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<< Headlines are listed according to date posted to this page <-> Articles are organized by date published >>
MARCH 2003 Spring/March 2003:
Smart
Tools - Companies in health care, finance, and retailing are using
artificial-intelligence systems to filter huge amounts of data and identify
suspicious transactions. By Otis Port, with Michael Arndt and John Carey.
Business Week's 2003 edition of The BusinessWeek50. "Some managers
still think that artificial intelligence--the decades-long effort to
create computer systems with human-like smarts--has been a big flop.
But executives at most companies on the BW50 list know better. Artificial
intelligence (AI) is often a crucial ingredient in their stellar performance.
In fact, AI is now a part of a swath of industries as broad as the BW50
itself. AI software helps engineers create better jet engines. In factories,
it boosts productivity by monitoring equipment and signaling when preventive
maintenance is needed. The Pentagon uses AI to coordinate its immense
logistics operations. And in the pharmaceutical sector, it is used to
gain new insights into the tremendous amount of data on the human genome." March 2003: Smart
cars - Knowledge is power...and safety. By Paul Sharke. Mechanical
Engineering. "The U.S. Department of Transportation, through the
1998 Intelligent Vehicle Initiative, identified eight areas where intelligent
systems could 'improve' or 'impact' safety. The list includes four kinds
of collision avoidances: rear end, lane change and merge, road departure,
and intersection; two kinds of enhancements: vision and vehicle stability;
and two kinds of monitoring: driver condition and driver distraction.
Besides reducing collisions, driver assistance systems may unblock clogged
highways one day, according to Martin Treiber and Dirk Helbing of the
Technical University of Dresden in Germany. Using a highway simulation
model, they found motorists tending to overcompensate for slowing traffic
ahead. The model indicated that 10 percent of the cars fitted with driver
assistance would reduce the problem by eliminating excessive braking.
Twenty percent of vehicles using such systems would eliminate traffic
jams altogether, they found. The first inklings of intelligent systems
to emerge commercially were in high-end cars. Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and
Jaguar introduced active cruise control in the United States early in
the '00s and in Europe a year or so earlier. Similarly, adjuncts to
anti-lock braking systems, such as brake assist and traction control,
debuted in expensive cars, but are now finding their way onto cheaper
vehicles, minivans, and sport utility vehicles. ... DaimlerChrysler's
Vöhringer described research under way that could one day protect pedestrians
from automobiles. Such an 'urban assistant system' could identify children
running out into the street and halt or slow the car in time to prevent
a collision." March 31, 2003: Getting The Message - It ain't just what you say, it's the way that you say it. By Paul Wallich. IEEE Spectrum. "An NSF-sponsored project on 'talk-printing' may give a sense of where the state of the art is going. Elizabeth Shriberg, Andreas Stolcke, and Kemal Sönmez of SRI International (Menlo Park, Calif.) are utilizing variations in pitch, rhythm, and speech volume -- information that speech-recognition programs typically throw out -- to refine word and sentence recognition, to identify speakers, and even to tell casual chats from serious discussions or the dissemination of orders and instructions. Collectively, these variations in speaking style are known as prosody. They have traditionally been viewed as statistical noise that speech recognition programs must filter out while finding the best match between a series of 10- or 20-millisecond sound samples and a database of likely words or phonemes. But for the SRI group they are precisely what turns a string of sounds into information. Prosody can help analysts make sense of otherwise ambiguous transcriptions, says Stolcke, pointing out that conventional recognition tools would show no difference between 'Don't go!' and 'Don't! Go!'"
>>> Speech,
Natural Language, Applications,
Law Enforcement, Data
Mining, Ethical & Social Implications,
Machine Learning, Military,
Filtering
-> back to headlines March 31, 2003:
Eureka!
You've got it. Massey News. "A flicker of enlightenment or
a frown of frustration, often the best indicators of a student's grasp
of new learning, mean nothing to a computer tutor programme. But scientists
from four New Zealand universities are fast coming up with the world's
first intelligent computer tutor that assesses a student's state of
learning using non-verbal cues. The Next Generation Intelligent Tutoring
System (NGITS) is being developed by computer scientists, information
systems developers and neuropsychologists from Massey University Auckland,
The University of Auckland, Auckland University of Technology and The
University of Canterbury. NGITS will interpret such non-verbal cues
as facial expressions, change in heart rate, voice inflections and even
eye and body movements that for human teachers are 'dead giveaways'
as to a student's level of understanding. Using these cues NGITS will
provide individualised instruction by adapting its teaching strategy
to the knowledge, learning ability and needs of a student." Week of March 29,
2003: Pictures
Only a Computer Could Love - New lenses create distorted images
for digital enhancement. By Peter Weiss. Science News (Vol. 163, No.
13; p. 200). "More and more, computers are being tasked with making
sense of the visual world in ways that people can't. With a new generation
of optics, engineers are recasting visual scenes for computers' consumption.
To the human eye, these pictures are visual gibberish, hardly worth
a single word, let alone a thousand. To computers, such data can be
worth more words than you'd care to count. Central to it all are new
styles of lenses. Instead of the familiar concave and convex disks,
optical engineers are making oddly shaped, radically different lenses
tailored to the strengths of computers. 'Once you break away from thinking
that the optics have to form something [people] recognize as an image,
there are many things that you can do,' says Joseph N. Mait of the Army
Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Md., and the National Defense University
in Washington, D.C. ... Other optical engineers are developing novel
lenses to help computers sense motion and the physical properties of
remote objects." March 29, 2003:
Struggling
to Regain Technological Buzz After Bubble's Burst. By Barnaby J.
Feder. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Call it buzz,
cool, magic or whatever -- the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology cannot thrive without it. But like many of the businesses
that flourished during the 1990's technology boom, the lab -- where
researchers talked about cyberspace, multimedia and virtual reality
long before those words became household terms -- has struggled to generate
excitement and reposition itself now that the bubble has burst. ...
'Fundamentally, we bet on people and then continually experiment with
how to organize it,' said Walter Bender, who succeeded Dr. Negroponte
as director of the original lab in September 2000. 'I don't think that
anyone has as diverse a collection of activities, and the real magic
of the place is the interaction.' ... Companies like BT, the former
British Telecom, and Motorola , which have each donated more than $1
million annually to the lab, view it as both a window into new business
opportunities and an insurance policy against being blindsided by technology
developments they did not anticipate. ... Dr. [Nicholas] Negroponte,
a charismatic professor from the department of architecture, recruited
a diverse collection of free-thinkers in setting up the lab, including
notables like Marvin Minsky, a specialist in machine intelligence, and
Seymour Pappert, a well-known learning theorist. The graduate students
they brought came from design, computer programming and sociology backgrounds
to receive degrees in a new discipline called media arts and science." March 28, 2003:
Aibo
inventor - Don't use robots for war. AFP / available from The Star.
"The Japanese inventor of Sony's Aibo pet robot said Thursday that
humanoid robots should not be used in conflict situations, such as the
war in Iraq, to harm people. 'Technologically, it is still very difficult
to realise, to have robots fighting each other but if they are connected
to the Internet without security measures, a hacker or a bad guy could
control them easily and harm people,' Masahiro Fujita, who also helped
develop Sony's SDR-4X II humanoid robot, told a press conference."
March 28, 2003: Stanford expert on artifical intelligence dies at 68. Associated Press / available from The Mercury News. "Robert Engelmore, a long-time Stanford University computer expert and an authority on artificial intelligence, has died of an apparent heart attack at the age of 68. ... Engelmore for many years was the executive director of the Heuristic Programming Project at Stanford's Computer Science Department. He was also an editor of A-I (Artificial Intelligence) magazine and was an expert on medical and military applications of artificial intelligence."
>>> Tributes March 28, 2003:
Privacy
in age of data mining topic of workshop at CMU. By Byron Spice.
Post-Gazette. "A Pentagon initiative to find terrorists by sifting
through computer databases has caused an outcry among privacy advocates,
but the problem of safeguarding personal information isn't restricted
to the military's Total Information Awareness program. Even when identification,
such as names and Social Security numbers, are stripped from medical
records or other computerized information, it can be all too easy to
infer identities by combining the remaining information with other databases,
said Latanya Sweeney, director of the Data Privacy Laboratory at Carnegie
Mellon University. That makes privacy a concern even when the analysis
isn't intended to identify or track any individual, as is the case for
the Real-time Outbreak and Disease Surveillance program being developed
at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon as an early warning
for bioterrorism. ... Her own research has shown that 87 percent of
the U.S. population can be uniquely identified based just on gender,
birth date and five-digit ZIP code. In one study, she found that by
linking medical records -- stripped of names but including gender, birth
dates and ZIP codes -- gathered by a governmental group, with voter
registration records for Cambridge, Mass., she was able to identify
the medical records of 97 percent of the 55,000 voters." March 27, 2003:
Website
offers new view of music - A website that acts as your personal
music adviser has been set up by a student at the University of Southampton.
BBC. "Richard Jones began working on Audioscrobbler as part of
his third-year computer science project and has been surprised at how
popular it has become. Now, around 3,000 users regularly tune in to
the website to go to the forums and get in touch with people with similar
music tastes. At the heart of the website is a software program that
monitors what you listen to, recommends new artists and puts you in
touch with other people who listen to similar tunes. Using a technique
known as collaborative filtering, the software matches everything that
is played on the computer, whether from MP3 files, streaming media or
CDs converted to some other format. It can then match your profile up
with other Audioscrobbler members, as a means of introducing people
to new music." March 27, 2003:
His
software is so smart the computer's almost human. The Straits Times.
