: Basic sciences reclaim their space. By Lilliam Riera. Granma International. "Roberto Rodríguez Morales, head of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) department, explained to Granma International that they have developed two pieces of software, both registered here in Cuba. The first program, prizewinner in the 12th National Science and Technology Forum, allows medical measurements to be taken by means of a digitalized image. The second, known as EXPARAM, is being used as part of the national system for special needs teaching for those with hearing problems."
>>> Applications, Education
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February 19, 2003: Who should explore space, man or machine? By Richard Stenger. CNN. "The Russians and Americans may have ended their rivalry beyond Earth, but another contest for dominance in space remains, one that pits biology and brains against circuits and chips. ... So who should explore space? When grilled by Capitol Hill lawmakers last week, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe expressed support for both man and machine. 'It's not a question of either or, robotics or humans,' O'Keefe said. 'The strategy we try to employ is not an either or but the best of both.' ... Interestingly, robots might someday take over some spacewalking chores. NASA is working on a prototype called Robonaut to handle more mundane tasks of astronauts in space. But Robonauts would supplement, not replace, the work of humans, whose depth and breadth of performance is beyond current robotics capability, according to Chris Culbert, a robotics researcher at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas."
>>> Robots, Space Exploration, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications; and see our Human - Machine cartoon below as well as several related articles on this page
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February 19, 2003: Strandcom Offers World-Class Made-In-Malaysia Smart Home System. By Mohd Arshi Daud. BERNAMA. "The new mi-GUARDZ, to be developed with local universities, would have 'a bit' of artificial intelligence where it would recognise the habits of houseowners. 'For instance, if you like to drink coffee and have a hot shower when you arrive home, the system will automatically brew coffee for you and turn on the water heater as you get back,' said Badardin."
>>> Smart Houses, Applications
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January/February 2003: The Software Developer as Movie Icon. Editorial by Warren Harrison. IEEE Software (Vol. 20, No. 1, pages 5 - 7). "As a college professor, I often get an opportunity to speak with incoming freshmen who have decided to major in computer science. Virtually all these young people share a single attribute: they have no idea what a professional software developer does. This means that many students who pick this career will either be unsuccessful or, worse yet, successful at a career they'll hate until they retire. At the same time, many students who would find the profession enjoyable and be quite good at it might not give it a second thought. ... [M]ost software developer hopefuls don't have a clue about what they will be spending the rest of their lives doing. And the information they do receive from movies about software developers is consistently inaccurate. Because of this, I have begun a semi-serious study of how Hollywood portrays software developers, analyzing a number of classics in which computers and software play major roles in the plot. Disney's TRON (1982), WarGames (1983), and The Net (1995) are representative of the way movies portray computer folk. The image that emerges is not a pretty one."
>>> Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Software Development, Resources for Educators, Resources
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February 19, 2003: Digital Connexxions Awarded Predictive Marketing Patent. Opt-in News. "Marketing solutions provider Digital Connexxions Corp. announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted Patent Number 6,466,975 for its predictive marketing technology. Currently, this technology is being integrated with Digital Connexxions flagship product SubscriberWorx, which is used by publishers and list managers to manage their subscriber lists. 'We are immensely proud of our invention, as it is one of the first marketing applications that uses artificial intelligence technology to learn the subscriber's preferences real-time, and dynamically presents the most relevant promotion and offer,' said John Ching, CTO of Digital Connexxions. ... 'The A. I. engine actually learns and becomes smarter at predicting what the subscriber will want to do next, with each additional interaction.'"
>>> Applications, Business, Marketing, Machine Learning, Expert Systems
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February 19, 2003: 18th century theory is new force in computing. By Michael Kanellos. ZDNet / also available from CNET (Old-school theory is a new force). "Thomas Bayes, one of the leading mathematical lights in computing today, differs from most of his colleagues: He has argued that the existence of God can be derived from equations. His most important paper was published by someone else. And he's been dead for 241 years. Yet the 18th-century clergyman's theories on probability have become a major part of the mathematical foundations of application development. Search giant Google and Autonomy , a company that sells information retrieval tools, both employ Bayesian principles to provide likely (but technically never exact) results to data searches. Researchers are also using Bayesian models to determine correlations between specific symptoms and diseases, create personal robots, and develop artificially intelligent devices that 'think' by doing what data and experience tell them to do. ... 'Bayesian research is used to make the best gambles on where I should flow with computation and bandwidth,' said Eric Horvitz, senior researcher and group manager of the Adaptive Systems & Interaction Group at Microsoft Research. 'I personally believe that probability is at the foundation of any intelligence in an uncertain world where you can't know everything.' ... Bayesian theory can roughly be boiled down to one principle: To see the future, one must look at the past."
>>> Uncertainty/Probability, Natural Language, Reasoning, Namesakes, Information Retrieval, Agents, Representation, Filtering, Applications, Medicine
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February 18, 2003: Clearing the air - New device sniffs offices. By Peter Healy. The Advocate. "Pro Services calls the $25,000 device the IAQ 4000 system. The acronym stands for indoor air quality. The company that makes it, Aircuity Inc. of Newton, Mass., refers to that equipment as the Aircuity Building Performance and Indoor Air Evaluation System, said spokesman Robert Skinner. The system consists of a portable air sampling device, a Web-based data collection and reporting tool and an artificial intelligence-based diagnostic program. It monitors and analyzes temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, airborne particles, total volatile organic compounds, mold and pollen, ozone and radon. While the news is replete with stories about building security these days, the Aircuity system would be ineffective against a major act of sabotage or terrorism, Skinner said. 'The portable technology is not designed to detect biological agents,' he said. 'However, Aircuity is developing technology to address biological detection.'"
>>> Artificial Noses, Applications, Public Health & Welfare, Expert Systems
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February 18, 2003: Robots are getting more sociable - Researchers work on machines with a human touch. By Alan Boyle. MSNBC. Please note: accompanying the article is a link to an interactive brief history of robotics. "For [David] Hanson, K-Bot is step down a decades-long path in cognitive science. Future robo-faces could be used to test theories about how humans come up with acceptable responses to social cues. Eventually, the robot itself might recognize when it has flashed an inappropriate expression or made an ill-timed remark, then adjust its own software accordingly. There may even be occasions when humans who have a psychological problem with socializing could learn a thing or two from K-Bot's descendants. Many other robotics experts are working on their own brands of sociable machines. Cynthia Breazeal, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a pioneer in the field, by virtue of a cute contraption called Kismet. ... Now she's working on a furry, lop-eared robot named Leonardo, which was designed with the aid of experts in animatronics. 'There are many, many, many, many possible applications,' she said. Sociable robots could serve as entertainers, nursemaids, servants or surrogate friends. The software advances could also lead to better on-screen 'virtual humans' in situations where the physical form isn't needed -- say, providing a friendly 'face' at automatic teller machines. ... Looking beyond the science and engineering, the effort to construct more humanlike robots has a philosophical point as well, the researchers said. 'Robots have always been an intriguing mirror to our own conception of what it means to be a human,' Breazeal said."
>>> Robots, History, Cognitive Science, Assisitive Technologies, Applications, Marketing, Philosophy; also see related articles below
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February 18, 2003: City & Country - Ambling along. By Cecilia Chow. The Edge Daily. "Consultants have made predictions about what the new year holds for the Singapore economy and property market. Now, it’s time for the feng shui masters to do the same, based on their study of the cosmic forces that will come into play during the Year of the Goat. ... 'The number 'seven' represents an energy that brought power to women, [a] boom in communications and information technology, and prosperity to the east coast of a country,' says Hong Kong-based Raymond Lo, a professional feng shui practitioner and researcher for more than a decade. By next February, the world will move into the 'Age of Eight', which will result in a total shift in energy. 'It will bring power to young people, a boom in robotics and artificial intelligence, as well as prosperity to the southwestern side of a country,' says Lo."
>>> Applications, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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February 18, 2003: Retired IRS special agent keeps up computer work. By Leonard Jackson. News 9 & The Oklahoman. "The third major event in [Robert] Kelso's career came in the last six years before he retired in 1999. He and Anderson arranged with the IRS national office to program government data such as currency transaction reports, foreign bank accounts, FAA records on airplanes, Social Security numbers, real estate purchases and other financial data bases. They used this data to develop a computer artificial intelligence expert system for the national office named Project FOCUS. It involved using computer artificial intelligence to identify narcotics traffickers and money launderers. It also involved the potential identification of nuclear proliferation issues for the U.S. Customs Service and items of interest for other agencies of the U.S. Treasury Department. In the development of Project FOCUS software, Kelso collaborated with computer scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory on artificial intelligence and 'fuzzy logic.'"
>>> Fraud Detection & Prevention, Fuzzy Logic, Machine Learning, Law Enforcement, Applications, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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February 18, 2003: £1m supercomputer to university rescue - IBM donates equipment to help fire-hit facility rise from ashes. By Stephanie Todd. Edinburgh Evening News. "A world-renowned computer centre devastated by the Old Town fire has been given a £1 million supercomputer that will help accelerate groundbreaking research. Edinburgh University's celebrated School of Informatics will take delivery of a powerful Regatta server from IT giant IBM today. The server, or 'mother computer', will allow the school to create a massive yet easily accessible database of decades' worth of pioneering research. The databank will cover tens of thousands of items of research into computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics. ... IBM engineer Freddie Moran added: 'Many people would perceive this as some abstract and unconnected academic event that does not impinge on daily life, however, this could not be further from the truth - it is part of Scotland's future, and what the Intermediary Technology Institutes, recently announced by Scottish Enterprise, are designed to promote. Subjects such as e-science and informatics need to be demystified and explained in such a way that everyone can understand they are as valuable as, for instance, medical research. More importantly, they are a key enabler to growing world-class life science research and investment in Scotland.'"
>>> Reference Shelf, Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students), Resources
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February 18, 2003: Pentagon's 'wish list' to enhance commandos' abilities. By Kim Burger. Jane's Defence Weekly. "The US government is also seeking digital analysis and artificial intelligence technology that may enable analysts to track terrorists' financial transactions and communications, while other capabilities are desired for non-intrusive download of data from cellular telephones, pagers and personal digital assistants, [John] Reingruber said."
>>> Machine Learning, Law Enforcement, Military, Fraud Detection & Prevention
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February 18, 2003: FAQs - What is artificial intelligence and how it works? By Adeel Khan. Daily Times (Pakistan). "[A]ll have an input corresponding to senses, a choice of actions based on response rules, sometimes called 'productions', and the ability to act, be it as graphics on a computer screen, as a text output or as limb movements. Most have a memory for storing experiences and the ability to learn. ... Can an artificial intelligent system really think or is it just simulating thought? Do the concepts it uses have meanings? When we use a computer to write a letter, we know that the computer does not understand the words we type. Now, suppose we put into a computer many words and also, somehow, all relationships between words. Can it now understand these words? ... Why not use artificial neural nets to realize the functions of the brain? We could also ask: Why do planes not flap their wings?"
>>> AI Overview, FAQs, Philosophy, Robots, Neural Networks, Machine Learning
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February 18, 2003: Roboburgh Robotics represents the sizzle that goes with the steak of factory and process automation. Essay by James H. Morris. Post-Gazette. "There is definitely a lot more to robotics than R2D2. Robotics plays a role whenever computers deal directly with the real, physical world -- sensing movement, smelling chemicals, moving freight or driving vehicles. One of Pittsburgh's most successful new companies is McKesson Automation, which sells a system that mechanically dispenses medicines in hospitals in order to eliminate human error. In other words, robotics represents the 'sizzle' that goes with the 'steak' of factory and process automation, a huge continuing enterprise that accelerates as computers become ubiquitous. ... Quiz: What Pittsburgh sports team won three world championships in the last decade? Answer: Carnegie Mellon's Robotic Soccer Teams! Playing on an international stage against teams from all over the world, Carnegie Mellon's small, wheeled robots and Sony Aibo legged robots have been bringing home the gold in the International RoboCup Federation's annual competitions since 1997. Prior to this year's main event in Italy, Carnegie Mellon will be hosting the first American Open robotics competition on campus from April 30 to May 4. The event will be open to the public.
>>> Robots, Applications, Sports, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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February 17, 2003: No summer break for bioinformatics. By Andrea Malcolm. Computerworld New Zealand. "Auckland University of Technology is holding a summer school seminar on bioinformatics -- the application of IT to biotechnology. Why should there be a special branch of IT dedicated to this area? ... The main problem in dealing with biological information is the massive amount of data, which is distributed all over the world, says [Professor Nik] Kasabov. He says bioinformatics has several major areas of development -- bioinformatics database, statistical methods and the new areas of computational intelligence in biological applications. 'That includes artificial intelligence, neural networks and support vector machines -- all the state-of-the-art AI development goes to help processing biological information.'"
>>> Bioinformatics, Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students), Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Applications, Summer Courses, Resources
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February 17, 2003: Arab scientists to unveil 'intelligent systems.' Gulf News. " he Arab Science and Technology Foundation (ASTF) will unveil its first 'intelligent systems' products, including a voice-enabled system, a smart inspector robot for long pipes and a smart menu navigation system. ... The new voice-enabled technology is largely a speech enabling development platform that allows for the rapid creation and deployment of speech enabled applications in a wide variety of languages, including Arabic dialects. ... From the end-user's point of view, the new platform improves the quality of the user's experience with the applications by allowing the use of natural spoken language rather than rigid keyword commands. The target market for the new technology - the users of mobile communication and in-vehicle automotive equipment - will have over two billion users worldwide by the end of 2005, with 200 to 250 million located throughout the Middle East and North African region... The second technology development by ASTF scientists is an autonomous small robotic inspector for the insides of very long and small diameter pipes, such as coiled tubing, underground and undersea pipelines, heat exchangers and power plants' tubing. The smart inspector detects corrosion and other in-pipe defects, and will help companies save millions of dollars in maintenance costs for oil and gas pipelines."
>>> Applications, Natural Language, Robots, Telecommunications, Industry Statistics, Interfaces
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February 17, 2003: Intelliorg system wins grant. By Christopher Boyd. Orlando Sentinel. "A minority-owned company associated with the University of Central Florida Technology Incubator last week announced that it had won a state grant to beta-test a pattern-recognition technology developed for the nation's homeland security program. ... The Intelliorg program monitors databases, looking for patterns that are meaningful to security experts. ... 'Intelliorg's technology combines cognitive analysis, artificial intelligence and modeling and simulation to enhance decision support in critical, information-intensive situations,' said Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini, the company's founder, president and chief executive officer."
>>> Pattern Recognition, Law Enforcement, Machine Learning, Applications
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February 17, 2003: Dollars From Heaven - NASA-funded research small but vital. By Byron Spice. Post-Gazette. "From a purely financial point of view, NASA plays a relatively minor role as a federal sponsor of academic research, contributing about 4 percent of all federal spending for university research and development. But from the point of view of Chuck Thorpe, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, NASA's $308 million in sponsored research projects often have a special quality that attracts and inspires students and faculty. ... NASA has been a major sponsor for some of the Robotics Institute's most challenging programs: Dante II, the robot that walked into an active volcano in Alaska; Nomad, the robot that successfully searched for meteorites in Antarctica; and Remote Agent, the artificial intelligence program that allowed the Deep Space I probe to set its own 120-million-mile course for an asteroid flyby. About half of NASA's $15 billion annual budget goes toward human spaceflight programs, such as the shuttles and the International Space Station. The other half, devoted to science, aeronautics and exploration, is the source of funds for academic grants, noted Kathie Bailey-Mathae, federal relations officer for the Association of American Universities."