"It's not quite artificial intelligence the way Steven Spielberg
envisioned it in his movie. But 26-year-old Carlos Fernandes has developed
software which has taken one big stride towards a world where computers
can interact intelligently with humans. Named PerceptiveI, the software
monitors user behaviour on websites and responds accordingly. ... 'The
software has the intelligence to decide if the user can be engaged as
a customer,' Mr Fernandes, chief executive of the company that has the
same name as the software, told The Straits Times...." March 27, 2003:
AUS
developing autonomous intelligent cleaning systems. By Ashfaq Ahmed.
Gulf News. "The time is not far away when small robots using water
and detergent will be used to clean high-rise buildings through what
the experts call the 'autonomous intelligent cleaning systems' - thanks
to researchers at the American University of Sharjah (AUS). ... 'There
will be no human involvement,' said Dr Mohammed Ameen Al Jarrah, Director
of the Mechatronics Centre. 'Autonomous cleaning systems are being used
in some countries, but their use is limited to floors. After developing
the project for the airport, we are planning to develop such systems
for cleaning high-rise buildings. It is a pioneering project because
none of the countries in the region uses such a system.' ... The AUS
is the first university in the Middle East which is offering a master's
degree programme in mechatronics ["a system and approach to the
design of modern engineering products"] and has established a full-fledged
research centre and laboratory. Mechatronics students study a range
of disciplines; they are well equipped to go into a wide range of jobs
in electrical or mechanical engineering, as well as software development
and management positions." March 27, 2003:
Pinocchio
robots are homeless. Reuters / available from ZDNet (UK). "Sony's
latest robots are more human than ever, but because they cost as much
as a luxury car, not many are sold Judging from the cooing at a demonstration
of Sony's diminutive SDR robot, few would dispute just how cute the
humanoid machine is. Its creator Masahiro Fujita, who called it 'him'
instead of 'it,' seemed to feel genuinely guilty as he pushed it over
to show how easily it gets back up. 'I don't like this,' he said. ...
The updated SDR boasts a handful of improvements over its predecessor,
including an extra microprocessor to help it make small talk and special
sensors to keep it from pinching a human as it moves its arms or legs.
At fewer than 24 inches tall and a slight 15 pounds, the robot is too
small to pose much of a threat to furniture or other household objects.
And it has new mapping and motion control capabilities to help it avoid
tripping over obstacles and to protect itself by putting out its arms
when it does fall." March 27, 2003:
Vegetables
and Minerals on the Radar. By Pamela LiCalzi O'Connell. The New
York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Vegetable or Mineral? I played
20 Questions against a Web site and lost (for the record, I was thinking
of 'tree'). But then, many people are being outwitted by Robin Burgener's
program (www.20q.net/btest). Mr. Burgener's software, based on artificial
intelligence, has been 'learning' to play 20 Questions since 1988, when
it was passed around on diskette. Since moving online in 1995, it has
gotten progressively better at figuring out which general object (animal,
vegetable, you know the drill) a player is thinking of by asking a series
of questions. In 1998, it won about 40 percent of its games; now it
wins 70 percent." March 26, 2003:
Grants
to boost robot research. March 26, 2003:
Dairy
robotics could be popular in U.S. By Mark Fode. Pipestone County
Star. "Dairy farmers who have traditionally been tied to the farm
where their cows are located will apparently have help on the way in
the form of robotics. Bou-Match, a Madison, Wisc.-based company that
supplies product sold by Gorter Clay & Dairy of Pipestone, demonstrated
this very cutting-edge -- at least in the United States -- technology
during a seminar in the blue building at the Pipestone County Fairgrounds.
... [Bart] Geleynse said, too, that the use of robotics isn't a culprit
depriving the area of jobs. 'These (dairy farms) seem to be jobs no
one wants,' he said. Bou-Match advertises the new system as a way for
dairy farmers 'to break free from tedious milking chores while providing
a better environment for the cow.' The company -- and Hartke agrees
-- say cows experience less stress, choose when they want to be milked
and 'live in a more peaceful environment.' ... Geleynse said the automatic
attaching device is the main piece of the robotics. Since development
of the product, about 1,200 robotic dairies exist worldwide, many in
Canada." March 26, 2003:
Three
Columbia Students Win Goldwater Fellowship. By Veronica Zaragovia.
Columbia Daily Spectator. "In a nation currently undergoing a shortage
of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers, three
Columbia students are doing their part to fill the gap. And the prestigious
Goldwater Fellowship is helping them do it. ... [A]n award of $7,500
given annually to cover expenses such as tuition, fees, books, and room
and board, to about 300 individuals nationwide. The scholarship aims
to encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in mathematics,
the natural sciences, or engineering. ... [Lawrence David's] long-term
goals include attending graduate school to receive a doctorate in biology,
computer science, or computational biology, a combination of the two
subjects. ... In the fall, David wrote a paper that focused on research
problems combining 'statistical inference, artificial intelligence,
stochastic dynamic systems, and genetic regulatory networks,' he said.
... But David almost never even applied for the Goldwater Scholarship.
It took encouragement from his girlfriend and roommate to get him to
apply." March 25, 2003:
Carlsbad
student racks up perfect 1,600 on SAT. By Tim Mayer. North County
Times. "Tall, blond, slender and quiet-spoken, 17-year-old Eric
Christiansen's dream is to attend a top university and major in robotics,
maybe help build the first self-aware mechanical creature. ... A junior
and near the top of his class, Christiansen said after graduating from
Carlsbad High he hopes to go on to CalTech, the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, or Olan University outside Boston to major in robotics
and artificial intelligence. He said he wants eventually to earn a doctorate.
'It's really cool. It's the future,' he said. 'If somebody is going
to invent terminator robots that take over the whole workplace, it might
as well be me.'" March 25, 2003:
Apache
armament once tested at YPG. By T.M. Shultz. Yuma Sun. "In
1999 YPG tested a computerized cockpit management system for the Apache,
called a Rotocraft Pilot's Associate, or RPA. The RPA does what computers
do best, it crunches massive amounts of numbers quickly. It pulls together
information about the battlefield, keeping track of both friends and
enemies, it plots courses to avoid unwanted attention and can even fly
the aircraft. 'It's the practical application of artificial intelligence,'
said one Army official. The RPA keeps track of what's happening around
the aircraft by continuously monitoring things like weather, terrain
and fuel levels." March 25, 2003:
Data
Expert Is Cautious About Misuse of Information. By Steve Lohr. The
New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "[T]he real lesson learned
from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Mr. [Gilman] Louie said, was that
the intelligence failure was not so much that the government had too
little information but that the information held by different government
agencies was not linked, shared and analyzed. ... Speaking at the PC
Forum, an annual gathering of corporate technology executives, entrepreneurs
and venture capitalists, Mr. [Gilman] Louie said there were two different
paths being pursued toward data surveillance by the government. First,
there is what he termed the 'data mining or profiling' approach. ...
The alternative, which Mr. Louie supports, starts with some kind of
investigative lead and then uses software tools to scan for links between
a person under investigation and known terrorists, in terms of where
they live, recent travel and other behavior." February
- March 2003: Recent
advances in computer vision. By Massimo Picardi and Tony Jan. The
Industrial Physicist (Volume 9, Number 1). "Computer vision is
the branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on providing computers
with the functions typical of human vision. To date, computer vision
has produced important applications in fields such as industrial automation,
robotics, biomedicine, and satellite observation of Earth. ... The availability
of affordable hardware and software has opened the way for new, pervasive
applications of computer vision. These applications have one factor
in common. They tend to be human-centered; that is, either humans are
the targets of the vision system or they wander about wearing small
cameras, or sometimes both. Vision systems have become the central sensor
in applications such as *human-computer interfaces (HCIs), the links
between computers and their users *augmented perception, tools that
increase normal perception capabilities of humans *automatic media interpretation,
which provides an understanding of the content of modern digital media,
such as videos and movies, without the need for human intervention or
annotation *video surveillance and biometrics." March 24, 2003:
Dog
translation device coming to U.S. Reuters / available from CNN.