>>> Space Exploration, Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students)
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February 17, 2003: Robotics put new face on the future. Sci-fi depictions still a long way off. By Eric Schmidt. The Denver Post. "The scientists spoke at a symposium on 'biologically inspired intelligent robots' based on models from nature. The idea is not to mechanically replicate animals but to adopt forms from nature that lead to more useful technology, said Yoseph Bar-Cohen, a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. ... Cynthia Breazeal, a robot behavior expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also discussed the relationship between man and machine. She said there is a cultural aspect to artificial intelligence that goes beyond engineering into the realm of sociology and psychology. ... The inevitable allusions to science fiction drew mixed responses from the scientists. Bar-Cohen said movies such as 'Star Wars' or 'A.I.' give researchers ideas to pursue but don't necessarily point in the right direction. Breazeal said science fiction can be difficult for researchers because it sets the bar so high."
>>> Interfaces, Robots, SciFi, AI: the movie; also see related articles below
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February 17, 2003: New robot has a human face, but faulty software. By Michael Smith. Southam Newspapers / available from the Edmonton Journal. "The so-called K-bot, developed by graduate student David Hanson of the University of Texas at Dallas, is the most sophisticated device of its type -- a robot designed to mimic the human face and respond to expressions. But, Hanson said, it's being built on a shoe-string -- K-bot cost about $400 US -- and sometimes fails to perform on cue. Nonetheless, he said, a human-like face is going to be vital for many robots in the future. 'We are beginning to knit together the bits of artificial intelligence into a comprehensive robot,' he said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 'But you have to have a face . . . because the human face is the most natural paradigm for human interaction.' ... Hanson said the device -- once the bugs are worked out -- will be useful for scientists developing human-like robots and may also have medical applications, perhaps in helping people who have suffered brain damage and have difficulty interpreting facial expressions. But whether human-like robots will ever exist was questioned by physicist Yoseph Bar-Cohen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. It will depend on 'customer demand,' Bar-Cohen said. 'If no one cares about it, it will not happen.'"
>>> Interfaces, Robots, Assistive Technologies; also see related articles above & below
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February 17, 2003: Robots get cheeky. By Jonathan Amos. BBC. "Meet K-bot, probably the most sophisticated robot head yet developed. It is the creation of David Hanson, a former Disney employee now working at the University of Texas-Dallas. ...The two-kilogram head was shown off to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Denver. 'This is the face for social robotics,' said Mr Hanson, who is building the machine as part of his PhD studies. 'The human face is the most natural paradigm for human-computer interactions. This is how we will interact with the computers of tomorrow. ... You could distribute these things to labs all around the world and then you would have a standardised humanoid intelligence platform that can be integrated with locomotion robots and natural language processors. You could then begin to knit together all the various components of artificial intelligence into a cohesive integrated humanoid emulation robot. But fundamentally you have to have a good face otherwise you will not relate to it."
>>> Interfaces, Robots; also see related articles above
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February 17, 2003 [issue date]: The DNA Revolution - Future Visions - How will genetics change our lives? "TIME invited a panel of scientists and science writers to close their eyes and imagine the world 50 years from now. This is what they see. ... Ray Kurzweil, Inventor and author of The Age of Spiritual Machines: Within a quarter-century, we will have completed the reverse engineering of the human brain and will understand its principles of operation. We can then implement similar 'biologically inspired' methods of information processing using far more powerful computational technology. This will combine our human strengths in pattern recognition and emotional and artistic intelligence with the speed, capacity and knowledge sharing of machines...."
>>> AI Overview
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February 17, 2003: Human - Machine cartoon

newspaper cartoon

>>> AI NewsToons; and see the related news on this page
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February 16, 2003: Man vs. Machine - A new era in computer chess. Opinion by Garry Kasparov. The Wall Street Journal. "Years before the first computer was actually built, the famous British mathematician Alan Turing envisaged it playing chess and beating the human world champion. When the very first computers were delivered to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in the 1950s the scientists there immediately started to program it to play chess. The quest had begun. ... My match with Deep Junior is the beginning of a new era in computer chess. Both sides were under strict supervision and every aspect of each game was recorded. As a result, we can see the strengths and shortcomings of the machines, and of ourselves. This marks an important shift in the history of computer chess. ... What makes this new era so exciting is that there are many programs using different techniques that produce distinct styles. Deep Junior is as different from Deep Fritz as Kasparov is from Karpov. Chess offers the unique opportunity to match human brains and machines. We cannot do this with mathematics or literature; chess is a fascinating cognitive crossroads."
>>> Chess, History, Games & Puzzles, Reasoning
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February 16, 2003: Horizons of the human soul. Opinion by Sue O'Brien. Denver Post. "Truth be told, it was never the scientific marvels that drew me, never the gathering of esoteric knowledge about spheres beyond our own. It was the daring men, and eventually women, who ventured so far on a wish and a prayer. ... In the wake of the Columbia tragedy, as in the wake of Challenger, the pundits speak again of exploring space without endangering human lives. Send robots to probe the cosmos in our stead, they say. It's cheaper. Less risky. More efficient. After all, you never need to bring a robot safely home. ... But an unmanned program would never have given us Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Rick Husband, William McCool and Ilan Ramon. The critics are right. We can explore the horizons of the universe without sending men and women along. But they've not yet told us how we will explore the horizons of the human soul."
>>> Robots, Space Exploration, Ethical & Social Implications; also see related articles on this page
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February 16, 2003: Letters to The Sunday Times. The Contra Costa Times. "Robots in space - Manned spaceships are as useful as transatlantic liners. Talk about 'advancing the science frontier' is alluring nostalgia. All data collected by astronauts is measured by an instrument and could be read remotely. To stop progress is against our past, it is time to move on. Space exploration must continue but, with robots. In Boston (1968), a lecturer insisted sending men to Mars was nonsense, because we could learn as much with robots, like NASA does. He insisted NASA should use advanced 'artificial intelligence' instead of sending data to earth and commanding every move...." - Michael F. Sarabia, Bay Point.
>>> Robots, Space Exploration; also see related articles on this page
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February 15, 2003: Brainwave technology offers new hope for disabled. By Anna Nelson. swissinfo. "Last autumn, scientists at the Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence (Idiap) in canton Valais began experimenting with ways of harnessing brainwaves via electrodes to send simple commands to a computer. According to director Jean-Albert Ferrez, the institute has developed technology that can roughly identify what a person is thinking about, based on his or her mental activity. 'The computer can detect whether you are thinking about a calculation, a place, a colour or even what you want to eat for dinner,' he told swissinfo. ... The process works by attaching electrodes to a patient's scalp, which record the electromagnetic activity of the brain. These electrical signals are sent to a 'neuro-classifier' which is trained to recognise specific patterns of brain activity. The computer then matches this activity to a corresponding task such as turning on a light or even writing a letter using an on-screen 'virtual keyboard'. ... The project is still in its experimental phase and, according to Ferrez, it could take years before practical applications are developed for the technology. ... From speech recognition to brainwaves, nearly all of Idiap's research is aimed at facilitating human interaction with each other and with technology. Another area of the institute's work involves 'multimodal information processing', which focuses specifically on teaching computers how to interpret human actions, such as speech, touch and movement."
>>> Assistive Technologies, Interfaces, Machine Learning, Natural Language, Speech, Applications
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February 15, 2003: Ads about to see you coming. By Sue Lowe. The Sydney Morning Herald. "When Tom Cruise's character in the sci-fi film Minority Report walked past a wall of ads that recognised him and pitched products they thought he'd like, it was supposed to be a vision of advertising circa 2054. But a British company has said that by the end of the year it would launch software to allow 'live' advertisements to sense when a person is nearby, knowing their sex, age and race. The company, Intelligent Earth, said the profiling software could also be used in robotics, airport security systems and intelligent toys. ... Alexander Zelinsky, a professor working in computer vision at the Australian National University, highlighted the huge step from a machine's ability to pick out a human face to being able to work out the sex, age and race of the face."
>>> Marketing, SciFi, Toys, Law Enforcement, Robots, Machine Learning, Vision, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Applications; also see related article below
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February 14, 2003:Biology to make mini machines. By Richard Black. BBC. "Computers of the future will be built not by factory machines, but by living cells such as bacteria. That at least is the vision which has been outlined by scientists speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Denver. They have described how wires can now be made by yeast organisms, and how solar panels could be built using substances produced by sea sponges. Researchers believe these kind of technologies will be essential if we are to continue to shrink the size of electronic devices. Plants and animals produce an extraordinary variety of chemical substances, all designed to help them in their lives. But some of these substances - proteins or other kinds of molecule - might also be useful in the electronics industry, as it seeks ways of making silicon chips smaller and faster. Another potential application is nanotechnology - science which is done at the scale of just billionths (nano) of a metre." Also see a related article from the BBC: Nanotech may spark fierce ethical row. By Alex Kirby (2/14/03).
>>> Systems & Languages, Ethical & Social Implications
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February 14, 2003: Check out our Valentine's Day toon from last year: Machine Yearning!
>>> toons & humor
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February 14, 2003: Artificial worlds used to unlock secrets of real human interaction. Cornell News. "What do flocks of birds, traffic jams, fads, drinking games, forest fires and residential segregation have in common? The answer could come from a new computational research method called agent-based modeling. Michael Macy, a sociologist at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., is using this powerful new tool to look for elementary principles of self-organization that might shed new light on long-standing puzzles about how humans interact. ... He credits Craig Reynolds, a pioneer of agent modeling and three-dimensional computer animation, for the 1987 discovery that the complex choreography of a flock requires that each bird (or 'boid,' as Reynolds called them) follow just three simple rules: head toward the center of your neighbors, match their speed and trajectory and avoid collisions. ... Traditionally, sociologists have tried to understand social life as a structured system of institutions and norms that shape individual behavior from the top down, Macy notes. In contrast, agent modelers suspect that much of social life emerges from the bottom up, more like improvisational jazz than a symphony."
>>> Artificial Life, Multi-Agent Systems, Social Science, Agents
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February 13, 2003: Attack of the clone debate - For visionaries, legislators, escalating issue has many facets. By Michael E. Ross. MSNBC. "Writers, futurists and visionaries are bracing for the real-life impact of cloning, with some predicting violent social upheaval, a re-evaluation of our esthetic sensibilities, and the dawn of tailored genes and life spans of 100 years or longer. ... Scientists and futurists say that whether you oppose or embrace cloning, trying to ban it is a fruitless cause, and unwise. ... Cloning is the latest genetic technology to come before a public whose values and attitudes have slowly evolved with each new development. Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and author of 'The Age of Spiritual Machines,' a 2000 book speculating on the interface of computers and human intelligence, notes that the passionate antipathy that accompanied other once-cutting-edge procedures, from in-vitro fertilization to surrogate motherhood, has largely given way to a sense that such practices are commonplace. 'All the reproductive technologies we have -- artificial insemination, test-tube babies -- were once considered radical,' said Kurzweil, CEO of Kurzweil Technologies, a company specializing in artificial-intelligence and computer systems. 'A lot of technology when we first hear about it, we can't get used to it.'"
>>> Ethical & Social Implications
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February 13, 2003: Professor directs two tech efforts. By Dave Lundy. Chicago Sun-Times. "Kris Hammond spends every day commuting between two different worlds. As director of Northwestern University's Intelligent Information Laboratory (InfoLab), Hammond helps students and faculty explore efforts to reduce the friction between people and technology. As director of NU's Information Technology Development Laboratory (DevLab), he helps develop new technologies so they are ready to succeed in the for-profit world. If anyone has the background to bridge that gap, it is Hammond. After receiving his Ph.D. in computer science from Yale University, Hammond spent 12 years working on artificial intelligence technologies at the University of Chicago. He eventually grew tired of a world of theory without practice, and in 1998 jumped to Northwestern, with his InfoLab and students in tow. He later founded DevLab to help bring technologies into the marketplace. ... [interview]Q. Why did you decide to focus your career on artificial intelligence? A. I went to college at Yale and, although I was a philosophy major, I ended up working in the computer science department. I liked it so much that I stayed for graduate school and got very involved in artificial intelligence research. I always loved artificial intelligence because you are faced with the awesome problem of trying to use a machine to replicate how people think. ... Q. Tell me about some of your more interesting projects. A. Our first real powerhouse is a program called Watson that uses artificial intelligence to help people search for information. It acts like an assistant that's been reading over your shoulder."
>>> Cognitive Science, Information Retrieval, Applications, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Resources
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February 13, 2003: Hello, Dolly! By Jennifer Schuessler. The New York Review of Books. Two reviews: 1) "Gaby Wood's sprightly and imaginative book Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life looks back to the time when science and entertainment, the study of life's mysteries and the attempts to build imitations of it, were one and the same. ... The quest for mechanical life has its roots in the ancient world, but Wood begins her story in Enlightenment Europe, where 'the ambitions of the necromancers were revived in the well-respected name of science.' The eighteenth century was 'the golden age of the philosophical toy,' and its most celebrated engineer was Jacques de Vaucanson." 2) "[Rodney] Brooks has just published his own book, Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us , a highly readable overview of robotics that begins with Vaucanson's duck and moves briskly through W. Grey Walter's pathbreaking mechanical tortoises of the 1950s (which learned conditioned reflexes the same way any carbon-based animal does) to a radiant future when we will finally let go of our sense of 'tribal uniqueness' and embrace a robot-enabled super-longevity -- if the machines don't kill us all off first, that is. Brooks's own research concentrated on so-called 'humanoid robots,' mechanical life forms that know how to behave at a cocktail party."
>>> Robots, History
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February 12, 2003: Imagina Awards Showcase Extreme Variety. By Katherine Tyrka. Computer Graphics World. "This year's Imagina Awards once again showcased the extreme variety of computer graphics use today. With 380 submissions, including shorts and feature films, music videos and commercials, these awards are the traditional high point of the Imagina international festival for digital images, held February 3-6 in Monte Carlo. ... A new emphasis was given to video games, with session topics covering research in artificial intelligence, the sociology of massively multi-player games and future directions for game content and interactivity."
>>> Video Games, Multi-Agent Systems, Applications, Agents
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February 12, 2003: Butterflies offer lessons for robots. By Kimberly Patch. Technology Research News. "The research could find use in robotics within a decade, said [Robert] Srygley. 'I would expect that we will see flapping [robots] the size of butterflies or hawk moths with reasonable flight durations [and] distances in five to ten years,' he said. Flying robots could explore volcanic vents, assess stresses on bridges or skyscrapers, or other planets, said Srygley. 'Hundreds of small robots could be lifted into space to probe planetary surfaces rather than lifting a single crawling robot,' he said. As long as the planet to be explored has an atmosphere, more area could be covered using flying robots, he said."
>>> Robots, Applications
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February 12, 2003: Software company picks new director. By Frantisek Bouc. The Prague Post. "Web software company Systinet recently boosted its board of directors with the appointment of John Seely Brown -- scientist, author and former director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California. ... Brown is a co-founder of the Institute for Research and Learning, a member of the National Association of Education and a Fellow of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence."
>>> Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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February 12, 2003: Analog Chips - Making sense - In the coming years, look for analog--not digital--chips to attract the new talent and investment. By Eric W. Pfeiffer. Red Herring. "Analog chips enable computers to interact with the physical world--to see, listen, touch--before that information is changed into the ones and zeroes of computing's lingua franca. Analog is the yin to digital's yang; it is capable of dealing with continuous states of information, waves of light and sound. ... For decades all effort and focus has been on miraculous advancements in digital chips, but the next ten years will see a shift in emphasis to analog technologies. ... If we ever hope to reach computing's final frontier--true artificial intelligence--similar advances must be made with smell, taste, and touch. While human skin boasts millions of sensors, a robot may have but 20, says Sebastian Thrun, a professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. 'Most senses in the computer world are very impoverished,' he says. 'Robots are really good at finding out small things with accuracy and repeatability, but they are ages away from understanding the physical analog information that humans can.'"