"A Japanese toy maker claims to have developed a gadget that translates
dog barks into human language and plans to begin selling the product
-- under the name Bowlingual -- in U.S. pet stores, gift shops and retail
outlets this summer. Tokyo-based Takara Co. Ltd. says about 300,000
of the dog translator devices have been sold since its launch in Japan
late last year. ... Cited as one of the coolest inventions of 2002 by
Time magazine, Bowlingual consists of a 3-inch long wireless microphone
that attaches to a dog collar and transmits sounds to a palm-sized console
that is linked to a database." March 24, 2003:
Pupils
take robotic challenge. By Liz Ford. Education Guardian. "Schoolchildren
will be trying to recreate the moves of their footballing heroes this
weekend in a competition that ultimately aims to create the perfect
robotic football team. The regional finals of RoboCup Junior 2003, held
at Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes on Saturday, will see more than 100
pupils from primary and secondary schools in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire
and Oxfordshire compete to attend the international RoboCup competition
in Italy in July. ... Professor Johnson said he had been impressed with
the response from children to robotics. 'Kids not altogether engaged
in education will actually stay with technology longer if they are motivated
by robotics.' He added: 'When kids do robotics, their teamwork skills
improve enormously. And one nice thing is we do find robotics is equally
attractive to girls.'" March 24, 2003:
The
business of hatching start-ups. Compiled by Jorina Choy. Asia Computer
Weekly. "Incubation programmes are aplenty in the Asia-Pacific,
where government-backed bodies actively encourage the birth of technology
start-ups through incentive programmes. ... Among the few successful
companies are artificial software intelligence company VQ Interactive
which has made its mark by developing the Botizen, an online virtual
entity which can answer common queries in real-time and help direct
visitors around a Web site." March 24, 2003:
The Droids of Sport
- Robotic competitions are popping up around the world. A new book,
'Gearheads,' examines their universe. By Brad Stone. Newsweek / available
from MSNBC. "In March of 2004, teams of roboticists, off-road enthusiasts
and garage gearheads will set out in a giant caravan on the same potentially
lucrative journey attempted by countless others over the years: the
drive from L.A. to Las Vegas. But this time the trip will be far more
difficult. The vehicles at the head of the procession will be unmanned,
autonomous robots, racing against each other and the clock for a $1
million prize offered by the U.S. military. ... The first formal robot
competition took place 32 years ago in the hallways of MIT as part of
a mechanical-engineering class called 2.70. ... From there, robot competitions
proliferated. In 1989, inspired by 2.70, Segway inventor Dean Kamen
started FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology),
a robotics competition for high schoolers and their mentors. ... Teams
are also competing this spring around the world in the regional contests
of the fifth annual RoboCup, a robotic soccer tournament." March 24, 2003:
Real World Robots
- They're finally among us. They may not look like the Jetsons' Rosie,
but they are actually doing real jobs alongside humans -- in homes,
hospitals and on the battlefield. By Brad Stone, with Mary Carmichael
in New York and Atsuko Koizumi in Tokyo. Newsweek / available from MSNBC.
"Over the past few years, robots have infiltrated our ranks, robots
that look nothing like the luminescent-eyed androids of science-fiction
lore. They can't emulate the human brain's boundless flexibility, but
they do take advantage of the latest innovations in computing power,
sensors and artificial intelligences, and can do one or two things well.
Today robots work in homes, hospitals and in dirty, dangerous environments
like tunnels under New York City streets. Perhaps most significantly,
they populate military bases around the world, where the next generation
of unmanned aerial and ground vehicles are currently being battle-tested.
In an industry that has risen and collapsed several times since the
early '80s, there is at last optimism that the Age of Robots might finally
have arrived." March 23, 2003:
Dystopian
visions are real film noir. Commentary by Steven Greenhut. Orange
County Register. "Perhaps the world seems much like our own, but
that world isn't for real. It is a computer-created construct, and the
real people live out their lives in pods, serving as glorified batteries
to provide energy for the advanced computer beings that control things.
These are typical themes in 'dystopian' movies, the popular stories
about what could happen if some current trend is taken to an extreme
conclusion. ... It takes a strong constitution to hear the stories of
20th century totalitarianism. But there are few things I enjoy more
than the fictional stories of what might happen to our world if eugenics,
or cryogenics, or artificial intelligence, or certain trends in government
continue. They serve as warning signs about the results if men like
Pol Pot take charge, reminders of what happens when government becomes
too powerful, with current events providing fodder for such stories.
... Here's a list of my favorite dystopian movies, in no particular
order: 'Minority Report' ... 'The Matrix' ... "Impostor' ... 'Dark
City'...." March 22, 2003:
Device:
Arabic In, English Out. By Erik Baard. Wired News. "Soldiers
can't prevent the diplomatic misunderstandings that breed warfare, but
the Pentagon hopes a handheld electronic interpreter in GIs' packs can
prevent language barriers from claiming lives on the battlefield. To
be successful, such a gadget has to go way beyond the electronic phrase
books and generic tourist directories available today. A new device
being tested at the Office of Naval Research shows a lot of promise,
according to Joel Davis, a neurobiologist there. 'We have good ones
now; they'll be better in a few years, and eventually fantastic,' he
said. ... When a user speaks into the Interact system, a voice-recognition
program generates text that is then passed on to translation software.
That program then bridges the two languages, and a voice synthesizer
'reads' the translation out loud. ... 'The hottest areas of research
right now are being able to port rapidly to new languages and getting
these things to run well on very small devices like PDAs,' said Robert
Frederking, senior systems scientist at Carnegie Mellon University's
Language Technologies Institute. His group tested a system called Tongues
in Croatia in 2001." March 22, 2003:
UWF
on the forefront of technology. Opinion by J. Earle Bowden. Pensacola
News Journal. "[Dr. Kenneth M. Ford] and his associate director,
retired Admiral Timothy W. Wright, are building brainpower and futuristic
awesomeness touching the apex of artificial intelligence at 40 S. Alcaniz
St., in the old Pensacola police station that insurance company president
Skip Hunter cosmetically wrapped with a Spanish Mission, red-tiled roof
facade. ... Unknown to many Pensacolians, a lot of varied intelligentsia
floats in and out of the Institute of Human & Machine Cognition, one
of the nation's leading research centers investigating a broad range
of disciplines related to understanding cognition in both humans and
machines. Founded in 1990 by the Florida Board of Regents as a research
unit of the University of West Florida, IHMC is focused on human-centered
computing. Ford sees his mission as keeping human thought and action
at the center of science, extending rather than imitating human abilities." March 22, 2003:
Computers
learn to look and listen - Computers that can recognise and understand
human emotions could be about to move a step nearer. BBC. "Brunel
University in London is launching a three-year research project into
emotion recognition technology that could make the interaction between
computers and humans far friendlier in the future. ... Already computers
can recognise basic human emotions in photographs, although the Brunel
team acknowledges that the technology to recognise the complex emotions
of a real face are still some years away. Dr Kate Hone, research leader
on the project, said computers could be trained to respond to certain
cues in just the way humans read each other. ... Potential application
for emotionally aware PCs could include intelligent tutors ... CD player
which can select appropriate music based on the mood of the listener...."
March 22, 2003:
I,
Robot - by baby steps. The latest creation at MIT's media lab, a
robot named Ripley, can't play chess or guide spacecraft. He's more
like a rather slow-witted infant. By Michael Valpy. The Globe and Mail.
"AI's avant-garde reality in 2003 is Ripley, rather resembling
the head of an amiable mechanical Airedale. He's the creation of 34-year-old
Deb Roy, founder and director of the cognitive-machines group at MIT's
famed media lab, who has been building robots since his Winnipeg childhood.
... [W]hat looks to humans to be difficult for robots, like playing
chess, is in fact mindlessly easy. And what looks easy -- because it's
easy for humans to do -- is mind-numblingly complex. Like learning language.
Ripley is not being programmed with scripted speech. He is being taught
the meanings of words and how to speak, the way a human child would
be. ... Ripley learns language by looking at an object, touching it
and hearing the word for it. In the media lab it is called 'grounding.'
... The team is about to teach Ripley to understand the idea of point
of view. When the researcher talking to Ripley describes a beanbag as
being on his own left, it will be on Ripley's right. In effect, Mr.
[Nick] Mavridis says, it will allow Ripley to step outside himself and
grasp the notion of 'other.' ... Robots, Prof. [Anne] Foerst says, will
never be humans. But they could be somebodies -- individual selves." March 22, 2003:
The
cyborg evolution. By David Stonehouse. The Sydney Morning Herald.
"[Kevin Warwick] believes this cyborg evolution is inevitable and
vital to our very survival as a species. 'If we don't, the alternative
is to have intelligent machines running everything. I don't really fancy
that,' the scientist says in a phone interview from his home near London.
'But this alternative, I see as quite a positive alternative: humans
staying in control of what is going on, even though we have to become
cyborgs to do it.' ... Warwick, a cybernetics professor at the University
of Reading in England, is involved in ambitious and dangerous experiments
in the quest to meld man and machine. In March 2002, an electrode was
implanted in his wrist in order to read the electrical signals pulsing
through his nerves and report the information to a computer, thus providing
a link between the machine and his nervous system. ... Scientists are
making significant breakthroughs in getting computers to interpret thought.
... While Warwick worries that machines may conquer man if we don't
become part machine, he is not concerned that computers will end up
taking over if we do team up with them. 'The new system that we move
to is essentially an intelligent machine network that has human nodes
connected to it. I see it as if you are not connected to the network
- if you are not a cyborg - you're not part of it at all.'" March 21, 2003:
New
Soccer Game A Real Kick. By Christopher Allbritton. Popular Mechanics
News. "Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, and the second
release of World Tour Soccer 2003 .... from 989 Sports for Sony PlayStation
2 brings unmatched realism, excitement and play options for the soccer
enthusiast. ... The matches are played in accurately rendered stadiums
with passionate fans shouting chants and waving club and country flags.