>>> Robots, Systems & Languages, History
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February 11, 2003: Beauty in the eye of the android. BBC. "Artificial intelligence experts in Fife have unveiled a robotic head which they say can scientifically determine how attractive women are to men. But they have warned that it does not work in reverse because masculine appeal to women is not as likely to be based on looks alone. Specialists at Kirkcaldy-based Intelligent Earth company said that the head-shaped android was capable of calculating how 'feminine' or 'masculine' a person's face is. ... Managing director David Cumming said: 'The artificial intelligence technology we've developed here learns to recognise what sex someone is by drawing on its past experiences, in much the same way that the human brain learns when we are children.' ... The artificial intelligence firm received its first prototype of the robot, nicknamed Doki, last week and is now mass producing the android."
>>> Robots, Machine Learning, Vision, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), also see related article above
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February 11, 2003: Man and machine hit stalemate - Kasparov and computer reach unsatisfying climax. By Helen Pearson. Nature. "Chess fans were disappointed that Kasparov backed down when he appeared to hold the stronger position. 'It almost suggested [he] just didn't have the passion for the battle,' said grandmaster and commentator Maurice Ashley. Kasparov defended his play: 'I had one item on my agenda: not to lose,' he said. The grandmaster admitted that in a long, drawn-out match he was more likely to slip up than the computer, which never tires. ... Officials claim that the live-broadcast final game was the most-watched chess match in history. The event will be repeated next year, they promise."
>>> Chess, History, Games & Puzzles
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February 10, 2003: DARPA releases strategic plan. By Dan Caterinicchia. Federal Computer Week. "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency last week released a strategic plan, which lays out the agency's vision for the controversial Total Information Awareness project, as well as its top eight research areas. The DARPA report, made public Feb. 6, states that as a result of 'constant strategic reassessment,' the agency is emphasizing research in eight strategic areas: * Counterterrorism. * Assured use of space. * Networked manned and unmanned systems. * Robust, self-forming networks. * Detect, identify, track and destroy elusive surface targets. * Characterization of underground structures. * Bio-revolution. * Cognitive computing. ... DARPA's current IT efforts include: * The Software for Distributed Robotics program ... * The High Productivity Computing Systems program ... * The Enduring Personalized Cognitive Assistant."
>>> Applications, Military, Robots, Networks, Data Mining, Machine Learning
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February 10, 2003: Disaster recovery or recovery from disaster? By Aneet Shah. IT Director. "Market analyst Datamonitor predicts that spending on business continuity planning (BCP) and disaster recovery (DR) by financial services institutions will grow from an estimated $2.2bn in 2003 to $5.3bn by 2005, an increase of 45% over two years. ... A direct result of the complexity of the IT architectures being introduced is a need to share data between systems and process transactions, with the risk that if one part of the overall system fails, it can halt all of the other connected systems. With the advance in 'artificial intelligence', systems should be designed to be able to operate so that if one part of a system goes down, the remainder of the systems are automatically aware of this and invalidate any faulty transactions and continue normal operations."
>>> Networks, Applications, Industry Statistics
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February 10, 2003: At one with the universe - Do androids dream of electric sheep? Colin Tudge in London examines definitions of consciousness and artificial intelligence. The Age. "Is the brain simply a computer, and is consciousness merely the feeling we get when we think? Or is consciousness a primary component of the universe, which the brain can latch on to, like a radio receiver? ... There are three points of view. The first, which can be traced back to the founder of modern computing, Alan Turing, and is embraced by the Oxford physiologist Colin Blakemore, is pragmatic. Turing pointed out that it is impossible to know whether other human beings are conscious. Because we feel conscious, we assume other people must be like us. But this can only be an inference. But suppose we made a computer - a robot - that could make whimsical jokes and pass the sandwiches without being asked.... [T]he emerging modern view says that matter and consciousness are not separate entities, as Descartes supposed, but complementary aspects of the universe. Both exist, but neither is primary. Each is the obverse of the other, like two sides of a coin." Also raised in the article is the question: "Is it reasonable to ascribe consciousness to a droll and well-mannered aunt, yet deny it in a robot that behaves like one?"
>>> Philosophy, Turing Test, AI Overview, SciFi, AI: the movie, Robots, History
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February 9, 2003: Are you lonesome tonight? With Wakamaru the robot you need never be again. Commentary by Catherine Pepinster. The Independent. "In Japan, the inventors have gone a stage further. Last week Mitsubishi said that it has produced a robot that will act as a security guard for the elderly. Three-feet-high Wakamaru will patrol a pensioner's home for 24 hours a day, and alert families and social services should its owner, say, have a fall, or fail to get out of the bath. ... Wakamaru is to be nurse and companion as well, reminding forgetful people to take their medicine, to eat and take a nap. And, as the first robot to hold a simple conversation, based on 10,000 words, Mitsubishi claims Wakamaru will banish loneliness. ... What first puzzled me about Wakamaru is that Mitsubishi opted to market it as guard and companion only for old people. Why not promote it as the perfect flatmate for young single people."
>>> Robots, Assistive Technologies, Smart Houses, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
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February 8, 2003: Winning cell-phone program... in just 20 days. NTU student wins regional contest by designing Tetris game that allows player to compete against a virtual opponent. By Natalie Soh. The Straits Times. "Mr Li Guojie, 24, an engineering master's student at Nanyang Technological University , beat more than a thousand other entrants in the contest and his Java-based game will be available for downloading in less than a month. His game, called JSquarez, is a version of Tetris, except you are playing against a virtual opponent which has artificial intelligence (AI). ... 'AI is all about training and retraining the program to function and make decisions independently,' he said."
>>> Video Games, Machine Learning, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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February 8, 2003: Machines primed to checkmate in war for the world. By Nicholas Wapshott. The Times. "For the past two weeks, in the fusty surroundings of the New York Athletic Club, Garry Kasparov has been playing chess against a computer called Deep Junior in a contest billed as 'Man v Machine'. ... The Kasparov match, which ended last night in a tie, was played under the auspices of the World Chess Federation, which suggests that it is only a short step before artificial intelligences will be allowed to compete in the human championship. Deep Junior has already seen off all man-made rivals. Kasparov readily concedes: 'Humans' days at the top of the chess world are limited. I give us just a few years.' ... In most imagined accounts of the day that machines inherit the Earth, the computer is, like Frankenstein's monster, based closely upon the human model. In Fritz Lang's Metropolis the beautiful metallic android in female form is zapped into life as a fleshy flapper. ... Stanley Kubrick's vision of the future was altogether truer. His all-embracing computer HAL was kept out of sight and had no human characteristics, other than a soft voice and an unblinking, all-seeing, red-lit lens. It is that impersonal robot-in-a-box that is slowly taking over Western life. Our children have been playing with artificial intelligence, rather than real flesh and blood playmates, for the past decade, but we have barely noticed. We tend to think that they are playing on the computer, when they are playing with or against it. ... Who exactly was Kasparov playing against at the New York Sports Club? And who are our teenage sons really confronting when they tap away at the keyboard playing EA Sports's Fifa 2003? Our children are playing with their computer friends. The prospect does not alarm us because they do not look like us. ... America is on the brink of a new technological revolution which will do away with human labour in many fields where a safe pair of hands has always been thought essential."
>>> AI Overview, Chess, History, Games & Puzzles, SciFi, Video Games, Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, AI: the movie, Ethical & Social Implications, Space Exploration, Applications
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February 8, 2003: Who's Best at Chess? For Now, It's Neither Man Nor Machine. By Paul Hoffman. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "A battle-weary Garry Kasparov and a stolid Deep Junior agreed to a 28-move draw yesterday in the last game of their man-vs.-machine chess competition at the New York Athletic Club. The six-game match ended in a tie, with each side winning a game and drawing the other four. ... "It's déjà blue all over again," said Joel Benjamin, a three-time United States champion who worked with I.B.M. on Deep Blue. ... The grandmasters at the athletic club were divided on how soon it will be before silicon beasts dominate world-class chess completely. 'I give us only a few years,' Mr. Kasparov said. 'Then they'll win every match, and we may have to struggle to win even a single game.' Mr. Alburt was more sanguine. 'I believe that even at the end of this century, the top humans will be defeating computers,' he said. 'There are now physical limits to increasing computing power to the point where the game can be solved by a machine.'"
>>> Chess, History, Games & Puzzles
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February 7, 2003: Basketball buddies build a computerized shot doctor. By Kevin Maney. USA Today. "Eighteen months ago, there were three guys who met at church, lived in the same Silicon Valley neighborhood and played basketball in one of their driveways. The first guy was a physicist and MBA. The second, an expert in an esoteric computer field called machine vision. The last, a rocket scientist. While playing, they talked shop and basketball, as guys sometimes do. This led them to think up an invention, as Silicon Valley guys sometimes do. They made a seeing computer to teach basketball players to shoot better. It analyzes the arc of a ball as it travels from hand to hoop, then it tells the player how to change the arc so the shot has a better chance of going in. ... They call the machine Noah. Its tag line: 'Building the perfect arc.' ... McGhee is a one-man company called Machine Vision Associates. He's an expert in software that makes computers 'see' objects. Most of his work is industrial, such as putting machine vision on an assembly line so the machine can spot defective computer chips."
>>> Sports, Vision, Applications
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February 7, 2003: Ethics Matters - People like the old rules. Corporations have redefined the workplace, but individuals haven't. By Carlton Vogt. InfoWorld. "The fly in the ointment, of course, is that in our dealings with corporations, we interact with their representatives, who are moral agents, who are human, and who do have feelings. But what if we could eliminate that? Imagine that there were an AI (artificial intelligence) system so advanced that it could actually do the hiring for a company without any human intervention at all. It scanned incoming resumes, selected candidates, and screened applicants all by itself. ... [W]ithout human intervention, it selected candidates, made offers, and completed paperwork for those who accepted the offer. It then placed new hires on work schedules and assigned them to projects. On the first day of work, the supervisor received an e-mail saying that 'Pat Smith begins work on your project today.' Would that change anything? Would you now feel as bound by your acceptance of the offer as you would had you interacted with a human being? If you could simply log on to the system and cancel your acceptance -- the same way you can log in and cancel a hotel reservation -- would you feel you had 'broken your word?'"
>>> Ethical & Social Implications
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February 7, 2003: High Noon for Kasparov, Deep Jr. By Leander Kahney. Wired News. "It's Terminator time for Garry Kasparov. The final match in the six-game Man versus Machine chess tournament, which pits Kasparov, the world's best human player, against Deep Junior, the world's best computerized chess program, will be played this afternoon in New York, and it's all come down to the last game. After five fairly evenly matched games, the players are tied with 2.5 points each. Each has one win under his belt and three draws. But while Kasparov is nearly worn out, Deep Junior just keeps on going. Like a homicidal robot, the computer absolutely will not stop. Ever. ... In the fifth game, playing white, Kasparov was again expected to win. But on the 10th move, Deep Junior pulled a shocking bishop sacrifice, chased Kasparov's king all over the board, and forced him into a speedy draw after only 19 moves. ... Online, between 2 million and 3 million people have watched a real-time broadcast of the matches provided by X3D Technologies, which co-sponsored the event. The matches are also available for viewing here at Wired News, ChessBase, AOL, Der Spiegel and elsewhere. Such is the interest in the match that even ESPN will be covering it live, though that may have more to do with a seasonal lull in the sporting calendar than interest among sports fans."
>>> Chess, Games & Puzzles, Sports
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February 7, 2003: Enduring call of space. Commentary by Austin Bay. The Washington Times. "A more sophisticated argument pits robots against manned spacecraft. Increasingly able artificial intelligence systems mean we can get more out of robotics. Yet full-fledged space exploitation requires humans and human creativity to respond to the unexpected challenge and opportunity. To follow Mr. Michener's thought, some day we may need to inhabit space. Robots can't inhabit the Andromeda galaxy on our behalf."
>>> Space Exploration, Applications, Robots
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February 6, 2003: A Laurel Wreath for an AI Expert. ISI News. "Computer Scientist Jerry R. Hobbs received an honorary degree from the University of Uppsala Jan. 24, only three months after joining the USC School of Engineering's Information Sciences Institute. ... Using the DARPA Agent Markup Language Hobbs is building a beyond-Google search engine that tailors itself to the user's needs, expressed in something closer to ordinary language, ('I want to buy a first edition copy of Gone with the Wind at a store in Beverly Hills this afternoon'), rather than demanding that users guess the right key words. ... When not researching ways to help computers and people understand each other more easily, Hobbs travels -- to 118 countries so far . 'I have ... climbed the Matterhorn, drove a Land Rover from London to Capetown, got attacked by a thousand people in Egypt, got stuck in quicksand in the interior of Iceland, flew in a Russian cargo plane to Timbuktu, followed orangutans around the Borneo rain forest, narrowly avoided being kidnapped in Yemen, etc.,' he wrote recently."
>>> Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Information Retrieval, Web-Searching Agents

February 2003: Time to revisit machine vision? The move from idealized to knowledge-based systems is reducing complexity and costs for users. By John Lewis. Test & Measurement World. "Automated optical inspection (AOI) can increase the accuracy and speed of fault detection on printed-circuit-board production lines, but the time and skill required to train vision systems on new board designs often drives the cost of ownership too high for many low-volume/high-mix applications. Recent advances in computing power, however, are leading to the use of more-intelligent, knowledge-based systems and are giving the systems wider appeal."
>>> Vision, Applications, Machine Learning
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February 6, 2003: Machine visionary - Author and inventor Ray Kurzweil is an authority on artificial intelligence. Interviewed by Hamish Mackintosh. The Guardian. Here's a sample of what you'll find: "[Q:] 'Is AI experiencing a renaissance?' [A:] 'We're in an era of what I'd call 'narrow AI', where systems are performing intelligent functions that used to require human intelligence. Intelligent systems can fly and land airplanes or make financial investment decisions. These were research projects 10 years ago and are now in widespread practical application and have become integrated into our information infrastructure. Every time an application works, it's no longer called AI - it becomes a separate field. It's speech recognition, character recognition, robotics, machine vision, etc.'"
>>> AI Overview, Pattern Recognition, Turing Test, The AI Effect, Applications, Machine Learning, Finance, Interviews, Natural Language, Customer Service, Autonomous Vehicles, Music
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February 6, 2003: Niyogi uses computers to analyze language evolution. By Steve Koppes. The University of Chicago Chronicle (Vol. 22 No. 9). "If a computer could master language as well as a child does, the feat would rank as one of the greatest technological achievements of our time. But so far, computers fall far short of the capability. 'How do children learn the language of their parents with seemingly effortless ease?' asks Partha Niyogi, Associate Professor in Computer Science, Statistics and the Physical Science Collegiate Division. Linguists, psychologists and computer scientists specializing in artificial intelligence would all like to know how to answer that question. The computational analysis of how language evolves may well hold the answer, suggests Niyogi, who is completing a book on the topic. That is because children imperfectly learn the language of their parents. ... Niyogi's ultimate goal is to build computer systems that can interact with and learn from humans. The first step is to teach computers how to translate sounds into words."
>>> Speech, Cognitive Science, Natural Language, Applications
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February 5, 2003: Physicist still leaves some all shook up. By Dave Brooks. The Telegraph. "With Albert Einstein, science has long had its Gandhi, but only in the past few years has science pondered creating its Young Elvis. That would be physicist Richard Feynman, a man whose establishment-tweaking personality was so much larger than life that his friend Marvin Minsky (yes, that Marvin Minksy) told a gathering last week at MIT: 'I could tell you lots of anecdotes, because Richard was one long anecdote.' ... Feynman is the person that every geek wants to be: very smart, honored by the establishment even as he won't play by its rules, admired by people of both sexes, arrogant without being envied and humble without being pitied. In other words, he's Young Elvis, with the earth-shaking talent transferred from larynx to brain cells and enough sense to have avoided the fat Las Vegas phase. Is such celebrity-ification of scientists good? I think so, even if people do have a tendency to go overboard. Anything that gets us thinking about science is something to be admired, whether it comes in the form of an algorithm or an anecdote."