The incredibly smart artificial intelligence challenges gamers to use
the full array of special moves and managerial tactics to move the ball
up and down the pitch." March 20, 2003:
Check
that phone bill before you pay - Telkom says frauds are losing the
company millions of rand as more consumers dispute inflated bills. By
Lesley Stones. Business Day (South Africa). "Globally, telecommunication
fraud is a bigger business than international drug trafficking, with
operators losing $55bn a year. It is the single biggest cause of revenue
loss for operators, costing them between 3% and 5% of their annual revenue.
In financial 2002, Telkom said its network fraud had 'successfully been
reduced' to R174m from a massive R274m in 2001, as a result of enhanced
systems and proactive management. ... One way the operators can fight
back is by installing fraud prevention software to quickly detect usage
anomalies. Such a system has helped Telkom cut the fraud inflicted on
its network to below the international average. But the crime has become
so rife that Telkom has a team of investigators proactively monitoring
network abuse, says [Andrew] Weldrick. They rely on a computerised fraud
management system which uses artificial intelligence to create a profile
of each customer's ordinary usage patterns. 'If there is a sudden deviation,
like a series of international calls, it generates an alarm which our
investigators will pick up. Chances are we will phone you before you
get your bill,' he says. The system also has a self-learning capability
so it can adapt to new methods of fraud." March 20, 2003:
Man
versus machine. By Ross Bentley. ComputerWeekly CW360. "With
several titanic struggles against high-powered chess computers under
his belt, [Garry] Kasparov is keen to expand on his theme. 'The mind's
essence is creativity and the ability to improvise - this is what demarcates
humans brains from computer software. Chess computers have something
I call a 'black limit'. Based on its pre-programmed algorithms, a chess
computer will calculate six, seven or maybe eight moves ahead. The problem
is that once the computer has decided upon a course of action, it is
very hard for the machine to change that instantaneously. We humans
- even when playing a strategic game like chess - will nearly always
feel the danger even before it happens.'" March 20, 2003:
Intel hammering
out robot standards. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News. "Intel
is developing standards for building inexpensive robots that eventually
could automatically inspect industrial equipment or take aerial photographs.
... Currently, these robots are mostly of interest to university researchers,
but their commercial appeal is growing. ... The thrust of the robotics
effort is to reduce the cost and engineering required in building robots.
By standardizing the internal electronics, researchers and private companies
can cut costs and devote more time to developing mobility, visual recognition
systems and artificial intelligence software. The Georgia Institute
of Technology, for instance, is working on swarming robots that can
mimic bees and other insects that work in concert, similar to a project
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology." March 20, 2003:
Fever-dream
of the future haunts new generation - Metro screens newly restored
version of Fritz Lang sci-fi classic from the silent era, Metropolis.
By John McKay. The Canadian Press / available from The Edmonton Journal.
"Blade Runner. Dr. Strangelove. Star Wars. Batman. The Matrix.
Name just about any iconic sci-fi/fantasy film of the 20th century and
it no doubt owes a debt to the staggering prescient imagery of Fritz
Lang's German silent classic Metropolis, which introduced the robots
and futuristic cityscapes so familiar to later generations of movie
fans. ... [James] Quandt says Metropolis was hardly the first sci-fi
film of the silent era, but it did set a standard. 'Almost any subsequent
film about the future and artificial intelligence, or creation of replicants
-- Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein -- all the way through to A.I.,
I think they all in some way look back to Metropolis.'" March 20, 2003:
Games
fans do it by degrees. By Michelle Pountney. Herald Sun. "Computer
games enthusiasts have new heights to aspire to with Australia's first
degree in computer games technology. But the degree is far from three
years of playing computer games. Programming skills, physics, vector
calculus, algorithm design and analysis, artificial intelligence, mobile
computing and modelling behaviour are all in the textbooks for students
enrolled in the La Trobe University course. Course head Dr John Rankin
said the demand for highly skilled computer games programmers was growing
fast in Melbourne. ... 'The global market exceeds $55 billion. A PlayStation-type
game requires some 20 programmers and 20 animators to work over two
years at up to $5 million, for a game that may be popular for perhaps
only 18 months.'" March 19, 2003:
On
the Backs of Ants - New networks mimic the behavior of insects and
bacteria. By Kimberly Patch. Technology Review. "Drawing heavily
on the chemistry of biology, researchers from Humboldt University in
Germany have devised a way for electronic agents to efficiently assemble
a network without relying on a central plan. The researchers modeled
their idea on the methods of insects and other life forms whose communications
lack central planning, but who manage to form networks when individuals
secrete and respond to chemical trails. The researchers found that what
works for ants and bacteria also works for autonomous pieces of computer
code. 'The idea is inspired by chemotactic models of tracking trail
formation widely found in insects, bacteria, [and] slime molds,' said
Frank Schweitzer, an associate professor at Humboldt University and
a research associate at the Fraunhofer Institute for Autonomous Intelligence
Systems in Germany. The work could eventually be used for self-assembling
circuits, groups of coordinated robots and adaptive cancer treatments,
according to Schweitzer." March 19, 2003:
What makes
a Nobel Prize-winner tick? By Leo Esaki [1973 Nobel Prize laureate
in Physics]. The Daily Yomiuri. "Looking back over the history
of the Nobel Prize, the prizewinners were often those who tackled challenges
of bigger, smaller, faster or hotter--in other words, tackling the extremes
of the physical world. ... Civilization has advanced thanks to the development
of an infinite variety of technologies. Looking back at early efforts
in technological advancement must fill us with awe at the determination
of mankind to expand the limitations of human power. One of the first
things we did was invent a vast array of machines that dramatically
increased our capability to perform more swiftly and strongly by overcoming
our own physical limitations. ... Second, we are working hard on boosting
our own information-processing capabilities by harnessing the power
of the brain. One product of this research has been the computer, which
itself has led to the relatively new field of information technology.
The parameters of computer performance have advanced so rapidly that
it now seems just a matter of time before they achieve true artificial
intelligence, dealing with matters so far limited to the human brain." March 18, 2003:
3
county judges in tech training. By Virginia Terhune. The Jerrersonian.
"A self-confessed computer geek, Baltimore County Circuit Court
Judge Lawrence Daniels began tinkering with technology when he was 10
years old. ... The expertise will stand him in good stead as one of
three county circuit court judges who will take part in courses to help
them specialize in business and technology cases as part of a new statewide
program. ... Also an issue is the growing 'artificial intelligence'
of computers that one day may out-think humans. Unless judges, who tend
to rely on precedents set in earlier cases, make an effort to understand
technological issues, they risk operating in the dark. 'They'll be making
decisions whose consequences can't be foreseen,' said [Robert] Kalinoski."
March 18, 2003:
DOD
awards intell net-centric pilot. By Dan Caterinicchia. Federal Computer
Week. "The Net-Centric Enterprise Services initiative, which was
launched late last year, would create an infrastructure that will enable
users to quickly take advantage of DOD and intelligence community networks,
eliminating the system-by-system approach, [Rob] Walker said. ... The
architecture will use Semantic Web technologies, also known as 'smart
tagging.' The Semantic Web uses artificial intelligence so a user's
query gets the most relevant hits from its system or other connected
systems, [Kenneth] Bartee said. Some critics question whether smart
tagging is possible, but the Defense Intelligence Agency is 'out in
front' in this area, Bartee said, adding that even if it is impossible,
the research will still result in improved data tagging and the ability
for defense and intelligence agencies 'to share information without
rebuilding platforms or databases.'" March 18, 2003:
AI - Man
Versus Machine. By Don M. Herana. Philippine Daily Inquirer / available
from INQ7. "It sounds like a topic straight out of "The Terminator"
films. But no, this is not a review of the upcoming Terminator movie
- 'Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.' This article is all about artificial
intelligence (AI) and its best application today. Artificial intelligence,
or AI , is defined as the study of the abilities of computers to perform
tasks which currently are being done by humans. It is a field where
computer science intersects with engineering, philosophy, psychology,
and other fields of education. AI aims to capture human intelligence
by following a wide array of rules programmed into a computer. When
we talk about AI, first thing that comes to mind are humanoid robots
or cyborgs. These are the likes of 'Bishop' in Aliens, 'Data' in Star
Trek: The Next Generation and the more popular 'T800' in Terminator
2:Judgment Day. Yet, robotics is just one area where AI is commonly
used. The most popular application of AI today is the computer chess
program." March 17, 2003:
Meet Jeeves
the Robot - Eager to please, and only comes up to your knees...
By John Lui. March 17, 2003:
The
wizards of Weta. By Alan Cane. Financial Times. "The Weta team,
a multi-national, multi-cultural peripatetic army of illustrators, animators,
modellers, compositors and programmers, is about to start work on the
final film in the [Rings] trilogy, Return of the King, set for release
at the end of the year. The filming is finished; it is Weta's responsibility
to create the special effects on time and on budget. ... The capabilities
of animation software are advancing by leaps and bounds. Only a year
or so ago, large crowds were digitally created by multiplying up smaller
ones. Anomalies could occur. In one famous crowd scene, the sharp-eyed
will spot a section of the audience clapping backwards. In The Two Towers,
however, all 12,000 of the screaming orcs and Uruk-hai soldiers which
took part in the battle of Helm's Deep were separately created using
digital technology and artificial intelligence. 'Each has his own fighting
style, his own walk, his own clothes and armour,' [Scott] Houston says.
They were created using software called 'Massive' developed by Weta
and which will shortly be available commercially." March 17, 2003:
The
myth of man vs. machine. Opinion by Barlas F. Esin. Daily Forty-Niner
(California State University, Long Beach). " It would be misleading,
at this point, to assert that the A.I. has outdone human intelligence.
At the same time, it has the potential to set potent standards for defining
aptitude. The world's greatest chess player, Garry Kasparov, described
his loss to IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer five years ago as 'the end
of the mythological era' of man vs. machine matches, according to Newsweek.
... Let's face it -- when pitting humans against forces of either nature
or technology, myth is what it is all about. To a computer, it doesn't
matter who you are. Whether you are Kasparov or a rookie, the computer
will always give its best performance. In other words, the human race
has to confront a rough, tough challenge against the machine, if it
wants to preserve its integrity as the creator." March 17, 2003:
Making
Computers Talk - Say good-bye to stilted electronic chatter: new
synthetic-speech systems sound authentically human, and they can respond
in real time. By Andy Aaron, Ellen Eide and John F. Pitrelli. Scientific
American Explore. "What are the immediate uses of this technology?
They include delivery of up-to-the-minute news, reading machines for
the handicapped, automotive voice controls and retrieving e-mail over
the phone--or any system where the vocabulary is large, the content
changes frequently or unpredictably, and a visual display isn't practical.
In the future Supervoices could enhance video and computer games, handheld
devices and even motion-picture production. ... Scientists have attempted
to simulate human speech since the late 1700s, when Wolfgang von Kempelen
built a 'Speaking Machine' that used an elaborate series of bellows,
reeds, whistles and resonant chambers to produce rudimentary words.
... Software ... converts the written text from a series of words into
one of phonemes. The software notes features of interest about each
phoneme, such as what phonemes preceded and followed it, or whether
it is the first or last one in a sentence. It also identifies parts
of speech such as nouns or verbs in the text. ... We often debate among
ourselves the holy grail of text-to-speech technology. Should it be
indistinguishable from a live human speaker, as in a Turing test?"
March 17, 2003:
Pitch-perfect
PC - Software that turns a computer into a smart, sensitive practice
partner for music students. By Alex Markels. U.S. News & World Report.
"From outside her bedroom, it sounds as if 16-year-old Carolina
DePaulis is practicing trombone as an accompanist plays piano. They
begin Guilmant's 'Morceau Symphonique' together, then DePaulis launches
into a trombone solo. When she slows down, the pianist does too. But
open the door and you'll find the junior from Minnesota's Mound Westonka
High School all alone. DePaulis's mentor is a computer with a microphone
and speakers, running a program called SmartMusic. Computer-aided music
instruction isn't new; programs like Band in a Box and Music Minus One
also provide accompaniment. But SmartMusic compares students' playing
with a digital template, which lets it detect mistakes and mark them
on a score. It also simulates the rapport between musicians by sensing
and reacting to tempo changes. 'It makes me want to play more,' says
DePaulis.'" March 16, 2003:
In
Defense of Twinkies - People always suspected that this delectable
snack had staying power, but 73 years? It's an icon. By Charles P. Pierce.
Boston Globe Magazine. "The Twinkie's formidable shelf life has
aroused curiosity among bored undergraduates, the scientific community,
and people who are, well, members of both. Most seriously, the Twinkie
was subjected to a grim series of experiments eight years ago by a pair
of young scientists at Rice University in Houston. They tested Twinkies
for artificial intelligence (the cakes failed), electric resistivity
(the filling bubbled a little, but that was all), and gravitational
response, in which test a Twinkie was launched from a sixth-floor window,
with the result that, upon contact with the sidewalk, only a small crack
opened on the Twinkie's side." March 16, 2003:
Artificial
Intelligence - Teach a robot to drive, win a million bucks! By Mark
Vaughn. AutoWeek. "Imagine R2-D2 andC-3PO piloting a desert truck
in an off-road race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas with a $1 million
first prize dangling in front of them. No, this is not the latest reality
television show plot or some wacky promoter's scam-unless you consider
the United States government a wacky promoter. It's the DARPA Grand
Challenge for Autonomous Robotic Ground Vehicles (www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge)
March 14, 2003:
Spell
czech, for better or wurst? By Charles Sheehan. Associated Press
/ available from The Bakersfield Californian. "A study at the University
of Pittsburgh indicates spell-check software may level the playing field
between people with differing levels of language skills, hampering the
work of writers and editors who place too much trust in the software.
... Dennis Galletta, a professor of information systems at the Katz
Business School, said spell-checking software is so sophisticated that
some have come to trust it too thoroughly. 'It's not a software problem,
it's a behavior problem,' he said." March 14, 2003:
Face-Recognition
Technology Improves. By Barnaby J. Feder. The New York Times (no
fee reg. req'd.). "Facial recognition technology has improved substantially
since 2000, according to results released yesterday of a benchmark test
by four federal government agencies involving systems from 10 companies.
The data, which is the latest in a series of biannual tests overseen
by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is expected to
encourage government security officers to deploy facial recognition
systems in combination with fingerprinting and other biometric systems
for applications like verifying that people are who they claim to be
and identifying unknown people by comparing them with a database of
images." March 14, 2003:
Mind
of the company - Science is finding that mimicking living systems
to produce robots is about understanding biology, not physics. There
are lessons here for the way we run our corporations. By Tim Wallace.
Financial Review Boss. "The phrase 'fast, cheap and out of control'
was coined by Australian-born scientist Rodney Brooks and a colleague
for an article published in 1989 advocating the use of robots in space
exploration. Internet guru Kevin Kelly later adapted it for the title
of his 1994 book on new modes of thinking in artificial intelligence,
while filmmaker Errol Morris used it for his 1997 documentary film featuring
the robotics scientist. ... Brook's work on AI challenges us to rethink
OI (organisational intelligence) and to smash the machine, rebuilding
it from the bottom up - fast, cheap and out of control. ... The most
celebrated of all early efforts to create a robot that could do childish
things resulted in Shakey, built at the Stanford Research Institute
in the late 1960s to early 1970s, and so named because of the way its
camera and TV transmitter mast shook when it moved. ... The designers
of Shakey, and of the projects following it, believed that for a robot
to act intelligently in the world it first needed an accurate model
of that world. ... What must be happening in insects, Brooks realised,
was sensing connected to action - sensors to actuators - very quickly.
The key to building a similarly efficient robot, he concluded, was to
have it react to its sensors in the same way, so it did not need a detailed
computational model of the world. 'If the building and maintaining of
the internal world model was hard and a computational drain, then get
rid of the internal model. Every other robot had had one. But it was
not clear that insects had them, so why did our robots necessarily need
them?'" March 13, 2003:
A
bug's life for robots. The Economist Technology Quarterly. "Thanks
to advances in engineering and prototyping, a new generation of biologically
inspired robots is beginning to crawl all over the place. Cockroaches
are the inspiration for some of the most ambitious. At the forefront
of this interdisciplinary field is Robert Full, professor of integrative
biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr Full cheerfully
admits that some of his real-life critters can be disgusting, but they
offer valuable insights into how to conquer challenging terrain. ...
According to Martin Buehler of the Centre for Intelligent Machines at
McGill University in Montreal, the usefulness of wheeled robots has
reached its peak. Research into many-legged robots, however, is still
in its infancy, and the potential pay-off from them could be huge. The
main focus is on creatures with four or more legs." March 13, 2003:
Odyssey
of the Mind is part talent show, part science fair. By Kym Reinstadler.
The Grand Rapids Press. "Challenged to create a play about a character
with artificial intelligence that never answers anybody's questions,
yet always gives brilliant advice, a team of South Shore Christian Middle
School students chose an unlikely hero: a tennis shoe. March 13, 2003:
Robotic
future. By Kevin P. Craver. The Northwest Herald. "Guest speaker
Jack Burrus programmed his Hero robot to slowly reach up and give the
sixth-grader's nose a pinch in front of his classmates during a St.
Mary School assembly. There was a message behind the clever robot tricks:
Technology has limitations, but human creativity does not. And students
have to learn math and science to make a technological wonderland a
reality. 'Every great idea will be replaced. No matter what it is, there
will always be a better idea,' Burrus said. ... Students laughed or
gasped as Burrus gave them a taste of what the next decade may have
in store. He mentioned stories about computer companies working on technologies
for smart homes and others working on ways to give sight to the blind
and hearing to the deaf. They especially liked technological applications
that could replace some of their chores or keep younger brothers and
sisters out of their rooms." March 13, 2003:
Innovating
our way to yesteryear. Opinion by Ellen Goodman. The Boston Globe.
"For several years I've had a quote from the late Marshall McLuhan
pinned to my bulletin board that says, succinctly: 'If it works, it's
obsolete.' This just about sums up my skepticism about technological
advances. ... After a few more years of e-mail mania, messaging back
and forth 10 times over the Internet to coordinate a lunch date with
a co-worker, surely someone will come up with the futuristic way of
actually hearing another person's voice. Call it a telephone. If these
two reinventions are a success, we might also have a new, improved version
of a personal digital assistant. We'll call it a person. And since we
are told that artificial intelligence is the hot item of the future,
with everyone vying to write a program that will distinguish the human
from the machine, I have one last little marketing ploy. Let's reinvent
natural intelligence." March 12, 2003:
Gentle touch
of robot milker. BBC. "[A] robotics expert has been given a
grant to develop technology which makes the milking process not just
fully automated but also sympathetic to the cows. Dr Bruce Davies, from
Pontardawe, near Swansea, is perfecting a flexible arm - intended to
mimic an elephant's trunk - which will seek out a cow's udder and attach
itself to the teats. ... A 'thinking camera' on the arm uses the latest
in vision software to locate the cow's teats and is said to be much
more gentle when slipping on the milking cups. ... 'The current robots
are built around industrial robots of today, which are very mechanical,
relatively threatening devices, and also use what might be relatively
expensive equipment for finding the teats in the first place,' he said."