>>> Resources for Educators, The Wellspring Initiative, History, Resources
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February 4, 2003: Kasparov, supercomputer fight to stalemate. Islamic Republic News Agency ( IRNA) "World's chess giant Gary Kasparov played a deliberately unconventional defense with the black pieces Sunday to force a draw with the supercomputer Deep Junior and keep their series level with two matches to play. ... 'I think we still have some time before being wiped out by machines,' a beaming Kasparov said. ... Kasparov was respectful of his rival ahead of the matchup, describing the program as dangerous, unpleasant and unpredictable, with near-human qualities."
>>> Chess, Games & Puzzles
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February 4, 2003: Blueprint for the Future - How Science and Technology Will Change Architecture. By Jacob Dalton. TechTV / available from ABC News. " A decade ago, one might have considered Neil Spiller a fanatic, an architect whose concepts were more suited for a science-fiction novel than a world based in reality. ... To hear Spiller tell it, we're literally living in the past. The acclaimed instructor at London's Bartlett School of Architecture says that traditional theories of architecture are out of date. ... Spiller says the traditional notion of building is obsolete. Instead, architecture must marry its time-tested concepts with scientific theories and cutting-edge technologies. Spiller's concepts are theoretical, and some are as abstract as a Salvador Dali painting. However, he points out some existing technologies that could be a boon for architects. Besides software programming and knowledge of complex algorithms, Spiller says new-fangled sciences such as genetic engineering, artificial intelligence (AI), cloning, and nanotechnology are the future of architecture."
>>> Architecture & Design, Applications
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February 4, 2003: Making machines human is real chess match of AI world. By Ronald Kotulak. Chicago Tribune & Knight Ridder / available from the Centre Daily Times. "Garry Kasparov, the world's best chess player, may not realize it yet, but he's doomed. It really doesn't matter whether he wins his current match with a supercomputer, according to experts in artificial intelligence, or AI. They agree that computer technology is advancing so fast that within a few years machines will be well beyond the chess skills of any human. ... For computers, chess is no longer a challenge. It is not even the most intellectual game - the ancient Chinese board game Go and the computer game Civilization each require more sophisticated strategy. And cheap computer chess games can beat most players on Earth. But when they defeat the world's best, it will not be merely because of the machines' vast numbers-crunching power. Ultimately, chess computers - and other AI projects - will succeed when they are able to think more and more like a human. What makes chess so interesting and difficult is the enormous number of possible moves. ... Most computer scientists are not interested in building better chess-playing machines. But they are fascinated with the brain's fantastic pattern-recognition capabilities, and that is what they are trying to build into their new programs. 'Computer chess is kind of a sideshow for most AI people; it's kind of fun and interesting, but it's not exactly mainstream,' said Ken Forbus, professor of computer science, education and social policy at Northwestern University. 'Tremendous advances in computer technology have been made, but they won't show up in the chess stuff,' said Forbus, who develops artificial intelligence systems for the military and schools."
>>> Chess, AI Overview, Games & Puzzles, Applications, Machine Learning, Robots, Reasoning, Go
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February 4, 2003: Shuttle disaster revives debate on merits of manned flight - Why is America still sending men and women into space? By J. Lynn Lunsford and Nicholas Kulish. Wall Street Journal / available from The Journal Gazette. "Saturday's crash likely will accelerate the move toward more unmanned space exploration. 'One way to limit the risk is to only put people in space when you have to have people in space,' said Theodore Postol, professor of science, technology and national-security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 'To make it a show, like has been done in the past, and to have lots of experiments done by astronauts when they could just as easily be done by robot vehicles, is taking risks that don't need to be taken.' ... In the next five years, about one-quarter of NASA's scientists and engineers are eligible to retire, taking decades of institutional knowledge about space missions with them. The current pool of full-time employees that are 60 or older outnumbers those younger than 30 at the agency by about 3-to-1. Meanwhile, high-tech firms, not the government, have been attracting the best and brightest engineers from colleges."
>>> Space Exploration, Applications, Robots, Career Opportunities (@ Resources for Students)
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February 4, 2003: Should we be up there at all? By Hiawatha Bray. Boston Globe. "In a time when unmanned satellites can broadcast TV images around the world, and robots can scurry across the surface of Mars, why send people into space? ... Still, for Neil de Grasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, it's the human need for heroes that justifies the vast expense and terrific peril of human space flight. 'I have yet to see anyone give a ticker-tape parade for a robot,' he said."
>>> Space Exploration, Applications, Robots, Ethical & Social Implications
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February 4, 2003: Mitsubishi shows off robot carer - A Japanese company has developed a robot that doubles as a house-sitter and nurse. Ananova. "Mitsubishi's three-foot, wheeled creation has cameras inside its head and comes equipped with voice and face recognition capabilities. ... The company says the aim has been to create a dependable companion, particularly for old people or those in frail health. The robot can even spot when owners may be suffering from side-effects of their medication."
>>> Robots, Assistive Technologies, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Applications, Vision
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February 4, 2003: Students 'deal with' shuttle tragedy. By Susan Weinstein. The Taunton Gazette. "Elizabeth Calef was helping her students make their robot for an upcoming competition when she got the call about the Columbia shuttle disaster. ... 'The took it very seriously, but they dealt with it,' said Calef, who teaches physics at Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School and advises the FIRST Robotics team. ... Paul Zeller said he looked forward to a time when robots with artificial intelligence eventually replace humans on high-risk missions."
>>> Space Exploration, Applications, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Robots
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February 3, 2003: Chatting with a real hot, intelligent bot. By Chee Yih Yang. The Star Online. "Many Malaysians have taken to the SMS (short message service) phenomenon. It's cheaper than voice-calls, and a little less rude than too since the receiver is under no pressure to respond immediately. What if you're stuck on a long train ride back from work, and all your SMS messages are not being replied to? Well, you could chat with a total stranger who is guaranteed to reply. The catch is, as you may have suspected, that she's a 'bot' or a virtual entity. Plus, you'll have to pay for the service. Some time in the middle of this month, VQ Interactive Sdn Bhd (www.botizen.com) and Macrokiosk Sdn Bhd (www.macrokiosk.com ), both Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) status companies, will launch an artificial intelligence or AI-based platform that provides 24-hour SMSing to Malaysian mobile phone users. The application, BOTizen-SMS@Kelie, allows users to chat with its host 'Kelie.' The service is billed as something that mimics IRC (Internet relay chat), since the replies are instantaneous, any time of the day. ... Kelie is not only going to be marketed towards the bored and the restless - VQ Interactive is trying to convince Malaysian companies to incorporate Kelie into their advertising and promotional campaigns."
>>> Chatterbots (@ Natural Language), Marketing, Applications
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February 3, 2003: Moviegoers reaffirm support for space program - Sampling at Luxor shows backing for manned flight By Launce Rake. Las Vegas Sun. "Jim Bloom, a marketing representative from Atlanta, said he went to the IMAX movie not because of the tragedy, but because he's always been fascinated by space exploration. Bloom said he hopes robots do not take the place of people in space. ... His wife, Lacey Bloom, is a philosophy student in Atlanta. She said she understands the ethical dilemma. 'It's artificial intelligence versus real intelligence,' Bloom said. 'Is it worth it, not just the billions of dollars but in terms of human life?'"
>>> Space Exploration, Applications, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Robots, Ethical & Social Implications
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February 3, 2003: Robot Football. By Anne Blair Gould. Radio Netherlands. "For years, the Dutch have been famous for their world-class soccer teams - but few people know that the Netherlands won the German Robot Football Open in 2002. The Philips Cyber Football team demonstrated that its robots have got what it takes to win an international tournament. ... In the meantime, everyone gets a chance to show off their latest technological capabilities as the Robocup events continue - the next one is in Padua in Italy, from the 2nd to the 11th of July 2003. ... This story was featured in Research File. Listen to the programme in full [via link in article]."