... Research suggests cows adapt well to automated milking systems and
that there is an increase in yield." March 12, 2003:
Mimicking
cockroaches' 'mechanical intelligence' - Development of legged robots
could help in navigating disaster sites, other dangerous and difficult-to-reach
places. By Bronwyn Barnett. Stanford Report. "The sprawl robots
program at Stanford's Center for Design Research, led by mechanical
engineering Professor Mark Cutkosky, is one of the few laboratories
that designs and manufactures robots that are biomimetic -- mimicking
biology -- and hexapedal -- having six legs. Such robots soon may prove
important for environmental sensing, space exploration, military uses
and more. Insect legs are 'sophisticated mechanisms,' said Jonathan
Clark, a graduate student in mechanical engineering who helps develop
sprawl robots. 'What we've done is try to capture the essence of what
they do in a simple mechanical structure.' ... So, why cockroaches?
... Their brains and eyes may not be great, but the 'mechanical intelligence'
of their legs more than makes up for their mental and perceptory shortcomings.
'When roaches are running on rough terrain, they don't really think
about it ... they just run,' Clark said. 'If one hits an obstacle, it
just rolls with it and keeps going -- which is a very different approach
than traditional legged robots.' So far, the engineers have succeeded
in imitating the 'intelligence' of a roach's legs. It takes a mere seven
lines of computer code to instruct a robot to run." March 12, 2003:
A
fair chance to meet role models. By Ebony Reed. The Plain Dealer.
"Sara Lynch, a freshman at Lakewood High School, said she had never
met a woman engineer before. This week, Sara and about 250 other girls
are getting their chance to meet women engineers and scientists as they
participate in the Northeastern Ohio Science & Engineering Fair at Cleveland
State University. March 12, 2003:
Antiwar
Song, With Whimsy. By Neil Strauss. The New York Times (no fee reg.
req'd.). "When a news release arrived announcing that a company
in Barcelona, Spain, had developed an artificial intelligence application
that could analyze a song and determine its potential to become a hit,
it seemed to be a practical joke poking fun at the desperation and cluelessness
of the music business. But I regret to inform you that further research
has determined that not only does this company, Polyphonic HMI, seem
to exist, but there are already several major labels -- Sony Music,
RCA, and Universal UK -- that are either using it or considering the
option. ... Tracie Reed, the vice president of the North American office
of Polyphonic, said that the application, called Hit Song Science, was
originally developed by Grupo AIA, a Spanish artificial-intelligence
company. ... Several musicians and managers, when told about the technology,
laughed at a future in which a computer program listened to their songs
to determine if they were good enough to be released. Jordan Berliant,
a music manager at Tenth Street Entertainment, said, 'What creates a
hit is that people have an emotional reaction to a song, in particular
the lyrics. It's difficult to believe that a machine could gauge that.'" March 11, 2003:
Software
Pioneer Quits Board of Groove. By John Markoff. The New York Times
(no fee reg. req'd.). "The [Total Information Awareness] project
has been trying to build a prototype computer system that would permit
the scanning of hundreds or thousands of databases to look for information
patterns that might alert the authorities to the activities of potential
terrorists. Civil liberties activists have argued that such a system,
if deployed, could easily be misused in ways that would undercut traditional
American privacy values. ... The debate echoes an earlier one that placed
scientists at odds with advancing technologies. The war on terror is
raising ever more difficult civil liberties issues. 'Computer scientists
are going to have the same kinds of battles that physicists did amidst
the fallout of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,' said Michael Schrage, a senior
adviser to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Security Studies
Program." March 10, 2003:
Twins
crack face recognition puzzle. Reuters / available from CNN. "The
technology scans and maps the human face as a three-dimensional surface,
providing a far more accurate reference for identifying a person than
current systems, most of which rely on two-dimensional images, [Ron]
Kimmel said. ... The twins [Michael and Alex Bronstein] and Kimmel say
they want to turn the technology -- registered for a patent in the United
States -- into a commercial product, with applications ranging from
airports and border crossings to security zones and teller machines.
... The advantage of the system is its ability to compare facial structures
as they appear in different poses or light conditions, variables which
could distort a face seen as a two-dimensional image. 'One of my students
calls it sculpting in numbers,' said Kimmel. 'This kind of mapping makes
it all invariant, or it is not influenced by our expressions. If we
smile a little bit or we change our face a little, it will still be
mapped into the same signature, the same kind of surface.'" March 10, 2003:
Robot
farming step closer. The New Zealand Herald. "The farmer of
the future will not wear gumboots, says an agricultural engineer. 'He
will be somebody who just goes to the office occasionally,' said Ian
Yule, of Massey University. Robotic tractors would soon be at work using
the global positioning system (GPS) to make farming more efficient.
... 'It is possible to have tractors that run themselves and get their
instructions from an office' ... Dr Yule said the technology was so
reliable tractors could operate in the dark. 'In terms of guiding the
machine and controlling how fast it goes, all that can be done without
human intervention.'" March 9, 2003: Five
Reasons to Hope - New Technologies That May Help Silicon Valley
Rise Again. By Charles Piller. Los Angeles Times (no fee reg. req'd.)
"'In the next three years humankind will generate more data'--video
footage, Internet traffic, corporate records and even newspapers--'than
it has generated in all of human history,' says Nelson Mattos, a software
expert at IBM's Santa Teresa Laboratory in San Jose. That's hardly reassuring
for those of us already drowning in data. So the quest continues for
effective ways to tackle information overload. The goal, Mattos says,
is to 'organize, index and mine [diverse data types] so that you can
discover the trends and patterns.' Then exploit that knowledge for everything
from corporate marketing to research surveys of thousands of medical
papers in multiple languages to detecting potential terrorist plots
amid billions of innocuous activities by billions of law-abiding citizens.
... That ability, to predict events from 'the soup of billions of possible
coincidences,' as Stanford University computer scientist Jeffrey D.
Ullman has called it, is the holy grail of data mining. It's also still
years away. But more modest efforts to use and exploit the data stream
are expected to create major new market opportunities." March 9, 2003: Search
for the next big thing. By Jamie Doward. The Observer. "[T]he
shake-out has also helped highlight where the financiers are placing
their bets on future growth areas. Contrary to popular myth, fledgling
businesses that promise stellar growth are still being funded, it's
just that this time around, investors are more discerning. ... Analysts
predict that one of the big growth software sectors in the future will
be content management or 'data mining'. 'Silicon Valley VCs are getting
very excited about so called integrated or 'artificial' intelligence.
You've got an explosion in data sources and the challenge will be to
make technology understand content in context,' says Tim Jennings, research
director with the Butler Group." March 9, 2003: Robot
ducks don't defecate. Book review by Alan Rafferty. The Observer.
"Gaby Wood's book [Living Dolls] is a fascinating historical investigation
into the relationship between man and machine, filled with delightful
trivia. ... Little gets past Wood and, as she examines the ways in which
humans have been mechanised themselves (working on factory lines and
the like), this brilliant book focuses on the key questions about how
we tell the difference between them and us." March 9, 2003: Advances
in training help revolutionize the military. [Part
5 of 6] By Kit Lavell. The San Diego Union-Tribune. "To make
training more realistic the military has reached out to the business
world, academia, think tanks, and non-traditional sources such as the
entertainment industry for out-of-the-box thinking, technology and support.
The result has been significant developments in constructing live, virtual
and constructive, dubbed L-V-C, environments for military training.
... The University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies
began in 1999 with a $45 million grant from the Army with a mission
to help make soldiers better decision makers. Some of Hollywood's best
talent - men and women responsible for creating popular action and adventure
films - have teamed with engineers, professionals from Silicon Valley
and the computer game and amusement park industries, academicians, and
the military. Their mandate is to develop artificial intelligence to
allow digital characters to interact with real people. By engaging all
the senses, ICT hopes to advance the state of the art in virtual reality.
The navy has a counterpart at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey.
It is called MOVES (Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulation)." March 9, 2003: Talking
sense. Opinion by Kanniga Buraphatanin. The Nation. "Puttipan
Polnyanunt, 24, has set a great example for aspiring Thai kids and young
adults. Shortly after graduating from Kasetsart University's computer
engineering faculty two years ago, he has created an indigenous software
programme that enables computers to talk to you. ... 'I like adventure
and excitement' said Puttipan, who also plans to further his education
in the next few months in the area of artificial intelligence. The ultimate
goal is to make a computer think by itself. He is also interested in
creating an intelligent Thai-English and English-Thai translator to
help people translate information on web-sites and all kinds of word
documents in less time with lower cost. Puttipan is quite happy with
the way things are moving along in his life. 'That's because I can do
what I love, not because the work is becoming one of the best sellers
in the software market.'" March 7, 2003: Star
shines; 'Comic Potential' shorts. Theater review by John Moore.
Denver Post. "Sir Alan Ayckbourn, the world's most produced playwright
behind Shakespeare, penned 'Comic Potential' as a lighthearted farce
with an undeniably dark subtext that skewers television, consumerism
and technology while honoring the comic eras of Buster Keaton and Preston
Sturges. It is set in the near future, on the set of a third-rate British
soap opera where dumbed-down tripe is churned out in great volume thanks
to the invention of robot actors who can be programmed to act by handlers
using the equivalent of computer-game joysticks. They have memories
but no thoughts or feelings of their own. This studio is part of Planet
Media Corp., a conglomerate dedicated to the development of artificial
intelligence ('Our motto: Nothing Personal!')." March 2003: Look
under the Hood - New ERP system in. Application integration? Done.
Data backed up? Check. So what's that rattling noise coming from your
enterprise? Time to pop the hood and take a look at your business processes.
By Raoul Le Blond. CIO Asia. "The next time you order that Big
Mac and Coke at a McDonald's Singapore restaurant, a new crew scheduling
solution recently deployed by the company may just make the wait for
your food a little shorter. After all, it is about fast food. ... 'McScheduler
takes a lot of the guesswork from our HR planning and provides management
with greater visibility and a more objective way to schedule crews to
serve our customers in the fastest time and the best way possible,'
says [Davy] Wee. Using operations research, constraint programming and
artificial intelligence technologies, the Web-enabled solution enables
managers to speed up crew scheduling and assignments. ... Labour and
resource costs have also been improved. The solution also brought more
objectivity to the whole scheduling process...." March 7, 2003: A
Toy Dog Moves Closer to the Real Thing. ABC News. "Go Go is
a toy dog much along the same lines as the FurReal cats. Pet the doggie
double and its tail wags just like the real thing. And just like its
flesh and blood counterpart, Go Go listens for its owners voice and
will come when called. 'It will listen to where you are talking from
it'll turn towards you and walk towards you, and its all using your
voice as a kind of guide,' says Wayne Charness, marketing executive
at Hasbro Toys. The ersatz canine uses a technology called sound localization.
It's a set of built-in microphones that listens for a user's voice.
Chips and software process the sounds to figure out how far and in which
direction the person may be and directs the robot to the source." March 7, 2003: Robots
to lead Japan on slow walk to deregulation. Reuters / available
from Stuff. "Should robots be free to walk the streets of a Japanese
town? The government thinks so, and has exempted the southern city of
Fukuoka, a centre for robotics and venue of the 2002 robot soccer World
Cup, from a national regulation prohibiting the testing of robots on
public roads. Not at first sight the stuff revolutions are made of,
but the government hopes that by gradually relaxing the myriad rules
covering every aspect of Japanese business, it can make progress towards
the bigger prize of a free, dynamic economy." March 7, 2003: Just
add magic. By Louis Nel. News24. "Artificial intelligence is
magic too. Take Synapse Media Player for example. It's an artificially
intelligent media player 'that not only plays your MP3, WMA, OGG, and
other files, but ... also finds and memorises patterns in your listening
habits. You can activate this feature ('the Brain'), and Synapse will
play music from your library based on what you have listened to and
what it - statistically - thinks you will like'." March 6, 2003: Dash
for cash puts tech out of tune. Commentary by Rupert Goodwins. ZDNet
(UK). "And just to make sure the last ounce of human expressiveness
and creativity is expunged from the equation, here's HSS from Polyphonic
HMI in Spain. HSS stands for Hit Song Science, and it's an artificial
intelligence application for writing pop songs. Polyphonic HMI (that
stands for Human Media Interface, apparently) has analyzed quarter of
a million CDs for underlying mathematical patterns of melody, beat,
harmony, pitch, octave, fullness of sound, brilliance and chord progression.
It then takes an unreleased song and does the same, deciding how well
it'll fit into "the current hit universe": in other words, whether the
great record-buying public will clutch it to their bosoms -- or wallets.
But someone's got to write the song first, right? Wrong. But someone's
got to write the song first, right? Wrong. Fans of the massively enbrained
Brian Eno will know of his intermittent fondness for generative music,
most notably that of a company called Sseyo. This is computer-generated
sound that takes some basic rules and applies them pseudo-randomly to
create a unique track. Like much computer art, it's intriguing at first
but rapidly palls: the computer doesn't know what's in music that humans
like. Nobody does." March 6, 2003: Robots
at the bedside in US health care experiment - Its bedside manner
has kinks to work out, but an experimental robot may one day help the
US health care industry cope with burgeoning ranks of the elderly and
ill. Reuters / available from ComputerWeekly CW360 / also
available from MSNBC (Robot nurses learn bedside manners). "For
now the robots operate primarily as a form of mobile video telephone
allowing patients and doctors to communicate. But eventually, they may
help the health care industry serve millions by wheeling patients to
dinner, or even taking temperatures and drawing blood. 'This technology
enables health care professionals to care for people in remote locations
at a fraction of the time it would normally take,' said Loren Shook,
chief executive of Silverado Senior Living, an operator of assisted
living facilities for people with Alzheimer's disease. Silverado's Calabasas,
Calif., care center is the site for a clinical trial of a robot made
by InTouch Health Inc. that is designed to allow real-time, one-on-one
communication between doctors and patients, health care management and
staff or between patients and their families." March 6, 2003: Interactive
robots. By Monique Smith, Riverside University High School. On Milwaukee.
"Teens who have the Internet at home are crazy about instant messaging.
... But what if one is buddy-less? Worry no more thanks to IM programs
known as chat bots. Chat bots are programs designed to 'virtually' give
onliners a buddy that chats back with them, minus any heartbreak. Your
chat bot friend will never keep you waiting with a BRB (be right back)
message while it runs to the kitchen for a snack. Chat bots remain online
day and night, so there's always someone to talk to. In addition, they
always write back without delay. ... Pretty soon chat bots will communicate
amongst themselves and begin their own Internet colonies! They'll be
so well developed that the phrase 'artificial intelligence' will take
on a whole new meaning." March 6, 2003: Brain
power to be main focus in annual Cultural Studies Symposium. By
Tina Deines. Kansas State Collegian. "The conference, 'Brain Power:
Intelligence, Emotion and Cultural Fantasy,' will include keynote speakers
Katherine Hayles and Nancy Kress and will focus on artificial intelligence.
... Megan Urbanek, graduate student in cultural studies and British
literature, is one of the participants in the panel. She said she is
most looking forward to seeing how people from different fields view
the issue. ... [Michele] Janette said that in a world that is moving
toward more mechanism, the topics that will be discussed during the
symposium are relevant to everyone." March 6, 2003: Making
robots more like us. By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee. The New York Times
(no fee reg. req'd.). "Call it crazy, but Monica Nicolescu has
taken a robot under her wing. At a robotics laboratory at the University
of Southern California, she puts the two-wheeled machine through its
paces, leading it through a maze of short plastic pillars to an orange
box on the floor. It follows her around the lab, observing and reproducing
her every step. Through this high-tech game of monkey-see, monkey-do,
Ms. Nicolescu and her colleagues train robots to perform simple jobs
like picking up the box. But their goal, and that of other robotics
researchers, is to build robots that will be capable of doing not only
tasks they have been programmed for, but new and more complicated ones
as well. Despite advances in artificial intelligence, sensors and mechanical
devices, researchers are still a long way from realizing the guiding
vision of robotics: machines that can move and work like humans, learn
new tasks with little or no training, and react with sensitivity to
the changing moods of their mortal masters. Instead, most robots remain
human-dependent machines that can perform only specialized tasks, like
welding parts in a factory, searching through the rubble of a collapsed
building or vacuuming a living room. Few display what could be considered
sensitivity to people, and those that do tend to be toys, like Sony's
Aibo pet, that serve only to entertain. Robotics researchers are realizing
that the journey to more autonomous, adaptable robots will require more
than just improvements in mechanical, sensory and computing capabilities.