>>> Robots, Sports, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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February 3, 2003: Two Games to Decide. Sky News. " World number one chess player Garry Kasparov and the computer world champion program Deep Junior have drawn the fourth game of their six-game match in New York. Kasparov, playing black, took no chances after losing the third game last Thursday with a blunder after being ahead at one stage. ... The software program - built by Israelis Shay Bushinsky and Amir Ban - and Kasparov played the longest game yet of the match, 61 moves in more than five and a half hours."
>>> Chess, Games & Puzzles
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February 2003: Healthcare's Last Mile - Linking Disparate Information Systems. Viewpoint by David St. Clair. Health Management Technology. "In the telecommunications industry, the 'last mile' is the cable linking the technology infrastructure of the switching station to the consumer sitting at home. ... We are facing a similar situation in healthcare. Healthcare organizations have spent billions in recent years on information technology, but we still are not having a sufficient impact on patients and the quality of care they receive. We have not gone the last mile. The reason: a myriad of disparate systems that cannot talk to each other. Too often, the information is stored in silos, legacy systems unable to talk to each other. ... In the coming years, we will see the increasing use of electronic medical records and transmission of data by home monitoring and implantable or wearable medical devices. The new data sources, when coupled with new types of analytical software, have the potential to reshape the way we deliver healthcare in the U.S. Clinicians will be able to download information from instruments implanted in patients and have the data analyzed by a decision support system using artificial intelligence tools, such as logic engines and neural networks. The physician can then communicate care instructions to the patient, even if he is confined to his home or at a remote clinic."
>>> Knowledge Management, Medicine, Applications
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February 3, 2003: Hands-on high-tech school - Ecole de technologie superieure opened its doors yesterday, revealing an institution where students build canoes from concrete and a robot that sometimes loses its way. By Levon Sevunts. Montreal Gazette. "At the neighbouring stand, Nicolas Morency, a fourth-year automated-production engineering student, was trying to get Mentis, a robot, to navigate a path marked by blue duct tape and orange traffic cones. Mentis kept getting lost, but Morency was certain that sooner or later his team would succeed in designing a robot capable of navigating not just a flat floor, but also a field or a forest. When they do, the U.S. Army, which has already expressed interest in the robot, will be waiting for them with wads of cash, Morency said."
>>> Robots, Academic Departments & Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Applications, Military
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February 3, 2003: To seek, to find and not to yield - The Columbia disaster should not stop manned space trips. Comment by Duncan Steel. The Guardian. "Nowadays many space activities may be carried out by robotic craft, controlled from the ground or by their on-board computers. But there is a limit to what can be done remotely, or using artificial intelligence. Space agencies try to minimise cost in every way, and anything involving manned flight implies far higher expenditure, but in the end there is no replacement for a human brain. Many probes have been sent to Mars, and this year Nasa and the European Space Agency will launch others, but these have all been robotic craft with limited capabilities. To understand Mars, and conduct a proper search for life, eventually we'll need to send a geologist with a rock hammer - plus, of course, some pretty sophisticated analysis equipment."
>>> Space Exploration, Applications, Robots
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February 3, 2003: Daniel C. Dennett -The Mind Machine - To cognitive scientist Daniel C. Dennett, there's nothing artificial about the intelligence of computers. Watch this episode of Tech TV's Big Thinkers series on Monday 2/3 at 9:30 p.m., Tuesday 2/4 at 12:30 a.m., and Wednesday 2/5 at 8 a.m. Eastern. "Many philosophers and scientists have pointed out the similarities between the human brain and the computer, but no one has dedicated more time to those similarities than this week's big thinker Daniel C. Dennett of Tufts University. Considered a radical by many in the cognitive science field, we sat down with Dennett to find out why he believes that the mind -- and indeed consciousness itself -- is solely a series of computations." A video highlight - - Daniel C. Dennett on artificial intelligence - is available online.
>>> Cognitive Science, AI Overview, Philosophy, Interviews, Show Time, Resources
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February 2, 2003: Oregon authors > Misha Nogha - Writer of cyberpunk novel now switching gears. The Register-Guard. "[Question] 'What is cyberpunk?' [Response] 'The term cyberpunk was coined by Gardner Dozois, editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, to describe a movement in science fiction (in the '80s) which emphasized the interplay between artificial intelligence and humans. In many of the books, the characters have implants in their brains that allow them to directly plug into computers. Of course, this is happening now with sightless individuals who are able to receive from computers patterns of vision. My book more deals with the sociological impact on persons who are either mechanically enhanced or genetically manipulated.' [Question] 'Who are the best cyberpunk authors?'..."
>>> SciFi, Glossaries (@ Reference Shelf), Ethical & Social Implications
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February 2, 2003: Mind Over Matter - Self-admitted geeks find way to compete through design and programming of robots who perform tasks. By Brandon Ortiz. Star-Telegram. "The FemBots were among more than 100 high school students from eight Tarrant County high schools who competed Saturday at the third annual RoPro robot competition at the University of Texas at Arlington. The two dozen robot cars were built from identical LEGO kits provided by the university's Department of Computer Science and Engineering. ... [Roy] Hernandez plays football and wrestles but admits he's a math geek who watches BattleBots on Comedy Central regularly. Building a robot lets him challenge his problem-solving skills. 'You can't rely on a remote so you have to use your programming,' Hernandez said. 'You are creating artificial intelligence. Kind of like the movie [A.I.: Artificial Intelligence].'"
>>> Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), AI: the movie, Resources
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February 1, 2003: Walk offers clues to identity. By Andrew Webb. BBC. "What is of particular interest to scientists is trying to make a computer do what we all do instinctively - know within a split second that the lolloping or swaggering figure coming towards us is a close relative, a complete stranger, or one of our best friends. Researchers at Georgia Tech in the US city of Atlanta are trying to teach computers to record the precise way we move."
>>> Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Law Enforcement, Applications, Vision
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February 1, 2003: France's Thales to enter Japanese market. Asia Times. "French defense electronics manufacturer Thales Group is making a full-scale move into the Japanese market. ... Thales is considering establishing a production site in Japan and may also set up an research and development location with its Japanese partner to study applications of GPS (global positioning system) equipment, artificial intelligence and surgical operation simulators."
>>> Applications
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February 2003 [issue date]: Robots That Suck - Have they finally come out with a robot for the rest of us? By George Musser. Scientific American. "When humans use a personal computer, we enter into the computer's world. If it can't do something, or if it crashes, too bad; we have to deal. But a robot enters into our world. If floors are uneven, if legs get in the way, if lighting conditions change, the robot has to deal. Extra computing power doesn't necessarily help; on the contrary, more sophistication typically means less resilience. Through the school of hard knocks (lots of them), robot experimenters have learned to keep things simple. Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and robo-guru Rodney A. Brooks led the way in the mid-1980s with a new style of robot programming, in which cheap sensors directly trigger elementary behaviors. ... Apart from DustBot, a cheap but clever toy made by the Japanese company Tomy, the first consumer robot that could vacuum was Cye. Released in 1999 by Pittsburgh-based Probotics, Cye is the Apple II of robots: just pull it out of the box and plug it in. ... Last October, Brooks's own firm, iRobot, based in Somerville, Mass., brought out Roomba, a robot tailor-made for vacuuming. The lead designer, Joseph L. Jones, is co-author of the 1993 book Mobile Robots: Inspiration to Implementation , which remains the single best guide for beginning hobbyists (it got me started). The main subject of the book, the Rug Warrior project, grew out of a floor-cleaning bot that Jones had built for a contest at M.I.T. ... Roomba closely resembles a vacuum robot, Trilobite, that was introduced by Swedish appliance maker Electrolux in November 2001."
>>> Robots, History, Smart Houses, Applications, Robot Kits (@Software & Hardware)
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