Equally important, they say, is improving the way people and robots
interact: after all, they say, that may be how robots will learn, and
to be truly useful, robots must be acceptable to people." March 5, 2003: Web
companies searching for dollars. By Stefanie Olsen. CNET News. "Executives
of leading Web search companies see rosy days ahead for their technology.The
search box is becoming dominant in all areas of the Web for news, finance,
shopping, personals and jobs; and Yahoo is committed to making the most
of the opportunity, according to the company's vice president of search,
Tim Cadogan. ... The momentum behind online search activities has a
significant financial component. Overture's chief technology officer,
Paul Ryan, in his own keynote address on Tuesday, estimated that in
the next couple of years, sales from search engine marketing will hit
about $6 billion--just shy of the total worth of the online advertising
market in 2002. ... But Ryan gave only a brief sketch of how to improve
search engine technology with intelligence on the context of keyword
queries and knowledge of a Web surfer's intent while searching. (In
contrast, just six months ago, Google CTO Craig Silverstein compared
the future of search to the sophisticated artificial intelligence system
in the 'Star Trek' television series.) Yahoo's Cadogan also outlined
areas that his company sees as key for innovation in Web search, including
understanding the intent behind queries. In the future, he said, if
a Yahoo visitor types the word 'Windows' in a search field, Yahoo might
deliver results that provide helpful choices among products to buy or
research links. He also said that improvements will help match people
looking for products and services with commercial interests." March 5, 2003: Robot
finger has feeling - Artificial muscle feels the weight of objects
it moves. By Phillip Ball. Nature (Science Update). "Scientists
in Spain have developed a robotic finger with a sense of touch. It is
made of a polymer that can feel the weight of what it's pushing and
adjust the energy it uses accordingly. This is similar to the way we
use our sense of touch." March 5, 2003:
Virtual detectives track criminals. By Jane Wakefield. BBC. "Increasingly
police forces are relying on software that can sift through the information
they gather to help them solve more crimes. Every UK police force, some
European ones and the FBI in the US now use a visualisation software
tool by a British company called i2 to analyse all data. It allows hard-pressed
police officers to piece together and picture the evidence they have
collected. ... The software works by analysing witness statements, names,
addresses, telephone and financial records and any other evidence. It
then looks for links that otherwise might have remained elusive." March 3, 2003: DNA's
Disciples - A recent conference of genomics experts underscores
how far the field's technology has come -- and how far it still has
to go. By Erick Schonfeld. Business 2.0. "Despite all the wonders
that supposedly await us, by the end of the meeting I couldn't shake
the feeling that what's driving us to unlock the secrets of life is
our inability to cope with death. Inventor and artificial-intelligence
guru Ray Kurzweil predicted that advancements in genomics, coupled with
nanotechnology and the combination of human and computer intelligence,
could extend our life span to 1,000 years. Challenged to define intelligence,
he called it 'the ability to solve problems using limited resources.
And the most limited resource is time.' The implication is that the
smartest thing for us to do would be to eliminate the ravages of time
as a variable by prolonging life indefinitely." March 3, 2003: Looking
for Intelligence in Ice Cream - Companies have mastered collecting
information, but not what to do with it. That's made data-sleuthing
'business intelligence' software one of the few hot areas in tech. By
Julie Schlosser. Fortune [to appear in March 17th issue]. "Ben
& Jerry's may cultivate a down-home image, but as a unit of $47-billion-a-year
Unilever, it depends just as heavily on the stats for its success. And
to get those figures, it relies on so-called business intelligence,
or BI, software: a plain-vanilla name for programs that crunch huge
quantities of data in search of trends, problems, or new business opportunities.
... Large retailers typically now have 80 terabytes' worth of information
on their products--equivalent to 16 million digital photos or 320 miles
of bookshelf. Sears has around 70 terabytes (70 million megabytes) of
data, Kmart more than 90, and Unilever 106 terabytes in North America
alone. And still that's relatively puny: At the end of last year, Wal-Mart
had 285 terabytes in its data warehouse. But Wall Street doesn't give
out awards for collecting data; what the companies needed was a way
to put the information to work. Otherwise, says Rebecca Wettemann, vice
president of research at Nucleus Research in Wellesley, Mass., 'it's
like having a bank account with millions of dollars in it but no ATM
card. If you can't get it out and can't make it work for you, then it
is not really useful.'" March 3, 2003: MIT
shares artificial intelligence information. By Bill Heaney. Taipei
Times. "A group of professors and research assistants from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US shared the latest
artificial-intelligence technology with researchers from Taiwan last
week. The four-day Oxygen Alliance workshop held at Acer Inc's Aspire
Park in Taoyuan County -- the first time the research group has met
outside the US -- ended on Friday. ... MIT delegates at the workshop
shared Galaxy, SpeechBuilder, and a face and speech recognition technology
with participants, teaching them how to install and make enhancements
to the technologies so that they can create their own branded products." March 3, 2003: Crime
- A Google For Cops. Hsinchun Chen is the inventor of a high-tech
crimefighting tool. By Seth Mnookin. Newsweek / available from MSNBC.
"As any crime fighter worth his tights will tell you, it takes
a nerd to beat the bad guys. Spider-Man wouldn’t even be spinning
webs if it weren’t for that science-loving Peter Parker. So it
is in real life that a geeked-out computer-science professor just might
revolutionize law enforcement in the 21st century. Working at the Artificial
Intelligence Lab he founded at the University of Arizona in Tucson,
Hsinchun Chen is the inventor of a high-tech crimefighting tool with
a name straight out of the comic books: Coplink. ... 'With law enforcement,
you have all these computer data-bases -- sex offenders, speeding tickets
and so on,' says Bob Griffin, president of Knowledge Computing Corp.,
the Arizona company that produces Coplink. 'This system automatically
finds those patterns.'" March 2, 2003: Auto
makers gearing up for fuel efficiency. By Ann Job. The Plain Dealer.
"Electronics make new transmission features possible, too - and
affordable enough for even lower-priced vehicles. ... Meantime, Toyota's
redesigned 2003 4Runner with V-8 includes a five-speed automatic that
changes gear-shift patterns according to driving conditions and what
its artificial intelligence unit deducts is 'driver intent.'" March 2, 2003: Robots
to the rescue. By Dave Scheiber. St. Petersburg Times. "In
the war on terror, University of South Florida engineering professor
Robin Murphy finds herself a pioneer on the front line with a new kind
of soldier: the search-and-rescue robot. ... As a professor of human-robotic
interaction and head of CRASAR, Murphy has led her team of students
to worldwide recognition as leaders in the field. January's Discover
magazine honored Murphy in its 'Top 100 Science Stories of 2002' edition.
She was featured for her advances with rescue robots, in particular
the work she and several graduate students performed at the site of
the World Trade Center. ... Her father was a mechanical engineer, and
growing up in Mobile, Ala., Murphy took notice: 'That's what I always
wanted to be.' She immersed herself in science fiction, a passion that
one day would lead her to name her robots after female science-fiction
writers. 'I never really identified with the heroes, the ones who fought
all the space wars,' she says. 'I always thought the scientists who
built things for these guys to go and do great things were far more
interesting.' ... 'I just want to be of use,' she says, as her bustling
robot seminar winded down last week. 'You look at what these guys in
fire and rescue service have to do. The technology is there to help
them. And it's up to my community of scientists to get to where we can
give the right technology to the right people at the right time.'" March 2, 2003: BU
grad finds pattern for success - Vestal man's embroidery technology
impacts textile industry. By My-Ly Nguyen. Press & Sun-Bulletin. "Five
computer work stations, a commercial embroidery machine and a lot of
brain power are nearly all David Goldman needs to run his growing business,
Soft Sight Inc. The software company he founded in August 1998, after
earning his doctorate in computer science at Binghamton University,
may revolutionize the textile industry with its flagship product: one
of the first embroidery design automation systems to hit the global
market. ... Goldman's product digitally automates the embroidery design
process using sophisticated artificial intelligence software that can
mimic the thought and decision process of a human counterpart. A scanned
image is used to generate the stitch placement needed to optimally sew
the image on a commercial embroidery machine. Human error is dramatically
reduced and the costs of producing embroidered apparel can decrease
significantly, Goldman said. 'We haven't seen a program of this sophistication
before,' said Larry Lawley, president of Data-Stitch Inc., an embroidery
equipment and software company based in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas
area. 'The technology's impact on the industry has been phenomenal.'
... Goldman and his team are continually working to enhance the automation
technology with help from the National Science Foundation and Binghamton
University." March 1, 2003: The
Meaning of Computers and Chess - What Deep Junior, Deep Blue, and
Garry Kasparov teach us about intelligence, human and artificial. By
Philip Ross. IEEE Spectrum Web Only News. "The original chess-playing
algorithm, proposed more than 50 years ago by Claude Shannon, the electrical
engineer who founded information theory, begins with the search function,
which generates all possible move sequences to a certain depth, set
by the computer's speed and memory. Then each end position is graded,
numerically, by an evaluation function that assigns value to such aspects
of chess knowledge as material.... Deep Junior seems to have played
about as well as Deep Blue, although its hardware was perhaps only 1
or 2 percent as powerful. Blue had 480 processors, each specialized
totally for the generation and evaluation of chess positions; Junior
had up to eight general-purpose Pentium 4 processors with up to 8 GB
of RAM. Processor performance has of course improved enormously in the
intervening years, but not enough to account for Deep Junior's matching
Deep Blue's performance. Rather, it is improved chess-playing software
that mainly explains Deep Junior's success, in part because programmers,
working with grandmaster advisers, have learned how to encode many aspects
of chess knowledge that had previously been unmanageable. Deep Junior's
handlers could not hope to match Deep Blue's search capabilities, so
they concentrated on tweaking Deep Junior's evaluation function." March 1, 2003: Best
Sci-Tech Books of 2002 - Asking Big Questions. 36 top books address
science's most complex puzzles. By Gregg Sapp. Library Journal. "Technology
- Brooks, Rodney A. Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us. ...
Computers were the revolutionary technology of the late 20th century.
Brooks, director of MIT's famed Artificial Intelligence Lab, contends
that robotics will be the next technological wave and that these complex
machines will force us to reconsider what it is that makes us fully
human." March 1, 2003: These
cars can keep you out of trouble. By Steve Makris. The Edmonton
Journal. "Safety and comfort technology in cars has come a long
way. Artificial intelligence prevents rollovers...."
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